We’ve got a tough fight in our hands
The stark reality is that we need to prepare for more attacks in built-up areas by fanatical terrorists.
ISIS is in the Philippines, big time.
According to the Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu, there are about 1,200 Islamic State ( IS) group operatives in the Philippines, including foreigners of whom 40 are Indonesian. He said this at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last Sunday, sponsored by the International Institute of Strategic Studies of which I’m a member.
Amid a bloody standoff between our troops and terrorists fighting under the IS flag in Marawi, Defense Minister Ryacudu called the extremists “killing machines” and urged full- scale regional counterterror cooperation. The threat of heightened terrorism, including the impending return of hundreds of Southeast Asian extremists who fought in Syria and Iraq, was a hot-button issue at the three-day summit that US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also attended.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana believes it’s no longer just the Maute group behind the fighting in Marawi City, but ISIS. He said that if it were just the Maute group, they would have given up long ago. The persistence of the current fighters is nothing they’ve seen before. He estimates that there are still between 200 to 250 terrorists in Marawi. Eight extremists from Malaysia, Indonesia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Chechnya have been killed so far.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State (IS), and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh, is a Salafi jihadist unrecognized proto-state and militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIS is a recent phenomenon that gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
The UN and many individual countries have classified ISIS as a terrorist organization. ISIS is widely known for showing videos of soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers that they beheaded; and for its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The UN holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a “historic scale” in northern Iraq.
IS is a theocracy, proto-state and a Salafi or Wahhabi group. It follows an extremist interpretation of Islam, promotes religious violence, and regards Muslims who do not agree with its interpretations as infidels or apostates. Its philosophy is symbolized by the Black Standard variant of the legendary battle flag of Prophet Muhammad that it has adopted: the flag shows the Seal of Muhammad within a white circle, with the phrase above it, “There is no god but God.” It points to its belief that it represents the restoration of the caliphate of early Islam.
IS emerged from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first post- Ottoman Islamist group dating back to the late 1920s in Egypt. It adheres to global jihadist principles and follows the hardline ideology of al Qaeda and many other modern-day jihadist groups. However, other sources trace the group’s roots to Wahhabism. IS is now believed to be operational in 18 countries across the world, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, with “aspiring branches” in Mali, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
In 2015, 2016 and 2017, ISIL
claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria, including: • a mass shooting at a Tunisian
tourist resort (38 European tourists killed), • Suruç bombing in Turkey (33
leftist and pro-Kurdish activists killed), • Tunisian National Museum
attack ( 24 foreign tourists and Tunisians killed), • Sana’a mosque bombings
(142 Shia civilians killed), • crash of Metrojet Flight 9268
(224 killed, mostly Russian tourists), • bombings in Ankara ( 102
pro-Kurdish and leftist activists killed), • bombings in Beirut (43 Shia
civilians killed), • November 2015 Paris attacks (130 civilians killed), • killing of Jaafar Mohammed Saad, the governor of Aden,
• January 2016 Istanbul bombing (11 foreign tourists killed),
• 2016 Brussels bombings (32 civilians killed),
• 2016 Nice attack (86 civilians killed), • July 2016 Kabul bombing (at
least 80 civilians killed, mostly Shia Hazaras),
• 2016 Berlin attack (12 civilians killed),
• 2017 Istanbul nightclub shooting ( 39 foreigners and Turks killed)
• 2017 attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypts (100 killed).
• 2017 Manchester Arena bombing (22 civilians killed).
• London Bridge and Borough
Market (7 killed, 48 wounded).
In Marawi, the latest reported death toll as of this writing has reached 128: 89 terrorists; 20 soldiers and policemen; and 19 civilians.
As of May 30, a total of 960 civilians have been rescued. An estimated 2,000 residents are still trapped in the battle zone. Our troops are confronting a very difficult combat situation — urban warfare. The special operations forces units that engaged in MOUT (military operations in urban terrain) during the Zamboanga siege have been deployed to Marawi.
The stark reality is that we need to prepare for more attacks in built-up areas by fanatical terrorists. They make strike in large formations, or in small teams, or as lone wolves as they do around the world. Bombings, shootings, stabbings, and running over crowds with vans or trucks of tourist areas are established methods used by IS. Westerners are preferred soft targets but the results have been indiscriminate with many children, women and elderly among those killed and injured.
We need to scale up the capability, quantity and quality of our urban warfare forces, backed up by activated Ready Reserve Units to protect vital infrastructure and tourist areas. We need sufficient UW combat forces required for simultaneous extensive and intensive urban warfare to deal with ISIS. They must be backed by adequate close air support, armor, artillery, air evacuation, field hospitals, and transports to sustain the troops until missions are accomplished.
IS changes the complexion of local militancy. This is a fanatical group that kills Muslims and nonMuslims alike. Their ambition is to establish a global caliphate by wrapping themselves around the Quran while masking their naked lust for power. They don’t deserve the same rights as humanity. They deserve to be killed on the spot.