IS core in Syria helping fund militants, report says
JAKARTA: The central command of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria has funneled tens of thousands of dollars to militants in the Philippines over the last year, most likely aiding their spectacular seizure of the southern Philippine city of Marawi, a report released yesterday said.
The report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, a research institute based in Jakarta, describes how Mahmud Ahmad, a high-level IS figure from Malaysia who is based near Marawi, worked through the group’s chain of command to Syria to get money and international recruits to help local militants seize territory in the Philippines for the caliphate.
The report provides insight into a question that has bewildered policymakers since militants affiliated with the IS swept into Marawi two months ago: How were they able to seize an important city in the southern Philippines, and what role did the IS’s central command play in the seizure?
The city has remained largely under the control of the militants for nearly two months despite a government military campaign to retake it with ground forces and aerial bombardments.
After the militants seized Marawi, they raised the IS flag and declared the establishment of a new province of the organisation, also known as Isis or Isil. Some senior politicians in the Philippines have dismissed the Maute Group, the major Islamist militant faction behind the seizure of Marawi, as “Isis wannabes,” characterising it as a drug mafia with little in common with the ideologically driven IS fighters.
But the report suggests that IS commanders in Syria took the Maute Group’s strategic ambitions seriously.
The IS’s ability to support its Philippine offshoots appears limited mainly to periodic Western Union transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, the report found, suggesting that direct support from Syria was a relatively minor factor in the Maute Group’s ability to seize Marawi.
The report argues that local recruiting and fundraising among pious Muslims who resented the Philippines’ central government have probably played a more significant role in the insurgents’ successes.
The institute’s research is based on field visits this year to Mindanao, the island where Marawi sits, interviews with people close to Indonesian militants in the Philippines, and militants’ messages obtained from Telegram, the highly encrypted messaging service used by the IS. Last week, the Indonesian government announced it would ban some features of Telegram, because of how useful the app has been for terrorists.
Intercepted chats show that the IS has a sophisticated command structure in Southeast Asia, allowing for complex coordination among its supporters across the region.
In one instance from last year, two Indonesian militants were connected via a Malaysian contact to another militant based in Thailand who helped them support a prison break here. The goal was to free a group of Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnic group from western China, who had been detained there.
Though the prison break was initially successful, the Uighurs were eventually recaptured by the Thai police. Still, the report notes: “The story illustrates how well-connected the Isis network has become, with an Indonesian connecting as easily with contacts in Turkey, the Philippines and Thailand as with his own friends in prison.”
International coordination of IS leaders with Southeast Asian militants may amplify the terrorism threat to neighboring Indonesia, the report said.
The past 18 months have produced a steady trickle of low-casualty IS-inspired terrorist attacks in Indonesia, but until now the actions have tended to be poorly planned and executed.
A major concern for the Indonesian government is that some of the 20-odd Indonesian fighters who have joined up with IS groups in Mindanao will acquire the equipment and expertise to commit serious terrorist attacks at home.
The report calls for Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to improve their security services’ coordination and intelligence sharing, so that the names of key suspects are passed along.
Still, the first step is ousting the IS from Marawi. When Marawi was seized in May, President Rodrigo Duterte pledged that the militants would be defeated quickly. But groups aligned with the IS continues to maintain its grip on sections of the city, and it now appears unlikely that Marawi will be fully liberated when Mr Duterte delivers his annual address to the nation Monday.