A spokesman for the local Joint Task Force Sulu confirmed details about Saturday’s deadly firefight in a report. He said the wounded government troops were being treated at a military hospital and appeared to be out of harm’s way.

“Ground information and reports gathered by troops from the nearby communities [indicate] there were four Abu Sayyaf members killed and five wounded,” Lt. Col. Gerald Monfort said.

He said the rebel force was composed of about 40 militants from a faction led by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, who is acknowledged as the new leader of the southern Philippine branch of Islamic State (IS).

The pursuing troops recovered one of the bodies of the slain militants and his M16 rifle, along with some personal belongings, backpacks, food provisions and cooking paraphernalia, Monfort said.

The firefight came three days after troops engaged Abu Sayyaf militants in another gunbattle in Sulu that left three policemen and a government militiaman wounded.

Philippine authorities have blamed Sawadjaan for planning and orchestrating suicide bombings in 2019 that used foreign militants. These included an attack by two Indonesians who blew themselves up at a Catholic Church in Jolo town in January. Twenty-three people were killed in the twin bombings there.

Sawadjaan took over as the IS leader in the region after Isnilon Hapilon, another Abu Sayyaf commander who headed the Islamic State branch in the Philippines, was killed in October 2017 at the end of a long battle with government forces in the southern city of Marawi.

In May 2017, Hapilon led pro-IS fighters from the Philippines and other countries in a siege of the city. The militant takeover precipitated a five-month battle that destroyed Marawi and left an estimated 1,200 militants, soldiers and civilians dead.

CORRECTION: An earlier version wrongly indentified Gerald Monfort as a lieutenant general.

It was first imposed by a presidential order from Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte in May 2017 to counter Islamic State-linked militants who then took over Marawi, a city in the south, and would hold on to it for five months as they battled government forces.

“Our security forces have determined that the purpose of implementing martial law has been attained and prevailing conditions in the whole of Mindanao island as well as the islands of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi have greatly improved since the defeat of the Maute fighters in October 2017,” Lorenzana said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Named after the brothers Maute, the militant group provided the main back-up force for Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, when he led hundreds of fighters from Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the siege of Marawi.

Both the military and police have made similar assessments that military rule was no longer needed in the south, and Lorenzana said he had endorsed the recommendation for signing by the president.

Hapilon, the Islamic State (IS) leader in the southern Philippines, and his fighters assassinated Christians and took dozens of civilians hostages when they took over Marawi city. His fighters engaged the Philippine military in deadly urban warfare, which at first stumped government soldiers who were more adept at jungle fighting.

American and Australian forces later assisted the Philippine military in non-combat roles in its campaign to break the IS siege of the city. They provided valuable intelligence data that helped pinpoint enemy targets in and around Marawi.

The militant fighters were eventually routed, with Hapilon among the dead. However, many militants, with foreigner fighters possibly among them, managed to flee the devastated city and resume recruitment operations in the Philippine south, officials said.

Hapilon has since been replaced as the IS regional leader by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a little-known Abu Sayyaf commander based on Jolo island. He has been blamed for masterminding suicide bombings there this year.

The deadliest attack was in January, when Sawadjaan deployed an Indonesian couple to detonate two suicide vests at a church in Jolo, killing 23 people.

Lorenzana as well as top military and police officials have said that there were dozens of foreign fighters lingering in the region.

In his statement, Lorenzana said that “threat groups” were no longer able to carry out “a Marawi-type attack” in the south because their forces had been significantly downgraded.

The Philippine congress had approved two extensions of military rule and the suspension of the writ of the privilege of habeas corpus in the south. However, violent attacks still happened in Mindanao in recent months despite the declaration of martial law.

Mark Navales in Cotabato, Philippines, contributed to this report.

Vinluan said the militants could have been responding to the killings of an Abu Sayyaf sub leader and five others in November during the rescue of a British hostage and his Filipina wife.

“The attack could be a retaliation for the losses they incurred recently,” Vinluan said, adding that a combined force of military and police fought off the militants.

Vinluan told reporters last month that a series of clashes pushed the militants to an area where they were at a tactical disadvantage, forcing them to splinter into small groups before fleeing and abandoning Allan Arthur Hyrons and his wife, Wilma Paglinawan-Hyrons.

The couple were rescued after being held for 53 days. While Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for kidnappings for ransom, no money was paid prior to their rescue, officials said.

Meanwhile, military officials said that the firefight late Wednesday lasted for a few minutes before the militants withdrew. Troops from the 6th Special Forces Battalion responded and evacuated those injured to a military camp hospital in Jolo while others pursued the militants.

Abu Sayyaf, the smallest of several armed groups operating in the restive south, is considered the most brutal one. Three years ago, members of the group beheaded two Canadian hostages and a German captive after their governments refused to pay ransoms following their kidnappings.

The camp is where Ismael Abubakar (also known as Imam Bungos), the leader of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), was believed to be hiding out, Estolas said.

“It was a preparatory move to soften the resistance of the militants before the actual operations started,” Estolas said.

“The militants were killed by the bombardment,” he said.

Philippine special forces stormed the militants’ stronghold afterwards, Estolas said.

They encountered no resistance and found the bodies of the slain enemy fighters slumped over their firearms at the BIFF encampment, he said. Troops recovered the bodies along with M16 rifles, improvised bombs and several hand grenades, he added.

A police forensics team was investigating to determine if the dead suspects were foreigners or Philippine militants, he said.

The BIFF is a splinter group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), once the country’s largest Muslim separatist group, which signed a peace deal with Manila in 2014 to end their rebellion of more than three decades.

The MILF now controls an autonomous region in Mindanao, where Muslims form a large minority.

The government has begun integrating MILF fighters into its ranks, primarily to help it against smaller armed factions that have vowed to continue the fight for full independence.

The BIFF is one of several known groups waging that fight and has flown the black Islamic State (IS) flag.

It, however, did not join other pro-IS militants in taking over the southern city of Marawi two years ago. Instead, BIFF launched deadly diversionary attacks elsewhere in the Philippine south to divert military attention from Marawi.

The five-month siege of Marawi left an estimated 1,200 militants, soldiers and civilians dead, in gun battles that saw foreign fighters from Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the enemy frontlines.

Troops are also going after the militants in another front in Lanao del Sur province, near Marawi, officials said.

The fighters are a band of 30 fighters who had helped in Marawi as well. They are believed to be led by a fighter known only “Zacaria” in Madalum town, according to the military.

“They kept on evading our troops but the soldiers are tracking them closely,” said Col. Jose Maria Cuerpo, commander of the local brigade.

Cuerpo said troops supported by artillery and air assets recently attacked a suspected camp of the fighters.

They found some 14 tents as well as personal paraphernalia and black IS flags that are popular with IS-linked militants here. But the enemy fighters escaped, he said.

Richel V. Umel contributed to this report from Iligan, Philippines.

Manila and Jakarta agreed to boost their maritime operations during the three-day Philippines-Indonesia Border Committee Chairmen’s Conference that began in the southern Philippine city of Davao on Tuesday.

The joint patrols aim “to review and strengthen the existing measures to ensure the safe passage of the respective nationals of both countries, to include the protection of fisher folks in the border areas en route to the fishing grounds at high seas,” Lt. Col. Ezra Balagtey, spokesman for the Philippine military’s Eastern Mindanao Command, said in a statement Wednesday.

Conference delegates were reviewing the so-called 1975 Border Patrol and Border Crossing Agreements between the Southeast Asian neighbors and would “recommend amendments of its provisions to be attuned to the prevailing situation in maritime security and terrorism in both countries,” Balagtey said.

Members of the border committee also held a meeting in the Philippines in January 2018, during which they similarly agreed to elevate cooperation on maritime security. That agreement came days after Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met President Rodrigo Duterte in Davao, the Philippine leader’s hometown.

The intensified patrols aim “to prevent the utilization of our respective territorial waters as an avenue for the proliferation of terrorism and other transnational crimes,” a joint statement issued by the two countries’ border committee chairmen said at the time.

“This kind of friendship between the two countries can help resolve any problem,” Indonesian First Admiral Gig Jonias Mozes Sipasulta was quoted as saying then by the state-owned Philippine News Agency.

“We need each other,” he said.

It was not immediately clear how the frequency of existing border patrols would be changed as a result of the agreement. It is common for military officials in the southern Philippine to decline requests for figures on security-related issues.

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are bracing for retaliatory attacks after the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria collapsed in March, leading to a push from a U.S.-backed coalition for captured IS-affiliated fighters, including many from Southeast Asia, to be returned to their home countries.

Didik Novi Rahmanto, chief of the Counter-Foreign Terrorist Fighters Task Force at Indonesia’s Densus 88 anti-terrorist police unit, told BenarNews in early November that Jakarta was ready to accept its citizens from Syria.

“We are prepared to deal with them,” Didik said.

He said at least 28 Indonesian IS detainees were believed to be among those who were abandoned by forces from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after Turkey’s offensive in northeastern Syria against the Kurdish YPG militia, the main element of the SDF.

The Islamic State's defeat of in Syria ushered in complex issues, including the extradition – or legal proceedings – for captured foreign militant fighters, as well as their wives and children.

Malaysia and Indonesia are accepting returnees on a conditional basis.

Citing data from border authorities in Syria, Indonesian officials reported that at least 1,321 Indonesians had joined IS or tried to enlist. Of that number, 84 were killed, 482 were deported while trying to enter Syria. Officials said at least 62 had returned from the Middle East.

Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines began trilateral patrols in June last year after pro-IS militants launched a siege in the southern Philippine city of Marawi. Five months of vicious fighting ended in October 2017 and killed at least 1,200 people, mostly militants, including the acknowledged Philippine IS leader, Isnilon Hapilon, and several foreign fighters.

Malaysia’s Sabah state is a short boat ride from islands in the Philippines’ Mindanao region, where pro-IS Muslim guerrillas and other armed Muslim groups operate. The waters between the two countries are extremely porous. According to analysts, the three nations share coastal borders that have long been used for smuggling routes.

“The marching orders to the troops is to capture them all because if we look at their purpose in coming here, it is to conduct terroristic activities, in particular to stage bombings,” Clement told reporters in Zamboanga city, referring to the foreign militants.

Clement was visiting the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) here, meeting with regional officials to assess regional security in the southern Philippines.

He said foreign terrorists were believed to be hiding with an Abu Sayyaf Group faction under the command of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a local militant leader considered by U.S. and Philippine intelligence as the new IS leader in the south after Isnilon Hapilon was killed at the end of a militant siege of Marawi city two years ago.

An increase in suicide bomb attacks in Sulu and its municipal capital, Jolo, was a sign that Abu Sayyaf fighters had been indoctrinated to the new terror tactic, Clement said, emphasizing that Filipino militants were previously not known for carrying out such attacks.

Foreign militants with the support of Sawadjaan’s group have already carried out at least two successful suicide bombings.

In January, an Indonesian couple blew themselves up at Jolo’s main Catholic church, killing 23 people and wounding more than 100 others during a Sunday Mass. In June, two Filipinos – the first Filipino bombers – detonated their explosives outside an army camp in Jolo, killing five people, including themselves, and wounding 22 others.

Clement said the military was also closely monitoring attempts by foreign fighters who fought for IS in the Middle East to penetrate the southern Philippines. Intelligence operatives are already closely coordinating with Indonesian and Malaysian authorities to track these fighters, he said.

The three nations began trilateral maritime and aerial patrols along the Philippines’ porous southern borders in June 2017 after pro-IS militants launched the Marawi siege.

“If ever there are reports, let’s say from Malaysia or Indonesia, they will share the information [with us], so we can prevent the terrorists from crossing, and the same is true also if there are reports of fighters here going to their respective country,” Clement said.

“The marching orders to the troops is to capture them all because if we look at their purpose in coming here, it is to conduct terroristic activities, in particular to stage bombings,” Clement told reporters in Zamboanga city, referring to the foreign militants.

Clement was visiting the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) here, meeting with regional officials to assess regional security in the southern Philippines.

He said foreign terrorists were believed to be hiding with an Abu Sayyaf Group faction under the command of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a local militant leader considered by U.S. and Philippine intelligence as the new IS leader in the south after Isnilon Hapilon was killed at the end of a militant siege of Marawi city two years ago.

An increase in suicide bomb attacks in Sulu and its municipal capital, Jolo, was a sign that Abu Sayyaf fighters had been indoctrinated to the new terror tactic, Clement said, emphasizing that Filipino militants were previously not known for carrying out such attacks.

Foreign militants with the support of Sawadjaan’s group have already carried out at least two successful suicide bombings.

In January, an Indonesian couple blew themselves up at Jolo’s main Catholic church, killing 23 people and wounding more than 100 others during a Sunday Mass. In June, two Filipinos – the first Filipino bombers – detonated their explosives outside an army camp in Jolo, killing five people, including themselves, and wounding 22 others.

Clement said the military was also closely monitoring attempts by foreign fighters who fought for IS in the Middle East to penetrate the southern Philippines. Intelligence operatives are already closely coordinating with Indonesian and Malaysian authorities to track these fighters, he said.

The three nations began trilateral maritime and aerial patrols along the Philippines’ porous southern borders in June 2017 after pro-IS militants launched the Marawi siege.

“If ever there are reports, let’s say from Malaysia or Indonesia, they will share the information [with us], so we can prevent the terrorists from crossing, and the same is true also if there are reports of fighters here going to their respective country,” Clement said.

“One KIA (killed in action) on gov side, seven KIA on enemy,” he said in his internal report about the incident.

The BIFF is a splinter group of the former separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which controls an autonomous region after signing a peace deal with Manila and holding a plebiscite on autonomy.

The latest firefight came two months after the decommissioning of MILF ex-combatants who had turned over hundreds of firearms as part of the peace agreement reached with the government five years ago.

“The Joint Task Force Central will relentlessly pursue the remaining BIFF rebels in Maguindanao and its neighboring provinces to prevent them from conducting atrocities and other diversionary tactics to carry out their terroristic acts,” Carreon said.

He confirmed that two soldiers were injured but declined to name them.

Carreon said troops used an MG520 attack helicopter to drive away the militants who were only 300 meters from government positions.

Military southern command spokesman Maj. Arvin Encinas said the fighting erupted Friday and raged until Sunday.

“We used every available asset we have, artillery and warplanes, because the BIFF were too many,” Encinas said.

The violence forced about 450 families to flee to safer grounds from near Tukanalipao, the same village where a botched raid in 2015 led to the deaths of 44 police commandos.

That raid led to the death of Zulkifli bin Hir, a Malaysian terror suspect and bomb maker known as Marwan who was subject to a $5 million bounty by U.S. authorities. Marwan also was suspected of leading the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia and was wanted for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200, many of them foreign tourists.

Recent actions

Philippine soldiers last week killed three suspected suicide bombers in the island province of Sulu, including two Middle Eastern nationals as troops remain on heightened alert to thwart any bombing attempts.

Troops in Jolo are on the trail of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a senior commander of the Abu Sayyaf group considered by both American and Filipino intelligence officials as the new IS chief in the south.

Butch Malang, chairman of the MILF coordinating committee on the cessation of hostilities, said the fighting intensified over the weekend after other IS-linked groups joined in. But he said the MILF combatants stayed away and instead assisted fleeing civilians.

Mark Navales in Cotabato, Philippines, and Froilan Gallardo in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, contributed to this report.

The slain foreigners had Middle Eastern facial features and authorities said they were working with Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, an Abu Sayyaf commander considered by both American and Filipino intelligence officials as the Islamic State’s local chief.

Monfort said the belated announcement of Mang’s arrest was on purpose, because he had undergone tactical debriefing for possible follow-up security operations to uncover the bombing plots.

“Alias Mang confessed to the location of the locally assembled improvised explosive devices in an Abu Sayyaf group warehouse,” Monfort said, describing the explosives as “16 pieces of unrigged pipe bombs fashioned from cut iron pipes that looked like dynamite sticks.”

The explosives were similar to IEDs that were found rigged to two vests recovered Tuesday from the three slain men.

Military forces in the south remain on a heightened state of alert to thwart any bombing attempts by the Abu Sayyaf following intelligence reports that the group could carry out “sympathy attacks” after the recent death of IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed when he detonated a suicide vest during a U.S. Special Forces raid in northwestern Syria.

Sawadjaan succeeded Isnilon Hapilon, another Abu Sayyaf commander who was killed at the end of a militant siege of the southern city of Marawi city two years ago. Troops took control of the Marawi after five months of firefights and aerial bombings that devastated the city and killed 1,200 people, most of them militants.

Military officials said Sawadjaan masterminded three recent deadly bombings on Jolo, including a suicide bomb attack by an Indonesian militant couple that killed 23 people at a church in late January.

The slain foreigners had Middle Eastern facial features and authorities said they were working with Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, an Abu Sayyaf commander considered by both American and Filipino intelligence officials as the Islamic State’s local chief.

Monfort said the belated announcement of Mang’s arrest was on purpose, because he had undergone tactical debriefing for possible follow-up security operations to uncover the bombing plots.

“Alias Mang confessed to the location of the locally assembled improvised explosive devices in an Abu Sayyaf group warehouse,” Monfort said, describing the explosives as “16 pieces of unrigged pipe bombs fashioned from cut iron pipes that looked like dynamite sticks.”

The explosives were similar to IEDs that were found rigged to two vests recovered Tuesday from the three slain men.

Military forces in the south remain on a heightened state of alert to thwart any bombing attempts by the Abu Sayyaf following intelligence reports that the group could carry out “sympathy attacks” after the recent death of IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed when he detonated a suicide vest during a U.S. Special Forces raid in northwestern Syria.

Sawadjaan succeeded Isnilon Hapilon, another Abu Sayyaf commander who was killed at the end of a militant siege of the southern city of Marawi city two years ago. Troops took control of the Marawi after five months of firefights and aerial bombings that devastated the city and killed 1,200 people, most of them militants.

Military officials said Sawadjaan masterminded three recent deadly bombings on Jolo, including a suicide bomb attack by an Indonesian militant couple that killed 23 people at a church in late January.

The trio was on a “suicide bombing mission” and heading toward the central area of Jolo town when they were stopped at a security roadblock, and a shootout ensued leading to the casualties, according to the Philippine military’s southern command.

“The incident prompted the government forces to fire back, which caused the instantaneous death of the three terrorists,” the military said in a statement.

It said the slain foreign militants were allegedly “the husband and son of the foreign suicide bomber who attacked” a military post in the nearby town of Indanan in September, the statement said.

Authorities recovered from the slain militants pistols, a grenade and explosive vests identical to the vest used in the previous attack.

“The hostile plan of the terrorists in Sulu could have caused tremendous casualties and could have tarnished the image of this country if not immediately acted upon by our soldiers,” said Col. Ignatius Patrimonio, commander of the local army brigade.

Two of the suspected bombers were Egyptians and the third was a Philippine member of Abu Sayyaf, ABN-CBN, a Philippine news website, quoted military officials as saying.

The shootout occurred days after troops who were on alert for “sympathy attacks” by local IS elements to avenge the Oct. 26 killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi clashed with militants on Jolo.

Members of the elite Joint Task Force Sulu launched the assault last week to prevent Sawadjaan from carrying out more attacks following the death of al-Baghdadi, who was killed when he detonated a suicide vest as U.S. Special Forces closed in on him during a raid in northwestern Syria. IS has since named Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi as his successor.

Sawadjaan became head of the Philippine unit of IS after Isnilon Hapilon, another Abu Sayyaf commander and the IS chief in the country, was killed at the end of a five-month militant siege of Marawi city in the southern Philippines in 2017.

So far, Sawadjaan has been blamed for masterminding three deadly bombings on Jolo, including a suicide bomb attack by an Indonesian militant couple that killed 23 people at a church in late January.

“Our forces on the ground are relentlessly tracking down the location of the terrorists who were inflicted with undetermined casualties during our initial encounters last week,” said Maj. Arvin John Encinas, spokesman of Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) based in Zamboanga.

The troops from the 1st Scout Ranger Battalion encountered Sawadjaan and 30 of his followers in the jungles near Jolo’s remote Patikul town last Wednesday. The soldiers overran the encampment and were believed to have left several of Sawadjaan’s men wounded.

The rangers also recovered five improvised explosive devices (IEDs), preventing what could have been another wave of bombings, Encinas said.

Later that day, another gun battle erupted between troops and remnants of Sawadjaan’s group. Seven army Scout Rangers were wounded in the clash.

“All the soldiers who sustained slight injuries have been in stable condition and our operation in tracking them [have] continued,” Encinas said.

Encinas said troops were also monitoring the whereabouts of the Abu Sayyaf group casualties.

“Until now, we have not recovered any of their casualties,” he said.

According to Encinas, al-Baghdadi was not known to most of the Abu Sayyaf members “except for leaders like Sawadjaan who might conduct sabotage” operations.

The Abu Sayyaf, or Bearers of the Sword, is a small group of Islamic fighters who are known more for banditry than militancy. It burst onto the international scene in the late 1990s with a series of audacious kidnapping attacks, including cross-border raids into Malaysian resorts.

Abu Sayyaf had once allied itself with the Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, and also flirted with the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah militant group. When the two terror groups lost their influence, and the IS and its black flag rose to prominence in the Middle East, one faction of the Abu Sayyaf under Isnilon Hapilon became adherents.

Two years ago, Hapilon, aided by Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern fighters, took over Marawi in hopes of turning it into a regional caliphate. A five-month battle followed that left the city in ruins and killed over 1,200 fighters from both sides.

Military officials say that dozens of foreign fighters are believed to be in the Philippine south, and are trying to regroup.

Joel Egco, executive director of the presidential task force, a government authority, condemned what he called a “cowardly attempt” to kill Caballero.

“Let us pray for Benjie’s survival,” Egco said, adding that the journalist was in a critical condition. “Packs of blood have arrived at the hospital. We are investigating this case and will get to the bottom of this and get his attackers.”

Caballero has no known enemies, although he has been critical of a powerful political clan in the southern province of Maguindanao, Egco said, while declining to identify any suspects.

“I am very sure that Benjie knew who would have wanted him dead,” Egco said.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines noted that Caballero serves as president of the Sultan Kudarat Task Force on Media Security. Sultan Kudarat is a province in the Soccsksargen region of Mindanao.

“Caballero posted last year on his Facebook that he (was) receiving death threats,” the NUJP said in a release.

Egco said Caballero had told him the radio station was financed by a powerful politician, adding Wednesday’s attack could have been linked to a feud between the station’s benefactor and the powerful clan.

Philippines’ ranking

Caballero’s shooting occurred one day after the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that the Philippines had the highest number of unsolved murders of journalists in the world.

In addition, CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index ranked the Philippines as the fifth worse country for prosecuting the killers of journalists.

The Philippines’ ranking, it said, was due in part to the November 2009 incident when 32 journalists and media workers were among 58 people killed when a political clan massacred members of a rival family contesting the governorship of a southern province. It is considered the largest, single-day killing of press workers anywhere in the world, according to press and rights groups.

About 100 members of a powerful Muslim clan were detained and put on trial for the crime, although nearly 10 years on, a verdict has not been reached.

In July, Eduardo Dizon, 58, a broadcaster for Brigada News FM in southern Kidapawan city was gunned down as he drove home from his radio program. He was the 13th journalist or media worker killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016.

Richel V. Umel in Iligan, Philippines, and Mark Navales in Cotabato contributed to this report.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, officials warned of the possibility of attacks by local militants sympathetic to Baghdadi in a bid to avenge the death of the IS leader, who had led the jihadist group since 2010.

“All [militant] networks have been monitored by Densus 88,” Indonesian national police spokesman Asep Adi Saputra told BenarNews, referring to the country’s elite counter-terrorism strike force. “But, still, the recent event has prompted us to be more alert to anticipate possible revenge attacks by al-Baghdadi supporters.”

The first terrorist attack claimed by IS in Southeast Asia was in Indonesia, more than three years ago.

In January 2016, authorities blamed a local IS-linked group known as Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) for a gun and bomb attack that killed eight people, including the four attackers, in Jakarta’s central business district.

JAD was also blamed for coordinated attacks in the Indonesian city of Surabaya in May 2018, when two families carried out suicide bombings on three churches and a police station. Twenty-four people were killed, including the attackers who used their children as young as 9 in the bombings.

Ridlwan Habib, a security analyst at the University Indonesia, said al-Baghdadi’s killing could prompt IS’s local supporters to launch revenge attacks, as he urged Jakarta to remain on alert, “because even though he is dead, the ideology is still alive.”

“It is possible that some followers are determined to avenge his death,” he told BenarNews. “Some may even be inspired by al-Baghdadi and blow themselves up with a bomb vest.”

Governments in Southeast Asia, home to more than 270 million Muslims, have been concerned over IS expanding its network in the region ever since the militant group lost control of its self-proclaimed caliphate – wide swaths of land covering an area as big as Great Britain – in parts of Syria and Iraq in March.

In the Philippines, where IS-linked local militants launched a major siege that devastated the southern city of Marawi two years ago, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said he believed that al-Baghdadi’s death was “just a momentary setback” for IS, considering the militant group’s reach worldwide.

“Somebody will take his place to lead the IS. Maybe not as famous and well known,” Lorenzana told reporters.

Military officials placed troops in the restive southern Philippines on heightened alert Monday for possible “sympathy attacks.”

The precautionary move was taken just before the Catholic country was to shut down for annual All Souls’ and All Saints Day holiday this coming weekend, when millions of Filipinos were expected to visit cemeteries and pay respects to the dead.

Among IS-linked groups in southern Philippines is the Abu Sayyaf, which President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to crush after it was linked to deadly attacks on civilian and military targets, as well as numerous abductions, including foreigners.

A key Abu Sayyaf faction is led by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, who has been identified as the new leader of the IS affiliate operating in the southern Philippines. He took over from Isnilon Hapilon, who was killed when Philippine government troops regained the city of Marawi two years ago.

Hapilon was believed to have led the IS in Southeast Asia before he was killed.

Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, commander of Philippine Army’s Western Mindanao Command, told BenarNews that al-Baghdadi was not well-known among low-ranking members of militant groups in the Philippines.

“Here in the Philippines during my custodial debriefing from among those who have surrendered to us, they don’t really know about this [IS leader named] al-Baghdadi,” Sobejana said.

“I should say the impact is lesser in as far as if they want to project it as martyrdom,” he said. “Not that much, unless those who were commanding [local militants] will … motivate the followers to avenge.”

‘The terror threat will continue’

Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation of 33 million people has experienced one IS-linked attack so far but the nation was mostly concerned about “lone-wolf attacks” involving individuals radicalized through online propaganda, according to Malaysian police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay.

“The terror threat will continue to exist if we fail to deal with the ideologies spread by IS or the other groups that hold onto the same ideologies,” he told BenarNews.

Malaysian authorities have arrested 495 people linked to alleged terror activities since 2013, according to government figures compiled by BenarNews. Dozens have been freed but no clear number is available.

Malaysia’s first IS-linked terror attack took place on June 26, 2016, when a grenade blast injured eight patrons at the Movida nightclub in Puchong town near Kuala Lumpur. Authorities blamed that attack on Islamic State.

But the nation also faces threats from local IS sympathizers and regional militant groups, including the Abu Sayyaf, whose suspected members had been arrested during police crackdowns in Sabah in recent months.

A Huey helicopter flies above a Philippine Coast Guard vessel circling the coastline in the southern Philippine province of Sulu, as state security forces tightened the security to thwart possible attacks by Islamic State militants, Oct. 22, 2019. (Photo: Mark Navales/BenarNews)

In Thailand, where a decades-long Muslim insurgency in the country’s Deep South has killed thousands, analysts do not expect Baghdadi’s death to have any influence on rebels.

Thai authorities earlier this month denied any connection between IS and the Deep South insurgents, despite the recent arrest of a Thai student in Egypt on suspicion of belonging to the terror group.

“Our enquiries have found no link between the people in the three southernmost provinces and the Islamic State,” Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters.

Security analyst Don Pathan told BenarNews that al-Baghdadi’s killing was not expected to have any impact on militant groups in Southeast Asia.

Trump said al-Baghdadi, who was believed to be 48, died Saturday when he detonated his suicide vest in a tunnel while being pursued by U.S. Special Forces. “There wasn’t much left,” Trump told reporters, referring to al-Baghdadi’s remains. "But there are still substantial pieces that they [special forces] brought back” for identification, he said.

Among the 31,500 foreign fighters who had joined IS in Syria, about 800 came from Asia, including 400 from Indonesia, Indonesia’s Defense chief Ryamizard Ryacudu told BenarNews in June last year, citing intelligence data from his government.

Al-Baghdadi’s ‘Inspirational approach’

Munira Mustaffa, a Malaysian terrorism researcher at American University in Washington told BenarNews that al-Baghdadi’s decision to kill himself using a suicide vest could be an “inspirational approach to signal to his followers to do the same.”

“I don’t think there's going to be much impact on Malaysian IS sympathizers given that he was pretty distant as a leader,” Munira said. “However, I would be cautious with making any assumptions on how it would resonate with Indonesians.”

Meanwhile, Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Monday urged countries around the world to “work together to stop resurgence of such notorious outfit” as the IS.

“Islamic State (IS) has never been Islamic,” Khan told BenarNews. “This notorious militant outfit is synonymous with mass murder, genocide, slaughter, destruction, arson and all other notorious activities. … So, killing of its chief al-Baghdadi is good news for the world.”

Bangladesh has been targeted in terrorist attacks in recent years, most notably the July 2016 siege of a Dhaka café in which militants hacked to death 20 hostages. IS claimed responsibility for the attack, but Bangladeshi officials adamantly denied that it was linked to IS or that the group had a presence in the South Asian nation.

The Bangladeshi government had “apparently crushed” the local network of militants linked with the IS, such as the Neo-JMB, and it would be unlikely that Bangladesh would see retaliatory attacks as a result of al-Baghdadi’s killing, security analyst Sakhawat Hossain, a retired Army brigadier general, told BenarNews.

“As the law-enforcement agencies in Bangladesh are very aggressive, they would not be able to carry out attacks in the near future,” Hossain said.

But, he said, militants “would try to stage their capability at an opportune moment.”

“We may see violent attacks by the sleeper cells in different countries in retaliation of Baghdadi’s killing,” he said.

Dennis Jay Santos in Davao City, Philippines contributed to this report.

“The suspects engaged the security forces in a 30-minute gun battle,” Caballero said. Soldiers recovered several firearms, including sniper rifles, from the slain men, he said.

Officials identified those killed as members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a Muslim rebel faction that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).

BIFF claims to fight for full independence for Muslims in the south and is a breakaway faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had ended its insurgency in 1996 when it signed a peace agreement with the Philippine government in exchange for autonomy in southern Mindanao region.

The government has said that the BIFF, while it pledged allegiance to IS, did not send fighters to the southern city of Marawi two years ago. Other IS-linked militant groups attacked Marawi in May 2017, triggering five months of heavy fighting and aerial bombings that destroyed the lakeshore Islamic city and killed 1,200 people, most of them militants.

The IS local leader, Isnilon Hapilon, and several key commanders, including foreigners, were killed in Marawi. The group has named a replacement for Hapilon, Sulu-based Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan of the Abu Sayyaf group.

Meanwhile, the BIFF maintains a strong presence in the central Mindanao region, officials said.

Regional police commander Col. Maximo Layugan said the suspects killed in the Wednesday clash were behind “terroristic and criminal activities” in Midsayap town, south of Marawi.

Among those killed was Mama Macalimbol, a BIFF fighter wanted for several crimes including a grenade attack on a Catholic Church in Midsayap that injured 16 people on Christmas Eve 2016, Layugan told BenarNews.

“These are notorious criminals linked to a local terror group and responsible for sowing atrocities in the locality,” he said.

Officials blamed the slow clearing operations on unexploded ordnance that dot the ruins of Marawi. On Wednesday, troops detonated a 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb they found in the area.

The task force, an inter-agency group created to supervise the city’s recovery, had promised that displaced residents would be allowed to return to their villages and rebuild their homes in May this year, a deadline that was extended to September.

But carting away debris from the battleground of a vicious war has been an agonizingly slow process, observers said. That area – the ground-zero of fighting that the government calls Most Affected Area – is littered with concrete slabs and charred sheet metal.

“We do not feel we were liberated,” Norhaisah Radja-alam, 36, told BenarNews. “After two years, we are still living inside temporary shelters so small that it barely fits my family of nine.”

Food donations from international NGOs and the government ran dry more than a year ago, she said. Radja-alam’s family has had to scrape by. To survive, she sells food to her neighbors in the relocation shelter, earning about 200 pesos (U.S. $4) a day.

“We also eat the food we sell, and from its earnings, buy the food we will cook for the next day,” Radja-alam said.

Cramped housing

Members of an events-organizing group use flowers to decorate the bullet-riddled iconic sign “I love Marawi” to mark the second anniversary of the city’s liberation, Oct. 17, 2019. (Photo: Froilan Gallardo/BenarNews)

Norhayne Dimapinggun lives with 16 members of her family inside a 24-square meter house in the village of Sagonsongan, one of the relocation sites near Marawi City.

She said the space was so tiny that she built a small extension at the back, using 75,000 pesos ($1,500) in livelihood funds the government gave her a year ago.

Dimapinggun said she missed the family’s ancestral compound inside the city where many of her relatives grew up.

“Our compound had three to four houses where about 50 of our relatives used to live,” she said. “It was a happy place every day.”

Dimapinggun said they all relied on one another in both happy and bad times, a kind of support system that kept the family together until fighting began in May 2017.

Philippine security forces were about to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the local extremist group Abu Sayyaf who had emerged as the regional “emir” of IS, when they were surprised by fierce resistance from the Marawi compound where he was located.

Five months of fighting, punctuated by almost daily bombing runs by fighter jets, pounded the once-scenic, mosque-studded city and killed more than 1,200 people, most of them militants, including Hapilon and his top aides.

Dimapinggun said her family has scattered in the nearby cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, and as far away as Manila, the Philippine capital, about 1,200 km (760 miles) north of Marawi.

Fighting destroys families

Dimapinggun’s story underscores one of the major casualties of the Marawi war: family bonds.

The clashes ripped apart tight-knit families and shattered crucial support systems, said Ellen Anisha Guro, head of Mindanao State University library in Marawi.

A Philippine Army platoon renders a gun salute as a sign of respect during the wreath-laying ceremony at the heroes’ landmark inside the 103rd Infantry Brigade headquarters in Marawi, Oct. 17, 2019. (Photo: Richel V. Umel/BenarNews)

“Residents here are clannish and rely on each other for comfort and support,” Guro told BenarNews, emphasizing that the design of temporary shelters built by the government did not consider local culture.

“A new house owner finds himself not in a neighborhood of family members but a community of strangers,” Guro said.

Father Teresito Suganob, a Catholic priest who was taken hostage by the militants for weeks, told BenarNews the government may have failed to see that the war not only physically destroyed the city, but ruptured the way of life for its residents.

“What is the use of new homes and buildings?” he said. “For the residents here, their family is more important.”

The siege took place over several months beginning in May 2017. Hapilon was backed by Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern fighters who beheaded locals who resisted them, took over homes and held many hostage.

President Rodrigo Duterte later sought help from the United States and Australia, which provided aerial surveillance to defeat the IS-linked fighters, though some of them escaped as security forces clobbered the city with aerial bombings.

Fighting ended soon after the government announced the death of Hapilon and his top lieutenants. Marawi was liberated, although large, ancestral areas were destroyed.

The city’s more than 200,000 residents who fled the fighting remain in evacuation centers two years later.

Duterte promised to rebuild Marawi City; China, Russia, Japan and the United States pledged money to support the rehabilitation. But those financial promises have not materialized, reports said.

Few dollars have reached the demolished areas. Meanwhile, according to estimates, the government would need to pour in up to $1.5 billion to rebuild.

But two years after the war ended, dreams of rebuilding have remained just that. Most residents who’ve lost their homes are now demanding compensation for their losses.

“There is nothing to commemorate, only pain and our sufferings that continue until today,” Drieza Abato Lininding, a former Marawi homeowner, told BenarNews.

“We don’t feel liberated at all,” he said.

Singua, a 58-year-old Filipina, works as a teacher at the Culianan Learning Center E-Impact, a special school funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in the city of Zamboanga.

“She was rescued at 6 a.m. in a local hotel in downtown Jolo,” Col. Pablo Labra, commander of the provincial police force, told reporters, referring to Singua.

One of the suspects, a woman, received the ransom that was carried by Soraya Bantongan, Singua’s daughter. After the payoff was completed, Bantongan was instructed to fetch her mother at the hotel, officials said.

Maj. Arvin John Encinas, spokesman for the army’s Western Mindanao Command, said the victim was in a state of shock when she was airlifted to a military hospital.

The kidnappers initially demanded 10 million pesos (U.S. $194,000), but agreed to lower the ransom to 200,000 pesos ($3,876), officials said.

Labra said a separate team tailed and arrested the woman who received the ransom while she was waiting for a bus to Indanan town, a known Abu Sayyaf territory outside of Jolo. He did not say if the ransom payment was recovered.

The arrested suspect was identified as Nurina Jura, 22, a native of Jolo. Police were trying to determine if she had links with Abu Sayyaf.

Another suspect identified as Nurjia Asakil, was arrested in a follow-up raid, police said.

Couple still missing

Encinas said troops did not know the whereabouts of British national Allan Arthur Hyrons, 70, and his Filipina wife, Wilma Paglinawan, who were abducted by unidentified gunmen on Oct. 4.

While Abu Sayyaf members are on top of the list of suspects, it is unusual for them to keep quiet days into a high-profile kidnapping, security experts said.

Encinas said a body was retrieved in a coastal area on the neighboring island of Basilan on Tuesday, although authorities could not immediately identify the remains.

“A headless female cadaver with severed arms and legs was fished out last night off the town of Lantawan in Basilan,” Encinas told BenarNews. “Investigators were still examining and have collected specimens for DNA testing.”

Authorities could not determine if the couple were abducted by the Abu Sayyaf or allied groups, he said.

“We have received plenty of information, but it has all been misleading,” Encinas said without elaborating.

Jeoffrey Maitem and Mark Navales in Cotabato City, Philippines, contributed to this report.

“The attack was perpetrated by local ISIS,” Encinas told BenarNews, using another acronym for Islamic State (IS).

The attack against the MILF fighters was led by Abu Turaife of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a group that splintered from MILF in 2008 and later pledged to IS. Turaife quit MILF’s ranks after its leaders signed a peace deal with Manila in 2014.

“Seven MILF fighters were killed,” Encinas wrote in an incident report seen by Benar.

SITE Intelligence, a U.S.-based group that monitors online communications among Muslim militant groups around the globe, reported that IS had claimed responsibility for the attack in the southern Philippines. SITE quoted IS as saying that eight MILF fighters were killed, but Encinas could only confirm seven deaths.

The bodies of the slain MILF fighters – Laguiali Ali, Poangan Ganda, Kho Mamaluba, Jeomar Salansamen, Mads Maitem, Tongan Tot and Datumaniot Musbil – were claimed by their relatives, the military said.

The incident occurred weeks after the MILF demobilized more than a thousand ex-combatants, who turned over hundreds of firearms during an official ceremony witnessed by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. There have been fears raised by some MILF fighters that this would leave them vulnerable to attacks from rival groups.

Despite the peace agreement, dozens of foreign militants are still believed to be on the loose in the Mindanao region, two years after Isnilon Hapilon, the IS leader in the Philippines, led dozens of foreign fighters in taking over the southern city of Marawi in 2017.

Hapilon and his top commanders were killed in Marawi at the end of a five-month battle between militants and government forces. He has since been replaced as chief of the IS branch in the Philippines by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a senior commander of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Some militants, including ones described by security officials as foreigners, escaped to other parts of Mindanao and have been trying to replenish their ranks to launch more attacks, authorities said. So far, the militants have not been able to succeed, largely because the south remains under tight military control.

Joseph Jubelag contributed to this report from General Santos City, Philippines.

Officers recovered several firearms, bomb-making components and a black IS flag, police said.

“We’re investigating the possible involvement of the suspects in recent terror attacks in the province since the group is linked to a local terror group,” senior police official Col. Reynaldo Celestino told BenarNews.

Two others, Kamlon Camsa, and his niece, Fayno Camsa, were subsequently arrested at a military checkpoint. Police said the pair was trying to smuggle bomb-making components through General Santos city despite tight security.

Authorities released limited information about possible family relations of the five Camsa suspects and Akgun’s connection to them.

Regional military spokesman army Col. Arvin Encinas said the suspects had been under surveillance on suspicion they were involved in a bombing at a public market last month that injured four.

“They were surprised by our raid. There was no resistance,” he told BenarNews, adding the suspects were being interrogated.

Akgun “has been giving military officials limited information about a series of attacks in the south,” Encinas said.

Dozens of foreign militants are believed to be in the southern island of Mindanao, two years after Islamic State-linked fighters were defeated in Marawi city. Five months of fighting there killed more than 1,200, including militants, soldiers and civilians.

Last week, the military arrested Jomar Maan, 23, a suspected bomber for Ansarul Khilafa Philippines, a local terror group with links to the IS. Military intelligence officials say they have yet to establish links between Maan and the Swedish national.

MNLF ranking member

Police identified Kamlon Camsa as a ranking member of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Muslim rebel group that signed a failed peace accord with Manila in 1996.

The MNLF is separate from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which splintered from it in the late 1970s. The MILF signed a peace deal with Manila and its leaders are members of a political bloc managing an autonomous region in the south.

An MNLF faction led by founder Nur Misuari has been threatening a fresh wave of rebellions in the south. President Rodrigo Duterte last month agreed to form a committee to explore ways to involve Misuari in the peace process.

Police seized “an improvised explosive device, a rifle grenade, a .38 revolver and an ISIS flag” from the suspect, said Lagradante, who identified the suspect as a bomber for the local group Ansar Khilafa Philippines (AKP), which is also called Ansar al-Khilafah Philippines or Ansarul Khilafa Philippines.

The AKP is a small homegrown network of Filipino militants in Mindanao, the country’s main southern island. Its leader, Mohammad Jaafar Maguid (alias Commander Tokboy), was slain in a clash with government forces in January 2017, although its members have remained active.

Security analysts say AKP has been involved in IS-style beheadings and in arms transfers to militants in Indonesia. Originally based in the southern province of Sarangani, AKP “may be the group with the closest links” to IS in Syria, according to a 2016 report of the Jakarta-based think tank Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

Last year, a bomb attack that injured eight people in General Santos was blamed on AKP.

Maan served as Maguid’s aide and personal cook, Lagradante said.

Police have filed charges of illegal possession of explosives and a firearm against Maan who is detained at a local police station.

Authorities had interrogated Maan to determine his involvement in recent terror attacks that occurred in the city and nearby areas, officials said.

“We are glad that after the Marawi siege and a series of encounters with the local terrorist groups, we have received more reports from the communities regarding enemies or armed group present,” Brawner told reporters.

Brawner identified the suspects as Janla Tangolo, 20; Arapat Tangolo, 22; and Kamarudin Sultan, 20. He said troops seized three rifles, a revolver, ammunition, backpacks, militant paraphernalia, as well as identification cards from the suspects.

It was not immediately clear whether the trio had attorneys.

Maj. Gen. Roberto Ancan, commander of the 1st Infantry Division and the military’s regional task force, said the three men were arrested as part of efforts to catch militants who had escaped from a five-month battle with government forces in Marawi that ended in October 2017.

The leader of the militant siege who was the Islamic State chief in the Philippines, Isnilon Hapilon, and his lieutenant, Omarkhayam Maute, were both killed in the battle. But some militants escaped as the military encircled Marawi, an Islamic city in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

About 1,200 people died in Marawi, which was devastated when fighter jets pounded the city with near-daily bombing runs. Most of the fatalities were militants, defense officials said, but security analysts believe that dozens of foreign militants are still in Mindanao and are recruiting locals for another attack.

“We encourage others to be courageous, continuously trust our troops and report any local terrorist presence in order to sustain the gains of peace and development in Western Mindanao,” Ancan said.

A BenarNews correspondent contributed to this report from Zamboanga City, Philippines.

Troops backed by armored personnel carriers were immediately dispatched to the area, and after a tense standoff, the MNLF fighters agreed to disarm peacefully, regional military spokesman Lt. Col. Edwin Alburo told reporters.

“They did not resist when the Army asked them to turn in their guns to authorities,” Alburo said, referring to the MNLF members.

After negotiations with the group’s leader, Ustadz Jamaluddin Abdullah, the guerrillas turned over almost 40 high-powered rifles. Abdullah also said the supposed “peace rally” was organized by the MNLF itself, although they could not explain if they had coordinated with local officials, the military said.

All of the MNLF fighters who were armed wore fatigues, and they apparently came from the neighboring cities of Cotabato and Davao, officials said.

“MNLF members can converge for dialogues and other peaceful activities, as long as they are not in uniform and under arms,” Maj. Gen. Diosdado Carreon, commander of a joint task force in the central Mindanao region, told reporters.

Under a peace agreement signed with Manila in 1996, MNLF members are not allowed to carry firearms or wear their uniforms outside of their camps, military officials said.

The incident came three weeks after President Duterte met with Misuari in the southern city of Davao and agreed to set up a “coordinating committee” to study what the MNLF’s role would be under the new autonomous region in the south, as part of broader plans to widen the peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The MILF broke away from the MNLF in 1978, after Misuari opted to drop his bid for a separate state in exchange for autonomy in the south. He later became a governor of an autonomous region, but Manila subsequently declared the autonomous region a failure.

The MILF signed its own peace accord with Manila in 2014, but opted for an extended autonomy. MILF leaders now control a transitional government in the southern region, and Duterte has been trying to accommodate Misuari politically to prevent another round of violence.

When Duterte became president three years ago, one of his first acts was to drop rebellion charges against Misuari, who in 2013 led his armed forces in laying siege to Zamboanga City, engaging troops in fierce battles that left more than 200 people dead.

The entire southern Philippines remains under military rule, two years after Islamic State-linked militants laid siege to the southern city of Marawi. The months-long attack killed 1,200 people, most of them militants.

Sunday’s attack by the “foreign looking” suspect took place soon before sundown in Baranguay Kajatan in Indanan, a municipality on Jolo, the military said, adding it had “thwarted” the attack thanks to “austere security measures and sustained cooperation by the community.”

“According to the guard on duty, an unknown terrorist in black abaya attire, appearing to be pregnant and suspicious, approached the entrance gate of KM3 Detachment of the 35th Infantry Battalion at the said barangay,” Col. Gerald Monfort, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Sulu (JTFS) and the army’s 11th Division, said.

The explosion in Indanan town happened meters from the site where two suicide bombers blew themselves up during an attack that killed six other people outside a military camp in late June.

The Islamic State (IS) terror group claimed responsibility for that attack and a twin suicide bombing that killed 23 people at a church in Jolo in January. Officials blamed an Indonesian couple for carrying out the church attack.

No one else was reported injured in Sunday’s attack, in which the blast ripped the suspect’s body apart, Monfort said.

The guard manning a checkpoint immediately took a defensive position and alerted other troops to take up fighting positions, Monfort said.

“The guard on duty warned the suspect not to cross the checkpoint after noticing unusual behavior of the person in the black abaya,” he said. “However, the unidentified terrorist suddenly blew herself up.”

Troops later recovered a manual fuse igniter believed to belong to the suspected bomber.

The bomber was “a woman and foreign looking with long hair,” a statement from the Philippine military’s Western Mindanao Command (WestMinCom) said, noting that authorities found the suspect’s mutilated head at the scene.

“However, the recovered dismembered hand is similar to that of a man,” WestMinCom said.

Maj. Gen. Corleto Vinluan Jr, the JTFS commander, commended troops for preventing casualties among soldiers and civilians.

“The suicide bombing could have resulted in tremendous casualties if it was not properly addressed by our soldier. Hence, I commend them for such a heroic achievement,” Vinluan said.

In Saturday’s attack in Sultan Kudarat province, CCTV footage obtained by police showed a man disguised as a woman leaving a bag with the bomb next to motorcycles that were parked outside a bakery, authorities said.

The bomb went off in front of the bread shop hours before around a thousand Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas turned in their firearms and were demobilized during an official ceremony in nearby Maguindanao province.

The event, witnessed by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and other officials, was part of a peace deal agreed to between MILF and Manila in 2014.

Philippine military officials said that the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a splinter faction of MILF that opposed the peace agreement and was now aligned with IS, likely carried out the marketplace attack on Saturday.

On Sunday, Islamic State claimed it was behind the attack in Sultan Kudarat, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a statement issued by the extremist group.

The bomb struck hours before President Rodrigo Duterte and other government officials gathered to witness the decommissioning of slightly more than a thousand ex-combatants with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), who turned over hundreds of firearms. The ceremony took place in Simuay, a district in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao, another province in the south.

“We are still determining the group behind the blast, but there is a likelihood it could be the BIFF,” said Maj. Arvin Encinas, a local spokesman for the military, referring to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, which splintered from MILF and rejected a peace deal struck between MILF and Manila in 2014.

BIFF kept fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Mindanao region. It later pledged allegiance to Islamic State and endorsed an IS-linked siege of the southern Philippine city of Marawi two years ago.

The bomb went off outside the Manolette bread shop in Kalawag 3, a village in Isulan, said Lt. Col. Joven Bagaygay, a local police spokesman.

CCTV footage obtained by police showed a man disguised as a woman leaving a bag with the bomb next to motorbikes that were parked outside the bakery, Bagaygay said.

“We will enhance the footage for possible identification of the suspect,” he said.

Eight civilians were injured in the explosion, officials said.

The bombing on Saturday was an attempt to disrupt the historic handover of weapons and decommissioning of the MILF fighters, said Von Al Haq, a former MILF spokesman who is now a deputy minister for transportation and communication in the regional autonomous government.

“Although it has no direct effect on our event, we have to be firm,” Al Haq told BenarNews.

Al Haq could not affirm that MILF’s former comrades in the BIFF were behind the bombing, but he said no other group was capable of carrying out such an audacious attack.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels wait for transportation to a weapons decommissioning ceremony at Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat town, Maguindanao province, southern Philippines, Sept. 7, 2019. (Photo: AFP)

Duterte: ‘A huge step’

The so-called “decommissioning” of 1,060 former MILF forces on Saturday night was part of the peace agreement that MILF and Manila reached five years ago.

The first phase of the decommissioning happened in 2015, and involved 145 combatants and 75 weapons.

Apart from those ex-MILF fighters who turned in their weapons during Saturday’s ceremony, officials said another 35 percent of the MILF force would be decommissioned next year, with the remainder to follow between 2021 and 2022.

By its own estimates, MILF has as many as 30,000 to 40,000 fighters in its ranks.

“Today, we mark another important milestone in the history of the Bangsamoro peace process. It truly warms my heart that we are able in our promise to be a more inclusive, accountable and transparent government for the Bangsamoro,” President Duterte said in a speech at the decommissioning ceremony, where piles of firearms turned over by the MILF fighters were displayed.

Duterte took office two years after the administration of Benigno Aquino III agreed to the peace deal with MILF.

“This is a huge step in achieving lasting peace,” Duterte said, assuring the demobilized MILF members of his government’s ongoing support for them.

The group’s chairman, Murad Ebrahim, today heads an 80-member team that leads the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

“We will continue to uphold our part of the bargain,” Ebrahim told the crowd during Saturday’s ceremony.

President Rodrigo Duterte (center) joins Moro Islamic Liberation Front leader Ebrahim Murad (left) in inspecting decommissioned firearms in Sultan Kudarat town, southern Philippines, Sept. 7, 2019. (Photo: Froilan Gallardo/BenarNews)

The BARMM zone is made up of at least five southern provinces, where MILF will oversee self-rule until local voters elect their own parliament by 2022.

A majority of voters in those five provinces ratified the autonomous region through a plebiscite held in January and February on a law that granted autonomy to areas controlled by MILF.

The referendum was the final step in the peace pact that was signed five years ago and aimed to settle decades of bloodshed in the Mindanao region.

The Bangsamoro Organic Law, as it is known, gave the impoverished Philippine south an expanded autonomous area and offered self-determination to the nation’s four million Muslims by empowering them to elect their own parliament.

The bombing on Saturday morning, however, was a reminder that the Philippine south remains a volatile region despite the 2014 peace deal.

Earlier this week, the military conceded that the armed forces were still hunting for dozens of foreign Islamic militants believed to be on the loose in the region. Last month, a first batch of 225 ex-MILF fighters began basic training at a Philippine army camp to prepare to become part of a joint security team tasked with going after pro-IS gunmen in the south.

The attack in Sultan Kudarat province on Saturday morning came after two suicide bombers, one of them a Filipino militant, killed six people by setting off explosives at a military camp on southern Jolo Island in late June. In January, an Indonesian couple blew themselves up in killing 23 people at a church in Jolo, authorities said.

IS, which claimed responsibility for both attacks, had appointed local militant Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan as leader of its branch in the Philippines after his predecessor, Isnilon Hapilon, was killed in October 2017, at the end of the five-month battle of Marawi.

“A non-neutralization of the ISIS foreign militants will allow them to increasingly radicalize local groups and then this may lead to more Marawi-style attacks or suicide bombings,” he told Benar News, using another acronym for Islamic State and referring to a five-month siege carried out in the southern Philippine city by militants linked with IS.

The military commander for Western Mindanao, meanwhile, said troops were searching the region for about 60 suspected foreign militants, including people from Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Morocco and Afghanistan.

“They are scattered in our areas. They don’t have popular support. In due time, using our capabilities, we will neutralize them,” Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said, reiterating an earlier pledge that the foreign fighters would be accounted for by year’s end.

He said the foreigners were believed to be in areas where Philippine militant groups, including the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), were operating.

BIFF, numbering hundreds of fighters, split from the 12,000-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2008 and has since pledged allegiance to IS. Earlier this year, MILF assumed the leadership of an autonomous Muslim region in the southern Philippines as part of peace agreement with Manila.

Sobejana said a first batch of MILF fighters who trained under the military had been deployed to certain areas in the south to help government security forces catch the foreign suspects.

“Their role will be important as the role of every member of security forces. They will help us fight terrorism so that peace will be restored,” Sobejana said of the MILF fighters.

Custodio also commented on the new role for the MILF fighters.

“We can only hope that they will be effective. That will depend on the quality of training, the trust on them put by the military, the manner in which they are deployed, the competence of the AFP commanders and the reliability of the initial vetting process,” Custodio said.

Foreigners were among the hundreds of militants who laid siege to Marawi two years ago, but Philippine authorities have increased their vigilance for more militants from abroad infiltrating the south after an Indonesian couple killed 23 people in suicide bombings at a church in southern Jolo island in January, according to officials from both countries.

The two bombers had aligned with Abu Sayyaf fighters under the command of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, touted as the new IS leader here following the death of Isnilon Hapilon in Marawi, authorities said.

“We applaud the plan to retire weapons that are supposedly in the hands of MILF combatants. What we are saying is that it is not enough, and it should not lead to expectations that it is going to resolve in a major deceleration in attacks that are related to firearms. It won’t,” said Francisco Lara, a senior adviser of International Alert Philippines, the local office of the London-based NGO that focuses on peace-building and conflict resolution efforts in hotspots worldwide.

“There is not going to be any impact at all,” he told Philippine media while releasing a new report by International Alert about prospects for peace in the southern Mindanao region.

The phased handover of weapons by the former rebel force, which counts up to 40,000 fighters by its own estimates, is part of a peace deal between the rebel group and Manila that led to the establishment in February 2019 of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which is governed by MILF.

The former guerrillas, meanwhile, have been helping the Philippine military go after Islamic State-linked militants, including many who belonged to groups that took part in a five-month IS siege of southern Marawi city in 2017.

In an interview with BenarNews in June, MILF leader Murad Ebrahim said his group was working to validate how many weapons were to be handed over to Manila, but that many of the firearms were owned by MILF members themselves and not the organization.

“We all know that right now the declaration has been there are two types of weapons – those that are owned by the members and those owned by the organization. The agreement is to decommission those weapons that are owned by the organization and not the members,” Lara told reporters.

Lara said he believed that a substantial number of firearms could be left in the hands of former MILF fighters but, in his view, the government and military must account for all of them.

The firearms to be decommissioned Saturday are to be kept by a group made up of government officials, MILF officials and foreign experts, and each combatant who hands over his weapons is expected to receive a cash payment, including money for education.

“Effectively, it’s martial law that has been able to curb the proliferation of illicit weapons, at least in terms of the evidence that we saw in our database,” International Alert country manager Nikki Dela Rosa said.

In particular, Dela Rosa said, the government needed to review its gun control regulations that allow a person to own 15 semi-automatic weapons.

While violence has continued in the south on a near daily basis, deaths attributed to conflicts have decreased year on year, by about 60 percent to just 900 in 2018. This was partially due to coordinated attacks and the drop in the use of explosives by various armed groups, International Alert reported.

“The state was also able to maintain a fragile peace in the Bangsamoro [region] by imposing martial law, which in turn deterred the carrying use of firearms,” Dela Rosa said.

“President Duterte had a productive meeting with Mr. Misuari in discussing peace efforts in Mindanao,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo told reporters. “The president relayed to Mr. Misuari his desire to immediately form a coordinating committee between the government of the Philippines and the MNLF.”

In the mid-1990s, Misuari and his Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) signed a peace deal with Manila, under which he became the leader of an autonomous region in the southern Philippines.

However, the government later acknowledged that it was largely a failed experiment, with many parts of the region failing to improve despite millions of dollars in largesse invested by Manila for the area’s development.

In 2013, MNLF members laid siege to Zamboanga City in the south, engaging troops in fierce battles that left more than 200 people dead. Thousands of homes were also burned down and Misuari went into hiding.

But when Duterte became president in 2016, one of his first acts was to order the government to drop charges of rebellion against Misuari. The president also worked towards the signing of a new law that expanded the autonomy and placed the leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in charge. MILF is a splinter group of the MNLF, but its leaders enjoy close ties.

Panelo said further discussions about the committee would take place in the second week of September to set the agenda.

He quoted Misuari as telling Duterte that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of 57 member states, should be part of the discussions. BenarNews could not immediately confirm Panelo’s statement.

The coordinating committee “will serve as a venue for the cooperation of the MNLF to achieve immediate peace” in the south, particularly its far-flung Sulu region and Misuari’s hometown, where years of rebellion also spawned smaller and more brutal groups, such as the Abu Sayyaf, Panelo said.

The committee “can expect the full support of the office of the president as we move toward our common goal of resolving the conflict that have caused deaths, and dislocation among the Muslims and Christians alike,” Panelo said.

“In resolving the Muslim rebellion in Mindanao, every undertaking that may lead to a lasting peace and prosperity to that region must be tried and tested until its fruition,” he said.

Misuari sidelined

Misuari was the founder of the MNLF, the forerunner of the MILF, which broke off after Misuari’s group wanted to settle for limited autonomy as opposed to the latter’s fight for full independence.

The MILF was left out of the original peace deal signed by Misuari and the government that saw him become the governor of a Muslim region.

But while Misuari’s MNLF faltered in keeping its end of the bargain, the government subsequently signed a peace deal with MILF. As part of that peace accord, the 12,000-strong MILF dropped its bid for self-rule and settled for an autonomous region in the south.

Fearing that he would be left out of the new power structure, Misuari staged the failed Zamboanga siege.

Misuari had initially opposed the deal with the MILF, under which Muslims in the south were granted an expanded autonomous area and offered self-determination. Some four million Filipino Muslims were also empowered to elect their own parliament.

However, it also appears to have sidelined Misuari as many local government functions are now led by the MILF.

Duterte, however, has continued to engage Misuari, who in March said he wanted the system of government changed to federalism in which he envisions himself a regional political player. But Congress has so far rejected such suggestions.

Joseph Jubelag in General Santos city contributed to this report.

The MILF men will spend the next month going through standard military training to prepare them as members of a “joint peace and security team (JPST),” whose main job will be to pursue fighters linked with Islamic State who are believed to be planning fresh attacks against government targets on the main southern island of Mindanao, officials said.

A breakaway faction of the MILF has expressed support for IS.

According to plans, the joint security team will comprise 1,400 soldiers, 1,600 policemen and some 3,000 BIAF fighters in total – a force that will police the newly established Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao – officials said.

They will be deployed in southern areas where there is a high concentration of violence, and while MILF completes the accounting and decommissioning of its weapons, as agreed in a peace deal it signed with the Philippine government earlier.

The formation and training of the MILF members as part of a joint security team is the “manifestation of our desire to sustain the peace process and our commitment to implement the Comprehensive Agreement of the Bangsamoro in the full implementation of the peace process,” said Carlito Galvez, a former military general and now President Rodrigo Duterte’s adviser on peace, reconciliation and unity.

The first batch of 200 MILF fighters was expected to serve and protect residents of some six government-acknowledged MILF camps, and other former communities held by the group in the south, he said.

Once the decommissioning process begins in September, only MILF fighters who are members of the joint peace team will be allowed to carry firearms.

“The military and police are the only ones allowed to carry firearms. After this basic military training, they will be given military ranks as reservists so they could officially bring their weapons as members of JPST as peacekeepers,” said Dickson Hermoso, co-chairman of the joint peace and security committee.

“Their personal firearms as part of JPST will be turned in to Armed Forces of Philippines as property of the government during the training, and the same will be issued to them when they will be deployed to maintain peace and security in areas that have been mutually identified by the GPH [Government of the Philippines] and the MILF,” he said.

‘Simply unimaginable’

The joint team will serve until 2022, when the interim government ends its term and an MILF-lead autonomous region goes to elections to choose its own leaders.

“Many years ago this type of event was simply unimaginable. No one ever thought that the MILF combatants will ever be in a military camp to undertake a military training,” said MILF leader Murad Ebrahim, who today heads the government of the autonomous region.

“But many previously unimaginable things have already happened and are actually happening now right before our eyes. The MILF has taken the mantle of leadership over the Bangsamoro Government in partnership with the government of the Republic of the Philippines.”

A first batch of 225 ex-Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters begins basic training at Camp Lucero in Carmen, southern Philippines, to become members of a joint peace and security team that will police the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), Aug. 1, 2019. (Photo: Mark Navales/BenarNews)

While Manila has managed to bring in the 12,000-strong MILF into the government, a faction known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) has left the group and pledged allegiance to the IS as it pushes through with its fight for full independence in the south.

Other smaller, more volatile groups composed of extremists, like the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), which was excluded from the peace deal, also pose a problem, officials said.

In an interview with BenarNews two months ago, Murad acknowledged that two years after Philippine government forces broke a five-month siege of the southern city Marawi by pro-IS militants, a small number of foreign militants remains scattered across Mindanao.

“They are distributed among different groups. Both the BIFF and the ASG also splintered into many groups. The ASG is not led by one leader – they are splintered into several groups. Same with the BIFF, into three groups,” Murad said then as he appealed to enemy groups to lay down their firearms and join his government in establishing peace in the south.

Life in Butig today

The basic training for the MILF members kicked off while, elsewhere in the south, the army began integrating former fighters from the Maute militant faction to rejoin society.

The Maute clan had helped former Philippine IS leader Isnilon Hapilon seize Marawi in 2017. Led by brothers Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, their band of militants planned and carried out the siege. Fighters from the Middle East and Asia are believed to have helped them out.

Hapilon and the Mautes were killed in the battle of Marawi. The IS branch in the Philippines is led nowadays by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, a little-known Abu Sayyaf commander based on Jolo Island, who planned deadly suicide bombings at a church and an army camp there earlier this year, according to authorities.

In Butig, the hometown of the Mautes in Lanao del Sur province, the military has been trying to reestablish full control and bring back a semblance of normal life.

But grim reminders of past violence carried out by the Maute-IS faction are still visible. A bullet-riddled elementary school stands unrepaired and the area remains largely deserted, except on Sundays when the town’s market struggles with few customers.

Nearby, a group of men play “sepak takraw,” a foot volleyball sport native to Southeast Asia.

The Philippine flag flutters from a pole where the militants used to fly Islamic State’s black flag.

Security is still tight, though. Heavily armed soldiers, who are stationed in the former town hall, patrol Butig’s deserted streets day and night.

Capt. Ron Villarosa, a local army spokesman, said they were trying to reintroduce farming and other sources of livelihood for the residents of Butig, but it has been slow going.

Former Moro Islamic Liberation Front combatants undergo basic training at Camp Lucero in Carmen, southern Philippines, Aug. 1, 2019. (Photo: Mark Navales/BenarNews)

Currently, some 165 former Maute-IS fighters who had surrendered to the government have been allowed to return to their families and their communities, according to officials.

The military has also partnered with Peace Crops, a group of young agriculturists volunteers, to teach the former guerrillas how to plant vegetables in a 90-hectare plot of land in Butig.

“The Mautes recruited seventy percent of their fighters from farmers of these villages. It was not the students in Marawi,” Villarosa told BenarNews, adding that the Mautes had enticed young people here with money if they joined IS.

“Take down poverty and the ISIS will lose their appeal,” he added, referring to Islamic State extremists by a different acronym.

At the courtyard of the old town hall in Butig, soldiers loaded boxes of vegetable seedlings and a small hand tractor in the back of a military truck. And judging by the early reactions, the program appears to be off to a good start.

Nappy Magondacan, a former IS fighter, said he was glad that the military and the volunteers had come to teach them some agricultural skills.

“This will augment my income to feed my family,” said Magondacan, 20, a father of two who fought under the flag of the Mautes. He was also suspected of having a hand in the killing of army intelligence officers in 2017.

Now, he works the rice fields around Butig during harvests, and gets a small share of rice as a salary.

“I joined the ISIS when the Maute brothers promised to pay me 20,000 [Philippine pesos] every month,” Magondacan said. “I did not receive that money they promised me.

Rey Anthony Anacleto, a volunteer with the Peace Corps, said the government needed to focus on areas like Butig where the IS insurgency grew, rather than concentrate in pouring money into Marawi, which remains largely destroyed.

“I hope in the future that would change because the real fight against extremism starts here in the farms,” he said.

Firefights went on until the next day and troops confirmed nine deaths on the enemy side, regional military spokesman Maj. Arvin Encinas said. The military said six of the nine dead enemy fighters had already been identified.

“We launched air and ground assaults against them,” Encinas told BenarNews, adding that clearing operations continued on Monday.

The soldier, identified as Sgt. Ahmad Mahmood of the Army’s 601st Brigade, was killed while another soldier and three militants were injured, Encinas told the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA).

Turaife is one of the leaders of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a radical Muslim faction that split from the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an insurgent force that signed a peace deal with Manila and controls a Muslim autonomous region in the south.

BIFF says it is fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in the southern region of the predominantly Catholic country. The group has now embraced the ideology of IS, which was defeated in wide swaths of the Middle East and is looking to expand operations in Asia and other areas, according to analysts.

The fresh fighting took place amid reports that several foreign militants associated with the IS leader in the Philippines, Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, were hiding in the south, the site of two suicide bombings since January, one of which was perpetrated by an Indonesian couple, police in Jakarta said last week.

The latest bombing, which hit a military camp on Jolo, occurred on June 28 and left three soldiers and three civilians dead along with two suicide bombers. One has been identified as a 23-year-old Filipino member of an Abu Sayyaf unit under the command of Sawadjaan.

Sawadjaan succeeded Isnilon Hapilon, who was killed in October 2017 near the end of a five-month battle that erupted when he and other militants seized the southern Philippine city of Marawi.

They number between 20 and 30, and are embedded with fringe militant groups, said Murad, the interim chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

“The reported foreign fighters of the ISIS here is very small. They are tied up with local groups and are not actually ideological,” he said, using another acronym for the Islamic State (IS).

Such groups are on the run after a massive campaign to crush them, two years after they stormed the southern city of Marawi and mounted a five-month battle that left more than a thousand people dead, most of them militants.

Murad heads an 80-member team that leads the BARMM, a zone made up of at least five southern provinces where MILF will oversee self-rule until local voters elect their own parliament by 2022. Marawi, now mostly in ruins, is one of its main cities.

The new Muslim homeland was ratified by voters in plebiscites earlier this year, as the final step in a peace pact signed with Manila in 2014, and brokered by Malaysia.

Map of Bangsamoro

However, small factions such as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and Abu Sayyaf have splintered from the MILF, and allied with the so-called Islamic State as it tried to establish a home base in Southeast Asia after losing territory in the Middle East.

Two years ago, militants from Southeast Asia and the Middle East joined in the Marawi attack, and a handful are known to have escaped and sought refuge in jungle camps.

“They are distributed among different groups. Both the BIFF and the ASG also splintered into many groups. The ASG is not led by one leader – they are splintered into several groups. Same with the BIFF, into three groups,” Murad told BenarNews.

And while the peace agreement requires his forces to eventually turn in their weapons, those assigned to join the military in combating these remnants would be the last to do so, Murad said.

“When the security structure is already in place, then we can decommission them,” he said.

‘Open for dialogue’

Murad acknowledged that there had been some residual violence in the south since he assumed the leadership of the BARMM early this year, but said he was confident that with the MILF joining the military in its fight, the threat would soon be eradicated.

Moreover, militants still fighting “are open for negotiations,” according to the 70-year-old veteran fighter.

“We are open for dialogue with them because we feel and believe that most of these splinter groups were frustrated by the government,” Murad told BenarNews during the interview on Friday at his office in Cotabato City, where he has traded his field clothes for a suit.

“We are also offering them, if they want to join (the government), we are open to accommodate them. We are willing to because our agreement with the government is that there will be a declaration of a general amnesty. This will cover all political crimes. So we will include them – all those who are qualified.”

Murad said those who joined the Marawi siege and those wanted by the government would not be covered by the amnesty.

‘Ready to transform’

In the years since the peace pact was signed, much has changed in the MILF’s main Camp Darapanan, just outside Cotabato City. A cement road leads to the heart of the area, replacing a dirt path that once connected the gunmen to the outside world.

An archway welcomes tricycles, trucks and other civilian traffic into the MILF administrative camp, while vendors selling freshly picked squash and other farm produce line the street as the harsh tropical sun beats down.

Yet the setting still bears reminders of the MILF’s decades-old rebellion for an independent Muslim state in the southern third of the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s largest predominantly Catholic nation.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters walk past a sign declaring the region Bangsamoro, June 22, 2019. (Jason Gutierrez/BenarNews)

A security patrol guards the camp’s perimeter and grizzled veterans tell stories of gun battles over piping hot coffee to anyone willing to listen. A sentry armed with a .50-caliber machine gun is perched on a post, scanning the horizon for potential enemies.

“Before we entered into this interim period of governance, we already expected that there will be great challenges because first of all, we are a revolutionary organization and we have no experience in governance. We had to transform from revolutionary to governance,” Murad said.

Murad and the MILF are trying to establish an autonomous Muslim region about two decades after the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) failed to do so. The MILF split with the MNLF in the 1970s.

After the MNLF signed a peace deal with the government in 1996, its leader, Nur Misuari, became governor of a Muslim region known as the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

But, according to analysts, Misuari failed to uplift the lives of the poor and allegations of corruption plagued his administration. In 2013, followers of Misuari led a two-month siege in southern Zamboanga city that left more than 200 dead, most of them MNLF fighters.

Murad said his administration aimed to prevent a similar failure by focusing on “moral governance.”

He noted that militants, particularly the Abu Sayyaf which is notorious for kidnappings for ransom, were motivated mainly by a desire to escape harsh poverty in their areas.

But as peace takes hold and economic development begins to trickle down, Murad said he expected many to give up their arms.

“Now, we see our people are ready to transform from the usual revolutionary force. We feel everybody accepts now the situation is different from what we were facing before when we started the struggle,” Murad said.

He credited President Rodrigo Duterte for the general change in the public’s perception of the Muslim cause.

“He himself acknowledged the injustices against the Bangsamoro. So this acknowledgement of injustices makes people like us feel this time around that it’s different from the past, when we were seen as their enemy,” Murad said.

About 120,000 died in fighting in the Philippines since the 1970s, according to Mohagher Iqbal, the former MILF chief negotiator who is now the BARMM’s minister for education.

The 70-year-old claims he may see peace in his lifetime in a region where 120,000 have died in insurgency-related violence since the 1970s – and despite the failure of an earlier autonomous region, the ARMM, governed by MILF’s predecessor, the MNLF.

In an hour-long, no-holds-barred interview at his office in southern Cotabato City, Murad discussed his dreams, expectations and challenges as he navigates his new position while militants, both foreign and local, are nipping at his leadership.

BenarNews: What challenges lie ahead for you? Did you think it would be easy or difficult?

Murad: Before we entered into this interim period of governance, we already expected that there will be great challenges because first of all, we are a revolutionary organization and we have no experience in governance. We had to transform from revolutionary to governance.

Second, the expectation of our people is very high. So we need to respond to that expectation.

The first challenge we faced in the first year of the transition period is that our block grant was not appropriated in the 2019 budget. So we only have the remaining budget of the ARMM for 2019.

This remaining budget is already pre-planned, so we cannot re-align. We cannot introduce new programs for 2019.

BN:In short, it is a question of money?

Murad: One of the challenges is the question of money. The funding.

BN:How do you see your group evolving in the face of these challenges?

Murad: We see that we are progressing. We can manage the challenges. And we are hoping that, because by 2022, there will be an election for a regular government. So we need to strengthen our political party because the ministerial form of governance is more dependent on the strength of the political party.

BN: Many of your men have known nothing except fighting. How difficult is that?

Murad: Starting a few years ago we already tried to capacitate our people, because we are expecting that when we enter the government we need to capacitate them. And on our side we see that our success depends on how we can mobilize the capability and the talent of our people.

So even though we employ our own people in the organization, we also maintained those ARMM employees who are … especially part of the bureaucracy, we maintained them. We did not totally change the bureaucracy.

BN: So the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is still there?

Murad: It’s still there. And the bureaucracy is still intact. Actually, as of now, we just changed all those personnel who were linked with the political authority.

BN: How is the civilian government taking the changes?

Murad: Well, we see that so far, it is acceptable to them.

BN: And what makes the MILF leadership this time around different from the MNLF?

Murad: Well, now we focus on what we term as moral governance. We see that our success lies in how we can correct the evils of the system … evils of society. So we need to focus more on the advocacy for moral governance.

And the very time during the inauguration of the ARMM, we asked all our BTA (Bangsamoro Transition Authority) members to pledge to Allah to abide by the moral governance. That is our main advocacy for now.

BN: Where are you on the decommissioning process? How many firearms does the MILF have?

Murad: There are two tracts in the peace process. One is normalization and the other is the political tract. The normalization and political tract are side by side.

Now, under the normalization tract, this includes the decommissioning of our troops. And the decommissioning is divided into three phases. The first phase falls after the BOL (Bangsamoro Organic Law) is in place, the second phase is when the security structure will be in place. Third is when all the provisions of the agreement is implemented.

So now we are looking into decommissioning about 12,000 of our combatants. Maybe in the coming two or three months.

BN: So these 12,000 fighters will turn over their firearms?

Murad: Yes. Because we have also divided the firearms into three categories – the firearms owned by the organization, the firearms owned individually by the fighters, and those that are owned by civilians but which were used during war.

So we have different arrangements with the government with this. So the first thing we will turn over are the weapons owned by the organization. Then maybe we will have some arrangement on those guns individually owned by the fighters and civilians.

BN: How many are you willing to give up to avoid being vulnerable to attacks by other groups opposed to the MILF?

Murad: We have officially declared the number of weapons owned by the organization to around 6,000 to 7,000. We are still trying to account for those owned by the combatants themselves. And then there is also those that are owned by civilians.

BN: 6,000 is a bit low, don’t you think?

Murad: As I have said, the firearms owned by individual combatants is much higher.

BN: How many are we talking about?

Murad: Our regular combatants alone, is about 30,000 to 40,000. … Some are owned by the combatants and civilians.

BN: Will the decommissioned weapons be destroyed?

Murad: Under the agreement, it will be put beyond use. It will be kept in a certain place agreed upon and it will not be used by both parties. It will not be destroyed. This is similar to the agreement of Northern Ireland. The weapons of the Irish rebels are intact.

BN: When the MILF joined the government, there were several groups that splintered from the MILF, including the BIFF (Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters). How do you plan to deal with them if your firearms have already been surrendered?

Murad: Well, initially we are forming an interim security arrangement. It is forming a joint peace and security teams composed of the MILF-BIAF and government forces. Half of it from the police and the AFP (military).

So this will be the interim security. The MILF forces in this interim security will be the last to be decommissioned. When the security structure is already in place, then we can already decommission them.

BN: Will the MILF will be part of the anti-Islamic State drive?

Murad: Yes, we will be. But our strategy is two parts – we are open for dialogue with them, because we feel and believe that most of these splinter groups, or all of them, are (fighting) out of frustration from the peace process. You will see that the ASG (Abu Sayyaf) emerged after the failure of the implementation of the 1996 peace process with the MNLF. The BIFF splintered from the MILF after the failure of the MOA-AD. The latest group, the Maute Group, splintered also from the MILF. They bolted out after the non-passage of the BBL (Bangsamoro Basic Law) during the Aquino time.

[The MOA-AD or Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain was signed between the MILF and the government of ex-president Gloria Arroyo. It was later rejected by the Supreme Court. The MILF then declared all-out war with the government, leading to large-scale clashes and the displacement of entire communities.]

BN: How are you going to prevent the entry of foreign fighters, as happened in Marawi?

Murad: First of all, the reported foreign fighters for IS here is very small. They are tied up with the local groups and are not actually ideological. It is more of a financial necessity. Now actually, our intelligence confirms there are very few foreign nationals who are with these small groups.

BN: How many were you able to monitor based on intel in Mindanao?

Murad: They are from 20 to 30 maximum. Scattered … not in one location.

BN: When you say scattered, they are in heavily populated areas?

Murad: They are distributed among different groups. Both the BIFF and the ASG also splintered into many groups. The ASG has no one leader – they are splintered into several groups. Same with the BIFF, into three groups.

Even the latest one, the Maute Group, was also splintered (in) at least two groups. So now, even these foreign elements, they are also scattered among these splintered groups.

BN: But they can take advantage of that?

Murad: Yes. They can take advantage. [But] minus the support of the people in the area and then with the strong security structure in place, we are confident that we can finally get rid of them. We are also offering them, if they want to join [the government], we are open to accommodate them. We are willing to, because our agreement with the government is that there will be a declaration of a general amnesty. This will cover all political crimes. So we will include them – all those who are qualified.

BN: Even those who took part in Marawi?

Murad: Well, that would be different because many of them are considered as criminals and not tied to political crime.

BN: Has the MILF heard about Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan? Police and military said he worked with Indonesian militants in carrying out the Jolo bombings. Do you believe that?

Murad: Well, we see that most of the ASG are mainly motivated by money. Because we see that’s why they are more engaged in kidnapping. Recently, they have been involved in these bombings. These foreign fighters are trying to entice them with money. And that is why they also joined this group.

BN: If you compare the MILF now to how it was several years ago, what’s the difference?

Murad: Well, now, we see our people are ready to transform from the usual revolutionary force. We feel everybody accepts now the situation is different from what we were facing before when we started the struggle.

[W]e believed at that time that it was a fight for survival. If you go back to how this conflict started, it started in the late 1960s when there was this so called genocide campaign versus the Bangsamoro.

Now it is different, especially after the new president, [Rodrigo] Duterte, came into power. He himself acknowledged the injustices against the Bangsamoro. So this acknowledgement of injustice makes people like us feel this time around that it’s different from the past when we were seen as their enemy.

BN: How has your life changed?

Murad: … Your lifestyle always depends on your surroundings. When you are in the jungle, you have a different lifestyle. In urban areas, you have another lifestyle.

BN: You are in comfortable suits now?

Murad: We have to be. Although, you know, I only wear like this (on) official business. But on ordinary days, I wear normal clothes.

BN: Describe your day.

Murad: … In my schedule for weekdays I am in the office. But on weekends, I stay in [MILF camp] Darapanan because now our plan is that we will maintain the MILF as a social movement. We will not disband.

We will officially register it as a social movement, not necessarily a political party but more like an NGO or like a CSO (Civil Service Organization). It could be a partner of the government in implementing social services to the people.