SIGNS OF EMERGING I.S. ASIAN HUB IN THE PHILIPPINES
Scores of fighters from Asia, Middle East heading to southern Philippines
DOZENS of foreign militants have fought sideby-side with Islamic State (IS) sympathisers against security forces in the southern Philippines over the past week, evidence that the restive region is fast becoming an Asian hub for the ultra-radical group.
A Philippines intelligence source said of the 400 to 500 marauding fighters who overran this city on the island of Mindanao last Tuesday, as many as 40 had recently come from overseas, including the Middle East.
The source said they included Indonesians, Malaysians, at least one Pakistani, a Saudi, a Chechen, a Yemeni, an Indian, a Moroccan and one man with a Turkish passport.
“IS is shrinking in Iraq and Syria, and decentralising in parts of Asia and the Middle East,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a security expert at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
“One of the areas where it is expanding is Southeast Asia and the Philippines is the centre of gravity.”
Mindanao has been roiled for decades by bandits, insurgencies and separatist movements. But, officials have long warned that the poverty, lawlessness and porous borders of Mindanao’s predominantly Muslim areas mean it could become a base for radicals from Southeast Asia and beyond, especially as IS fighters are driven out of Iraq and Syria.
Although IS and groups affiliated to the movement have claimed several attacks across Southeast Asia in the last two years, the battle here was the first long drawn-out confrontation with security forces.
Jakarta-based terrorism expert Sidney Jones has obtained messages from a chatroom that IS supporters use in the Telegram application.
In one message, a user reported that he was in the heart of Marawi City, where he could see the army “run like pigs” and “their filthy blood mix with the dead bodies of their comrades”.
He asked others in the group to pass information on to the Amaq News Agency, an IS mouthpiece.
Another user replied, using an Arabic word meaning pilgrimage: “Hijrah to the Philippines. Door is opening.”
The clash here began with an army raid to capture Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of Abu Sayyaf, a group notorious for piracym, kidnappings and beheadings.
Abu Sayyaf and a relatively new group called Maute have both pledged allegiance to IS and have fought alongside each other in Marawi City, torching a hospital and a cathedral, and kidnapping a Catholic priest. Reuters