Philippines cracks down on ISIL-linked militants
PHILIPPINE ISLAND UNDER MARTIAL LAW AS PRESIDENT RATCHETS UP FIGHT AGAINST EXTREMISTS
While Kim Jong Un threatens nuclear armageddon, a real war involving ISIL loyalists that could have regional and potentially global consequences grinds on, far from the world’s view, on the Philippine island of Mindanao.
For six months, the island has been under martial law as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wages war with the powerful and deadly Maute clan and their allies, Abu Sayyaf, and countless foreign fighters. Nearly 1,800 were killed — militants and government soldiers — in the armed five-month conflict known as the Battle of Marawi, the longest urban battle in the country’s history. In its aftermath, the Maute clan was diminished — seven of the brothers killed, and the senior Maute leader Abu Dor still at large — but Duterte continues to ratchet up the pressure on the region.
Citing continuing threats of ISIL-inspired extremists and local terrorist groups, he made the case earlier this month to extend martial law through to the end of 2018. “A further extension of the implementation of martial law … will help quell completely and put an end to the ongoing rebellion in Mindanao and prevent the same from escalating to other parts of the country,” he wrote in a letter to Congress.
Only 35 kilometres down the road from Marawi, in the predominately Christian Iligan City, there has long been a sense of dread that the savage urban war might at any moment spill over into a broader conflict. Thousands of people from Marawi have sought refuge here since martial law was declared across Mindanao in May.
“The reason we live under a red alert is that the Maute can look like civilians,” said clothing designer Daryl Lugatiman. “We worry that they may come here. We fear that they are already among our population. That is why we support martial law. We know that Duterte does this for our own safety.”
During the height of the conflict, Iligan looked and felt like a city at war. Thousands of fresh Philippine troops heading into the fight and weary ones who had just left it cross paths every day as the city became the primary rest stop and mustering point. Vietnam-era helicopters clattered overhead. FA50 warplanes laden with bombs and rockets screamed towards the battle zone to the south.
Former Marawi councillor Nassib Sambaco and a few Maranao-speaking friends from the besieged city run a gauntlet of 10 police and army checkpoints once every week with government permission to make sure the Philippine flag flies over their city and to check on what they described as the devastating damage that has been done to the place.
“We call the Maute terrorists because of the destruction they have caused in our place,” Sambaco said in an interview earlier this year. “They claim they are jihadists and are suddenly calling themselves Islamic State but that is branding. They do not even know what jihad is.
“What they really are is extremists. What they are doing is un-Islamic. They have taken Islamic principles and misinterpreted them.”
The Maute were “inspired by ISIL central, ideologically and tactically,” said Ahmad Elmuhammady of Malaysia’s Islam International University, who frequently writes on terrorism. However, the group built “their narratives based in a local context of perceived or real government discrimination, a slowmoving peace process and the hard approach taken by President Duterte.”
Like most places in the Philippines, Marawi voted strongly for Duterte in presidential elections last year. While the president remains hugely popular in Iligan and most of Mindanao, his decision to prosecute much of the war with air strikes has not won him many friends among people from there.
“Is there not at alternative to air strikes?” lawyer Abdullah Ahmad-Ali asked during the height of martial law. “They have become an effective tool for the Maute to recruit.
“The Maute are like a bacteria. They exist in parts of the body that are sensitive. But they are only one per cent of the population, if it is even that high. This must be stopped but in the right way.”
Half of Marawi had been destroyed, mostly by aircraft, with the level of destruction highest in the city centre, Ahmad-Ali said. His own office “has been blown up” and he lost all of his law books and papers for the cases that he had been handling.
Marjana Sagusura, who made a harrowing journey on foot to escape besieged Marawi one week after fighting began in May, said “there was shooting and burning everywhere, the main campus of the University of Mindanao was badly damaged and the Maute were warning people to leave or they might die.”
A constant refrain from Christians in Iligan was that the people of Marawi were getting what they deserved because of what was widely seen as quiet support of the Maute, Abu Sayyaf and Islamic State.
“To see the planes flying is good,” said Ricardo Naboyng, a guard on duty at the gate of a Catholic school. “There has to be bombing because that is the terrorists’ stronghold. I am not angry with Muslims, but I wonder why they make trouble.
“We must be vigilant to keep our own city peaceful and safe.”
Ahmad-Ali vehemently denied that the people of Marawi supported extremism, “but what happens in Iraq and Syria means that our hearts and minds can be easily manipulated.”
“This happens because of globalization,” he added. “It is so easy now to exchange ideas and information. Young people and even some older people here can see extremist videos that were made in the Middle East. They like these videos because they believe that they tell them about Islam. The truth is that that is not Islam at all.”
Though their numbers were diminished, the greatest victory of the Maute/Abu Sayyaf/Islamic State fighters may be that they managed to hold out for as long as they did by hiding and fighting in the ruins of Marawi despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Philippine forces.
That “lifted the prestige of the Philippine fighters in the eyes of ISIS central (and) has inspired young extremists from around the region to want to join,” according to a research paper produced by the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.
Ahmed-Ali said the way for the government to win back support of Filipino Muslims in Mindanao was to launch a strong rebuilding program when the bloody battle for Marawi finally ended.
A lingering worry, openly expressed by Christians and Muslims in Iligan City, was that after years of relatively peaceful coexistence, the violence in Marawi might drive a permanent wedge between the country’s more than 80 million Christians and more than 10 million Muslims.
“I don’t like Muslims because they make trouble for Christians by bombing and ambushing them,” said Pentecostal Merlinda Halisbas, bluntly summing up the daunting challenge facing President Duterte once peace is restored.
“Some of them are traitors who hate Christians. My feelings are so strong that I can’t really talk about them, although I know that some Muslims aren’t bad.”
WE MUST BE VIGILANT TO KEEP OUR OWN CITY PEACEFUL AND SAFE.