‘Philippines a new hub for IS’
> Foreigners fighting alongside rebels in Marawi: Source
MANILA: Dozens of foreigners have fought side-by-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 that of the 400 to 500 marauding fighters who overran the city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao last week, as many as 40 had recently come from overseas, including from countries in 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, local insurgencies and separatist movements.
But officials have long warned that the poverty, lawlessness and porous borders of Mindanao 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 in Marawi was the first long-drawn-out confrontation with security forces.
The government said yesterday it was close to retaking the city.
“We call on the remaining terrorists to surrender while there is an opportunity,” military spokesman Brig-Gen Restituto Padilla told reporters.
More than 100 people have been killed, most of them militants, according to the military.
Last year, Southeast Asian militants fighting for IS in Syria released a video urging their countrymen to join the cause in the southern Philippines or launch attacks at home rather than attempting to travel to Syria.
Jakarta-based terrorism expert Sidney Jones passed to Reuters some recent messages in a chatroom of the Telegram app used by IS supporters.
In one, a user reported that he was in the heart of Marawi 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, a mouthpiece for IS.
According to an intelligence brief seen by Reuters, authorities in Jakarta believe 38 Indonesians travelled to the southern Philippines to join IS-affiliated groups and about 22 of them joined the fighting in Marawi. – Reuters