Daesh links to militants ‘very strong’: Manila
if we assert our right, our award, it was never going to do any good for us’. Delfin Lorenzanax, defence secretary
manila — The Philippines is certain of “very strong” links between Daesh and home-grown militants and is concerned about regional repercussions from tension between China and the new US administration, Manila’s defence minister said on Thursday.
Intelligence from various sources had shown rebels in the southern Philippines had been communicating with Daesh, and funds were being transferred via mechanisms commonly used by Filipino workers in the Middle East, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said.
“Before, what we suspected was the Daesh group would come here but now we are certain that the connections are very strong between home-grown terrorists here and Daesh in the Middle East,” he said in an interview.
“Also there’s quite an amount of money being sent here from the Middle East.”
He said communications via social media, telephone and text messages had been intercepted and funds were being transferred that were difficult to detect due to the large numbers of Filipinos who regularly remit income from Middle East states.
The Philippines did not consider ties with longtime ally the United States to be strained, he said, despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s fierce rebukes of Washington.
Some statements about China by advisers to US President Donald Trump were “very troubling”, he said, adding that an Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States would make US troops based temporarily in the Philippines “magnets for retaliation” if things turned hostile. “We are concerned if war breaks out and it is near us we will be involved whether we like it or not,” he said, adding that if a conflict looked likely, the Philippines would consider scrapping the EDCA, to avoid a repeat of World War Two, when his country was badly affected.
There were no signs of any new Chinese reclamation in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, he said, and he had been given assurances repeatedly by China’s ambassador that it would not do any dredging in the disputed Scarborough Shoal.