Filipino soldiers pin down IS in Marawi
Army commanders believe they are in final stages to oust militants from city
Army commanders believe they are in final stages to oust militants from city.
MARAWI CITY ( Philippines): With a grimace, Brig-Gen Melquiades Ordiales of the Philippines 1st Marine Brigade recounted the painful gains made against Islamist militants in Marawi City.
“It took us one week from this point to that point, to cross that street,” he said, casting his eyes to the other side of a two-lane road in the heart of the southern Philippines city, lined by three-storey buildings shattered by air strikes and the remaining walls riddled with bullet holes.
“It was really very, very tough.” The grinding urban warfare that has destroyed much of the grandly named Sultan Omar Dianalan Boulevard shows just how much of a threat Islamic State is to the Philippines and potentially other countries in the South-East Asian region.
But when the fighting started, Philippine authorities were unfazed.
After the Islamic State-backed militants took over large parts of picturesque, lakeside Marawi in May, the country’s defence minister, Delfin Lorenzana, predicted the entire conflict would be over in one week. Now, after four months of intense aerial bombardment and house-by-house battles, Philippine commanders believe they are in the final stages of the operation to oust the rebels from the city.
In the past two weeks, military officials say they have conquered three militant bastions, including a mosque, and restricted about 60 remaining guerillas to about 10 devastated city blocks in the business district. Patrols have been increased on the lake to prevent the supply of armaments and recruits to the holed-up militants.
Military officers who have skirmished for years with Islamic insurgents in the southern Philippines say the battle in Marawi has been more intense and difficult than earlier encounters.
The Islamic State militants are better armed, with high-powered weapons, night vision goggles, the latest sniper scopes and surveillance drones, said Capt Arnel Carandang, of the Philippines Army First Scout Ranger Battalion.
He said he has served for almost a decade in the remote jungles and mountains of Mindanao, the southern Philippines region that has long been wracked by insurgencies. Now, Carandang says, the military is in unfamiliar urban terrain.
The militants have exploited the battlefield to their advantage and held off Philippines forces despite a 10-to-1 numerical advantage for the government troops.
Borrowing heavily from Islamic State tactics in the Iraqi city of Mosul, they have surrounded themselves with hostages and used snip- ers and a network of tunnels.
Marawi’s underground drainage system and “rat holes” – crevices in the walls of high floors allowing access to adjacent buildings – have enabled the rebels to evade bombs and remain undetected, soldiers at the battlefront said.
“We believe there have been some foreign terrorists that have been directing their operations, that’s why they are, how do I define this, really good,” said Carandang.
“We have seen some cadavers of foreigners. Some are white, some are black and some tall people, we guess, are Asians (from outside the Philippines).
“We have been hearing in their transmissions some English-speaking terrorists.”
Hostages – many of them Christians – have been deployed to build improvised explosive devices, scavenge for food and weapons in the heat of battle and fight for the Islamist rebels, according to those who escaped.
“When we were first moved to the mosque, there were more than 200 of us,” an escaped hostage, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, said last week.
“We gradually became fewer. People would go on errands but they wouldn’t come back.
“They either escaped or died. By the time I left, there were only about 100 of us.”
The account could not be verified, but military officials confirmed the man escaped from Marawi in early August.
The hostage said the militants were excited by their successes in Marawi, speaking often of the advantages of urban warfare and talking about some of their next possible targets, including other cities in Mindanao and the Philippines capital Manila.
“They said they could hide well in the cities. They can get civilians to become hostages and it’s more difficult in the mountains with only the soldiers,” he said.
Many of the fighters are young recruits, who are fanatical and accomplished fighters, the soldiers said.
“By the way they move and their tactics, you can see they’ve been trained,” said Col Jose Maria Cuerpo, deputy commander of the 103rd Brigade fighting in Marawi.
Much of this bloodshed could have been avoided, local political leaders said. Naguib Sinarimbo, a Muslim leader who has negotiated between the military and Islamic separatists for years, said he and other elders had urged the armed forces to allow militias and rival Islamist groups to take the lead in ousting the Islamic State militants.
The groups were familiar with Marawi’s terrain and, through family and clan links, could influence many of the fighters to lay down their weapons, they told the armed forces. The proposal was rebuffed, Sinarimbo said. Air power, the military assured them, was the path to a quick win.
Zia Alonto Adiong, a provincial politician, said the military also had doubts about the loyalty of some of the “political personalities” offering to provide their militias to push out the fighters. The result was a city in ruins, hundreds of thousands of residents displaced and “emboldened” Islamists, Sinarimbo said.
“They proceeded with the aerial bombing but they didn’t take the city,” Sinarimbo said.
“The military lost authority. “In addition, the devastation of the city will play into militants’ hands, creating resentment and further radicalising many youngsters.” — Reuters