Philippines conflict a fertile recruiting ground
The fighting in Mindanao will provide militants from abroad with skills to use at home, writes Florian Neuhof
The three-storey house is the largest of the intermittent buildings flanking a grassy side street in the desolate outskirts of Marawi. Its exterior walls are so riddled with bullets it’s surprising they have not crumbled and collapsed. In the gloomy interior, ammunition pouches, discarded clothing and copies of the Quran lie scattered.
It was here that Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the ISIL-affiliate Abu Sayyaf, was cornered by the army on May 23. By bagging the terrorist, the raid should have resulted in a significant victory for the government in its struggle against a growing Islamist insurgency. But a shoot-out ensued, and the soldiers realised they had shaken up a hornets’ nest.
Heavily armed militants appeared out of nowhere, and the unit was soon surrounded and forced to withdraw. Hapilon escaped, and Abu Sayyaf continues to menace.
The botched raid ignited a tinderbox. The Maute Group, another local gang that had pledged allegiance to ISIL, had secretly massed hundreds of fighters in the city. It seized the opportunity to take control of the “Islamic City of Marawi”, the only Muslim majority city in the Philippines, taking hostages, killing policemen and burning down a church.
“They were in the city already. Some of them were locals, some of them were not,” says Mohammed Khalid Al Mama, a youngster who lives near the Abu Sayyaf hideout and witnessed the raid.
As the population fled, the military moved in, kicking off a continuing siege of the city on the southern island of Mindanao. After months of heavy fighting and intense aerial bombardment, the few dozen remaining Maute fighters have been hemmed into a patch of the city centre, but continue to hold out as the military leadership is reluctant to lose more soldiers and endanger the lives of the hostages.
The military will eventually succeed in mopping up the last of the fighters. But the duration of the siege, the widespread destruction of the city and insufficient relief efforts for the displaced all play into the hands of the militants.
“The Marawi siege has been a categorical win for Maute and for ISIL,” says Justin Richmond, a former US special forces operative in the southern Philippines who founded impl.project – a development consultancy working in Mindanao. “The insurgency is stronger now. They have lost people but they are going to gain that back. This is going to be a prolonged fight.”
Several hundred of the approximately 1,000 fighters who took over Marawi are thought to have slipped through the military’s cordon. At the same time, the Maute Group is recruiting again on its home turf in Butig, a remote municipality south-west of Marawi. New recruits receive a signing on fee of US$600 (Dh2,204), says Mr Richmond, a small fortune in the poverty-stricken area.
Together with other militant movements, the Maute Group had been gathering strength since the US pulled its special forces and advisers from the Philippines in 2015.
Led by the brothers Abdullah and Omar Maute, it had been successful in tapping into the grievances of the Muslim minority, which is concentrated on the western part of Mindanao and small islands on the edge of the Sulu Sea, which separates the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, of which Marawi is part, is poor even by Philippine standards, and Muslims are widely looked down on by their Christian countrymen. Making things worse, local government corruption is endemic, entrenching poverty and stymieing economic development. Social mobility is hampered by the dominant clans in the region’s jungle hinterlands.
“The main problem of the Muslims in the Philippines and especially in the ARMM is the corruption. In all aspects, there is corruption,” says Alikman Nata, a local volunteer aid worker and head of the Lanao Muslim Youth organisation.
Corruption is the main reason why despairing Muslims join jihadist groups, says Farouk Ali, a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an armed movement.
After years of insurgency on Mindanao, the liberation front has engaged in negotiations with the government, and in 2014 signed a peace deal that, if implemented, would replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with even more autonomy under the Bangsamoro Basic Law.
Commonly referred to as the BBL, the law still has to be ratified by parliament. The government’s hesitancy over the BBL has angered Mindanao’s Muslims, and many locals believe the decision of the Maute brothers to turn to violence was driven by the delay.
“It was the failure of the BBL that started their radicalisation,” says Agakhan Sharief, an influential religious figure in Marawi who runs an Islamic schooling programme.
“The failure of the BBL is a huge blow to the legitimacy of the government. It reinforces the ISIL narrative,” Mr Richmond says. “The BBL isn’t just a peace process – it’s a recognition of the Bangsamoro identity, and a validation of the Muslim identity.”
Bangsamoro is the vernacular for Maranao Nation. Maranao is an ancient term used for the inhabitants of the autonomous region, and derives its name from Lake Lanao. Marawi lies on its shores.
About 250,000 Maranaos from Marawi and nearby areas have been displaced to the surrounding countryside and towns by the fighting. The government response to the humanitarian crisis has been
poor. Families are piled into abandoned buildings or other makeshift shelters, or languish in tent camps in jungle clearings. Supplies of food and other aid are inadequate.
The prolonged battle has not only kept them from their homes. It has also destroyed much of the city, meaning that the displaced have nowhere to return to. This is feeding a resentment that the Mautes have been encouraging by releasing propaganda videos of the destruction in Marawi.
“If the condition continues until two months from now, it will [create] more sympathisers. Because they will take it as discrimination, they will take it as oppression, and they will take it as they are not being cared for and they are not being valued,” says Aslani Montila, an aid worker who helps run an informal shelter in a disused seminary in the nearby town of Iligan.
Mr Sharief, who maintains ties to the displaced community, says that some Marawi men have already joined the Maute Group since the siege began.
The Mautes are not the only violent Islamist group posing problems. The Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, a splinter group of the MILF, enjoys substantial support among the local population and is a more formidable force than the Mautes, Mr Richmond says.
The delay in bringing further autonomy to Muslim Mindanao is strengthening the insurgents at the expense of the liberation front.
“The problem the [Front] has is that the BBL isn’t moving, so they don’t really have anything to offer to their constituents,” Mr Richmond says.
President Rodrigo Duterte has pledged to make the BBL a priority. If he cannot get parliament to pass the law, the front will probably return to the gun against the government. “Some of the firebrand commanders are already keen to resume the armed struggle,” Mr Sharief says.
“I have talked to [liberation front] commanders. They said, ‘If we cannot support ISIL, we will start a new war because we believe the government is not sincere with this agreement’,” he says.
A further destabilisation of the southern Philippines is not a problem for Manila alone. The vast jungle of Mindanao and a supportive Muslim population are an ideal breeding ground for extremism that can spread throughout the region.