| Southeast Asia |
| Philippines wants to blacklist Islamic group |
| 2006-09-29 |
| The Philippine government wants the US and the United Nations to blacklist a small group of Islamic converts, considered the country's most dangerous militants because of their financial backing and familiarity with Manila and other key cities, an anti-terror official said Thursday. The Philippines doesn't yet have a list of outlawed terror groups, but if it did the Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement would definitely appear on it, said Ric Blancaflor, director of the government's Anti-Terrorism Task Force, adding that Manila will cooperate with any governments that plan to ban the group. The movement, believed to have about 30 members, has been linked to a number of terrorist attacks in the Philippines, including a February 2004 bombing that gutted a ferry, killing 116 people. It has been hurt by the arrests of its leader and other members but could still plot attacks, Blancaflor said. The group has collaborated with the more well-known Abu Sayyaf, based on southern Jolo island, and Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional network allied with al-Qaida, in staging attacks and organizing terrorist training in the southern Mindanao region. It also has links with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a large group fighting for self-rule in the south, Blancaflor said. |
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| Southeast Asia |
| Manila raises security after reports of attack plan |
| 2006-06-22 |
| The Philippines raised security in the capital Manila on Thursday after intelligence that Muslim rebels with suspected ties to foreign militants planned to attack shopping malls and transport systems, a top police officer said. Vidal Querol, Metropolitan Manila's police chief, said about 15 check points were set up around the capital to guard critical public and private installations such as petrol depots, power, water and communications stations and bus and train stations. "We have been getting intelligence reports on an alleged plot by terrorist groups to plant bombs in Manila and other key urban centres in the south," Querol told journalists, adding he had met with mall owners to seek their help in tightening security. "They promised to help us ensure the safety of shoppers by beefing up mall guards and installing extra security cameras." Querol said the nearly 20,000 police officers in Metropolitan Manila, the sprawling capital of the poor Southeast Asian state, were placed on heightened alert at dawn on Thursday. "In the last few weeks, we're getting consistent reports from various sources about a plot by Muslim rebels to simultaneously bomb three or four targets in the capital," a senior police intelligence official told Reuters. The official said authorities were worried because the reports filtering in contained "very specific" details about the bomb plot, such as date, time and place of targets. Brigadier-General Delfin Bangit, commander of the elite Presidential Security Group, said they were concerned about the increasing threats from local militant groups with suspected ties to Indonesian jihadist groups. "There were consistent reports of bombings," said Bangit. "We are very concerned because the president has been moving around." Intelligence officials blame a small group of radical Muslim converts, Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement, for the series of bombings in the capital since 2004, including the worst attack that killed over 100 people in a ferry explosion. Two of the group's top leaders -- Ahmad Islam Santos and Pio de Vera -- were arrested last year in the southern port city of Zamboanga, disrupting an alleged plot to detonate a truck bomb in Manila. "Our latest information suggested a fresh plot to be carried out by new recruits," the intelligence official said, adding the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah and its local partner Abu Sayyaf may have provided funds for the planned attack. |
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| Southeast Asia |
| Rajah Solaiman folds into Abu Sayyaf, Abu Sayyaf folds into JI |
| 2005-08-23 |
| A lethal mix of militant groups is emerging in the southern Philippines, a senior police intelligence official said, warning of attacks as foreign and local jihadists share resources, talents and capabilities. The intelligence official, who declined to be identified, said foreign Islamic militants, mostly Indonesians, were building alliances with several homegrown Muslim rebels to survive government offensives on the southern island of Mindanao. Since July, Philippine troops backed by U.S. aerial surveillance vehicles have been combing coastal and mountain villages in Maguindanao province for about 30 rebels from the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, who are thought to be operating with a handful of Indonesian militants. "These militants are now crossing organisational lines to exchange and share manpower, expertise and resources," the intelligence official told Reuters late on Sunday. "If governments in the region are cooperating to eliminate these threats, we are now seeing that terrorists are also sharing their 'best practices' to fight back". A senior U.S. diplomat in Manila drew an angry reaction from government leaders earlier this year when he said Mindanao risked turning into "an Afghanistan situation". The Philippine official said there were intelligence reports that Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement, a group of radical Muslim converts, had merged with the Abu Sayyaf group led by Khaddafy Janjalani. This, he said, had increased the threat of attacks in Manila because most of the converts were based around the capital. Janjalani, long the subject of manhunt operations on Mindanao, is also thought to have developed close links with Indonesian militants belonging to different jihadist groups, including Jemaah Islamiah (JI). A classified security report shown to Reuters said JI instructors had taught about 60 of Janjalani's followers how to handle crude bombs fashioned out of unexploded mortar rounds. Philippine officials said foreign militants were forced to seek out other Muslim groups in Mindanao because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's largest Muslim rebel group, which is in talks with the government, started pushing them to leave. But they said rogue MILF elements continued to protect the foreign militants, allowing them to hide in a marshy area in Maguindanao province. "We always believed the leadership of MILF is determined to cut its ties with these militants," said Rodolfo Garcia, a member of the government's peace panel negotiating with the MILF. |
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| Southeast Asia |
| Abu Sayyaf is the military wing of a political movement |
| 2005-02-22 |
| The extremist Abu Sayyaf is merely a military wing of a terrorist "nebulous party." This was the government's assessment of the terrorist group in the new National Internal Security Plan (NISP) that is now the subject of discussions and brainstorming in the unified command levels of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Based on the 28-page security plan that was drafted by the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security (COC-IS), it said that the Abu Sayyaf has "a nebulous party structure" performing the role of a "brain" in the entire terrorist organization, and that this has yet to be fully determined and identified by government operatives. The group's "nebulous party," added the NISP, has "civilian supporters acting as its shield," while the Abu Sayyaf "itself as the sword." Such presumptions were compared to how the government regards the mainstream underground Maoist movement and the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). With regard the Maoist rebel movement, the NISP pointed out that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is its "brain," its underground political umbrella, the National Democratic Front (NDF), its "shield," and the New People's Army (NPA) is its "sword." As for the MILF, the rebel front is in itself the "brain," its revolutionary mass bases in Mindanao are its "shields," while its mujahideens (holy warriors) in the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), are its "sword." The NISP has it that the "core members" of the Abu Sayyaf were former mujahideens who fought in the Afghan wars of the 1980s. It later grew in strength when it was able to recruit disgruntled members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) after it entered into a peace agreement with the government in the early 1990s. After a series of government assaults, the Abu Sayyaf became a mere "lawless terrorist bandit group claiming Islamic theocratic objectives." However, the NISP noted that it still "exerts influence and enjoys support in the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur and Sarangani." "Lately," added the same document, "it has been pre-occupied with recruitment and kidnap-for-ransom activities to generate funds for the procurement of high-powered weapons." By now, the Abu Sayyaf has a fighting force of less than 300, from a peak of 1,200, but the government nonetheless considers it "as the immediate threat group in Southwestern Mindanao." "While many⊠communities (in Mindanao) are against the means by which the (Abu Sayyaf) hopes to attain its goal," the NISP assessed, "(it) continues to enjoy some degree of support." The Abu Sayyaf is being suspected by authorities to have established a link with the Jeemah Islamiya, the Southeast Asian terror network of Saudi-dissident Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Its ultimate objective is to carve an independent Islamic state in Mindanao. All of the Abu Sayyaf's terrorist units have been dispersed from its former regular fighting formations to avoid head-to-head confrontations with government forces, as the NISP document warned that "its special operations groups (are) lurking in several urban centers (to) conduct terroristic activities, to include bombings of uncooperative business establishments." By now, the government suspects that the Abu Sayyaf has already struck an alliance with a faction of the MNLF loyal to jailed former Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Nur Misuari, which recently staged a revolt in Sulu. While Abu Sayyaf terrorists are now believed to be also operating in Metro Manila, the military has vague information with regards its linkages with the shadowy Luzon-based terrorist group Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement (RSRM). For the past three years, police and military operatives have encountered elements of the RSRM and its self-styled armed wing, the Hukbong Khalid Trinidad (HKT), in campaigns against terrorism in Tarlac, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan. According to the NISP, "Government response (to the Abu Sayyaf) should not only put an end to terrorism and banditry." "More importantly," it added, "(government has to) address poverty, which is the breeding ground of terrorism." |
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| Southeast Asia |
| Philippines on alert for JI sleeper cells in Luzon |
| 2005-02-16 |
| Soldiers positioned north of Metro Manila have been directed to anticipate the springing into action of covert Islamic extremists belonging to alleged "sleeper cells" of a shadowy terrorist group operating in the Luzon island. Lt. Col. Vic Castro, intelligence chief of the Armed Forces' Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), revealed here on Tuesday before participants of the two-day seminar-workshop on the government's proposed National Internal Security Plan (NISP) that the military is now also on the lookout for "terrorist sleepers" aligned with the Jeemah Islamiya (JI). According to him, it has been three years now that the "sleepers" have been detected to be operating in the provinces of Tarlac, Pangasinan, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija, and that these purported "covert terrorists" have been using the "Balik-Islam" movement of the Filipino-Muslim community as a camouflage for their operations. Authorities have actually earlier tagged the alleged JI-allied "terrorist" group in Luzon as the so-called Hukbong Khalid Trinidad (HKT), believed to be the armed wing of the shadowy Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement (RSRM). Castro claimed that with the raging revolt in Sulu by a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) loyal to jailed former Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Nur Misuari, it is likely that the RSRM-HKT would "leap into action and carry out terroristic activities." He added that as the renegade MNLF fighters have already established an alliance with Islamic extremists belonging to the Abu Sayyaf, it is probable that the RSRM-HKT will similarly take advantage of the Sulu revolt and launch "sympathy attacks" in Luzon. It was in Tarlac City when the shadowy Luzon-based terrorist group was first detected after police authorities engaged seven of its suspected members in a shootout in a transport terminal on May 1, 2002. The encounter then led to the killing of Khalid Amir Trinidad, a Muslim convert, after whom the HKT was named. At the time, Trinidad and his colleagues were allegedly planning to terrorize Tarlac City by lobbing grenades on commercial establishments. While the Valentine's Day explosions in the Mindanao cities of Davao and General Santos could be the handiwork of the MNLF-Misuari faction and the Abu Sayyaf, Castro said it was only the RSRM-HKT that has the capability to launch the Makati City bombing. Meanwhile, the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has expressed skepticism if indeed the bombings in the cities of Davao, General Santos and Makati were undertaken by any of the country's Filipino-Muslim rebel groups. CPP senior spokesman, Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, said that the Valentine's Day bombings "do not serve any democratic or pro-people cause. nor the Moro people's cause for self-determination." The communist spokesman added that, at the most, the terrorist bomb attacks "serve only to justify the intensification of fascist suppression and the employment of terror to preempt the burgeoning people's resistance against the Arroyo regime" and that these "also serve to justify the escalation of US military intervention and give credence to the so-called 'war against terror' of the imperialist US government." Rosal said that like in previous bombings, the recent acts of terrorism in the two key Mindanao cities and the country's financial district "can only be the handiwork of elements or agents that wittingly or unwittingly serve the cause of the militarists and US interventionists." |
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