After hostage beheading, is Philippines facing ISIS threat?
Manila - Months before Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded retired Canadian mining executive John Ridsdel in the tropical jungles of the southern Philippines, they showed him pleading for life in a video with three other hostages that demanded a record-high ransom.
The scene was all too familiar in a Southeast Asian nation that has struggled with ransom kidnappings by the Islamic militants for years, except for two things.
In the video that appeared in November, two black flags with Islamic
State (ISIS) group symbols were displayed by the heavily armed Abu
Sayyaf fighters in the backdrop of lush foliage. Then after a deadline
for ransom lapsed on Monday, they killed the 68-year-old Ridsdel
- instead of waiting patiently for the money as the mostly impoverished rural fighters have done in the past.
Shocked by the outcome, many in the largest Roman Catholic nation in
Asia are asking if this is the same band of militants the government has
long dismissed as ransom-seeking bandits. Or, has the Philippines
fallen into a growing list of countries that are now grappling with the
spread of influence from the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq -
The Philippine government has insisted the ISIS still has no presence in
the country's south, homeland of minority Muslims who rose up to seek a
separate state in the early 1970s.
In his first remarks following Ridsdel's killing, President Benigno
Aquino III, whose term ends in two months, gave a history of the Abu
Sayyaf's brutal attacks, describing it as a group of outlaws and vowing
"to devote all my energies toward ensuring that, at the very least, this
will be a very seriously degraded problem."
A major offensive is believed to have killed about 14 Abu Sayyaf
militants in southern Sulu province this week, the military said.
"Even as it poses as a group of Islamic freedom fighters, the Abu Sayyaf
has behaved as criminals focused on enriching themselves by taking
hostages for ransom," Aquino said, describing them as opportunists who
want to "align themselves with ISIS to gain access to the funds and
resources of ISIS".
Terrorism experts, however, believe that a key Abu Sayyaf faction and at
least two other small armed groups have gone beyond pledging allegiance
to the Middle East-based jihadis on video and have struck a new
alliance under the ISIS flag.
Some foreign militants from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Middle East
helped forge the union under an overall leader, Isnilon Hapilon, a
senior Abu Sayyaf commander on southern Basilan Island, said Rodolfo
Mendoza, a retired police general who helped lead counterterrorism
efforts.
It's not yet clear if the foreign militants, three of whom were killed
in military offensives last year and this year, were ISIS fighters or
sympathisers who wanted to recruit Filipinos into the ISIS fold,
according to the Philippine military.
In November, Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded a Malaysian hostage despite
ongoing ransom negotiations. It happened while Manila was hosting an
Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit attended by world leaders,
including President Barack Obama and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak.
Another armed group, which has brandished the IS group's black flag in
southern Butig town but is not yet known to have joined Hapilon's
alliance, recently posted a picture online of two kidnapped villagers in
orange garb before they were beheaded as suspected military spies. It's
the first known instance in which local militants dressed their
captives in orange, as ISIS extremists do.
An unusual surge in kidnappings, including daring attacks on three
tugboats in and around the Sulu Sea that captured 18 Indonesian and
Malaysian crewmen beginning last month, along with recent beheadings,
may be an effort by the emerging bloc of militants to dramatise their
capability and brutality and convince the ISIS group to fully recognise
them as an affiliate entitled to funds and training support, Mendoza
told AP.
Earlier this month, an Abu Sayyaf ambush in Basilan killed 18 soldiers
in the military's largest single-day combat loss so far this year.
"They're now able to project internationally that they deserve the
serious recognition of mother ISIS," Mendoza said. "The kidnappings that
they do shouldn't only be seen as plain banditry."
After the September 11 2001, attacks in the United States, the militants
tried to forge a formal alliance with al-Qaeda but those efforts
failed. The Abu Sayyaf group tried for years to foster an impression
that it was formally allied to al-Qaeda for survival, said Abu Muslim, a
former Abu Sayyaf ranking member who has been captured and now
cooperates with the government.
"There was really no direct connection between the ASG and the al-Qaeda
then," he said. "But the impression that there was gave the group
stature and a veil of notoriety that was important in raising funds."
Ahmed Hashim, a counterterrorism and defence policy expert with the S
Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said European
and Middle Eastern countries have been more exposed to the dangers from
ISIS militants, but a vulnerable period awaits Southeast Asia.
A few hundred Malaysian and Indonesian militants are believed to have
travelled to Syria and Iraq in recent years. There are unconfirmed
reports that a few Filipinos have also joined the fighting.
"Not too many have come back yet," Hashim said. "The biggest danger is for Malaysia and Indonesia."
Under any label, Abu Sayyaf is clearly a "terrorist group" that will
face offensives for its "gruesome attacks on innocent people," the
military said.
A day before he was abducted from a marina on Samal Island, where he and
his friends berthed their yacht, Ridsdel wrote in his blog about the
thrill of his sea adventures and a hint of the unexpected that might
suddenly come with it.
"With a little bit of wind, it feels like the craft is flying, as it
skims over the water rather than undulating with it," he wrote. "All
very wonderful, until you have to go upwind in rough weather."
