Presence of Foreign Militants Complicates Fight in Southern Philippines

John Bechtel
2017.06.05
Washington
170605-SEA-fighters-620.jpg Philippine soldiers walk past Islamic State graffiti in Marawi, May 31, 2017.
AFP

Southeast Asian governments are struggling to determine how many Islamic State-linked foreign militants are in the southern Philippines, a year after IS leaders urged followers who could not travel to Syria or Iraq to go to Mindanao island instead.

Philippine military officials have identified people from six other countries among more than 120 suspected extremists who have been killed in the southern city of Marawi as ferocious battles with government forces entered a third week.

The fallen foreign combatants who were fighting alongside Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) gunmen backed by members of the Maute gang included citizens of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore as well as Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the Philippine military said.

Speaking at an international security conference in Singapore over the weekend, Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu said he had been advised that “1,200 ISIS are in the Philippines, around 40 from Indonesia.”

Philippine Defense Undersecretary Ricardo David said he was not aware of that figure, as he responded to Ryacudu’s comment at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual regional security forum hosted by Singapore.

“I really don’t know, my figure is about 250 to 400, a lot less,” he told reporters at the conference attended by officials from 39 countries.

The fighting in Marawi broke out May 23 after Isnilon Hapilon, an Abu Sayyaf commander recognized as the leader of IS’s branch in the Philippines, was spotted in the city.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in the south of his country after the militants took control of large parts of Marawi, marking the first time that IS-linked groups had claimed territory outside of Syria and Iraq. Efforts by the Philippine military to wrest the largely deserted Marawi from militants holed up there have taken longer than expected.

“The group’s recent siege of Marawi City … attests to their potential to turn Mindanao into an ISIS wilayat (province) for Southeast Asian militants,” Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a report assessing the terrorism threat in Southeast Asia. It was released earlier this month and referred to IS by another acronym.

Marawi a ‘game changer’

IS recruiting efforts have focused on increasing the extremist group’s strength in the Philippines, said Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), a Jakarta-based think-tank.

“What’s clear is that for the last year, there has been a steady stream of exhortations over Telegram from Indonesians in Syria and from ISIS-supporters in Indonesia that the Philippines was the place to go. As it became harder and harder to cross the Turkish border into Syria, the message on social media changed from ‘join us in Syria,’ to ‘look to the struggle closer to home,’” Jones told BenarNews.

“So ironically, while Western governments like the U.S. and Australia have seen the biggest danger coming from foreign fighters coming from Syria and Iraq to the Philippines, in fact the bigger threat was from would-be fighters in the region who had never set foot in the Middle  East,” she added.

In June 2016, IS released a propaganda video showing a Filipino, an Indonesian and a Malaysian appearing together to urge Muslims to fight in Syria or the Philippines.

“If you cannot go to [Syria], join up and go to the Philippines,” Malaysian IS figure Rafi Udin said in the 20-minute video.

He also urged IS supporters at home to use any means to kill non-Muslims and non-believers “wherever you meet them.” In the video, the three men carried out what appeared to be the beheading of three prisoners who were kneeling in front of them, hands bound, in orange jumpsuits.

Rommel Banlaoi, who heads the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said governments in the region need to evolve in their efforts to counter extremist groups.

“The Marawi situation is a game changer in Philippine counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts. The battle in Marawi has demonstrated the complex nexus of local armed resistance and international terrorism,” he told BenarNews.

“The aftermath of the Marawi crisis will not automatically conclude the armed conflict as threat groups facing government forces have the resilient ability to evolve and adapt to the current and emerging  situation,” he added.

Malaysia, Indonesia track combatants

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s police chief said that a handful of militants from his country were involved in the fighting in Marawi.

“Based on intelligence and news, there are five Malaysians in Marawi city. Three have been killed and we are, at the moment, certifying the number of Malaysians in Marawi,” Police Inspector-General Khalid Abu Bakar told BenarNews.

In Jakarta, Indonesian police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said some 38 Indonesians had gone to the southern Philippines within the past year, but not all were linked to the siege in Marawi.

“Four people have been killed in Marawi and 22 are still in the southern Philippines. We do not know their condition yet,” he told BenarNews on Friday, without identifying the four who were killed. A dozen were waiting to be deported after being arrested by Philippine security, he added.

Nasir Abbas, a terrorism analyst and a former member of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, said the number of Indonesians in the Philippines was likely higher than the government’s projection.

“I think the number could be more than 80 people because the southern Philippines has always been a military training center in Southeast Asia,” he told BenarNews. “Radical groups in Indonesia have had close ties with the groups in the Philippines,” he said.

Another terrorism analyst told BenarNews the number could be even higher.

“The cells that support IS in Indonesia have a close relationship with Filipino terrorists,” said Al Chaidar, a terrorism analyst from the Malikussaleh University in Aceh province.

Joint patrols

Mindanao lies near the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, where local authorities warned in January that IS-linked extremist cells were planning to use Sabah as a transit point for sending fighters into the southern Philippines.

In recent days, the Malaysian armed forces have deploying assets to Sabah, including patrols boats, to safeguard “areas identified as vulnerable to entries from the southern Philippines.”

The seas separating the southern Philippines from Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo have also been rife since 2016 with acts of piracy and maritime kidnappings of sailors from commercial ships by Abu Sayyaf-linked gunmen. Since last year, the three neighboring countries have vowed to launch joint patrols aimed at protecting shipping from similar attacks, but the patrols have been delayed repeatedly.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein announced that these long-awaited joint patrols were nearly ready to begin.

“Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia will launch joint sea patrols in the waters of Mindanao this month to resist any threats from the Daesh militant group who wants to establish a caliphate in Southeast Asia,” he told BenarNews on Monday, using another name for IS.

“Joint patrols in the waters bordering the three countries will begin on June 19 but air patrols will commence soon after that.”

Officials from the Philippines and Indonesia did not immediately reply to BenarNews' requests for confirmation of that date.

Felipe Villamor in Manila, Hata Wahari in Kuala Lumpur and Rina Chadijah in Jakarta contributed to this report.

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