June 13, 2001, NewsBreak, The Abu Sayyaf strikes again, by Manny Mogato,

June 13, 2001, NewsBreak, The Abu Sayyaf strikes again, by Manny Mogato,

More than a year after the Sipadan kidnappings, the bandit’s are still free men. What’s wrong?

After the rescue of American hostage Jeffrey Schilling from his captors in a coastal village in Luuk, Sulu last April, the government bragged that it had done away with the extremist Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). Thus, it came as a big surprise when the Abu Sayyaf pulled off another daring caper in a resort in Palawan. The extremists snatched at least 20 hostages, including three American nationals and an eight-year-old boy.

The Armed Forces and the National Police were caught with their pants down. The security forces had failed to track down the movements of the elusive Abu Sayyaf. No one expected them to sneak into a luxurious resort in Palawan— hundreds of miles northwest of their bases in Jolo and Basilan—and escape almost undetected. And Palawan happens to be where one of the military’s major air and naval bases is located.

Many have been made to believe that the military has been keeping the Abu Sayyaf busy dodging bombs and bullets in the hinterlands and coastal areas of Jolo island. After all, President Arroyo ordered the complete annihilation of the group in April.

What really went wrong at Dos Palmas? Was there a breakdown in military intelligence? Were the military and police too slow to react? Or were they so ill-equipped to track down and intercept the bandits’ fast-moving kumpit, an indigenous sea craft powered by three outboard engines? All of these factors were at play. Add to this the fact that more than a year after the Sipadan kidnappings, not one of the Abu Sayyaf leaders has been caught.

But national security adviser Roilo Golez says, “There’s no failure of intelligence. We have a military that is among the best in the world pound for pound.” Golez points out it is difficult to locate a small motorboat in the vast Sulu Sea, considering that the area is about the size of the entire Luzon island. Besides, the military’s patrol aircraft and surface vessels are not adequately equipped to guard the country’s coastline. A total of 10 naval surface vessels and 11 aircraft have been searching for the gray kumpit that carried the bandits and hostages— from the southern tip of Palawan to Basilan and Sulu.

A senior military intelligence officer confirms they received advance intelligence reports about the Abu Sayyaf’s planned attacks on resorts in Palawan, Boracay, Cebu, and other parts of Mindanao. “As early as late last year, there had been reports about the Abu Sayyaf’s intention to grab tourists in Palawan,” says an Army intelligence officer. “We did our homework but we can’t avoid some foul-ups sometimes. We can’t always be 100 percent in our work.”

Retired general Alfredo Filler, who served with the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) during the first few months of the Arroyo administration, confirms the intelligence report about the Abu Sayyaf’s plan to kidnap tourists in the best resorts in the country. But he describes the report as a general plan by the Abu Sayyaf to strike in expensive resorts. “It was actually raw information and you cannot just predict when these people would really strike,” says Filler.

Army Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan, the military’s spokesperson, offers the best excuse for the Dos Palmas raid. Adan says the Abu Sayyaf has taken advantage of the tense political situation in the country. “We just had midterm elections and it was perfect timing,” says Adan. “Our soldiers and policemen were still too busy with their election duties. Many of the troops assigned to combat duties were shifted to guarding the electoral process and the Abu Sayyaf saw this as an opening to mount their operations.” At the start of the military offensive against the Abu Sayyaf in September 2000, there were more than 5,000 soldiers in Jolo hunting down the extremists. By the time Schilling was rescued last month, the number of troops had been sharply reduced. The two Marine Expeditionary Brigades had already been withdrawn and only the Army’s 104th Infantry Brigade remained for the mopping-up operations.

MNLF AND BLOOD TIES

Apart from the elections, a possible trigger for the Abu Sayyaf’s attack was the bruising power struggle within the senior leadership of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). Majority of the 40-member MNLF’s central committee decided last April 29 to withdraw their trust and confidence from ARMM Governor Nur Misuari as the front’s chairman and transfer his vast powers to a 15- member executive council.

Misuari is resisting the moves by other MNLF leaders to clip his powers and project him as the “toothless” leader of an organization that has clout in the influential Organization of Islamic Conference. However, Misuari has remained popular to a number of MNLF members in his native Sulu province despite facing the most serious challenge to his 30-year leadership of the former secessionist movement.

In the past, the military accused the MNLF of providing refuge to Abu Sayyaf members fleeing from government operations. At the height of the Sipadan hostage crisis, the Abu Sayyaf was able to breach the military dragnet by passing through the MNLF-controlled areas.

This is not unusual since many former MNLF fighters have become part of the Abu Sayyaf. In most cases, members of the MNLF and Abu Sayyaf are related to each other by blood or intermarriage. The strong family bond among Muslims in Sulu has been a big factor in making it doubly difficult for the military to hunt down members of the extremist group.

The known island commander of Abu Sayyaf forces in Sulu, Radullan Saheron, was a legendary MNLF fighter who saw action in the Mindanao rebellion in the 1970s. Even the two notorious Abu Sayyaf sub-commanders, Mujib Susukan and Ghalib Andang, have MNLF links. Susukan was a son of a feared MNLF fighter who fought side by side with Misuari and Saheron while Andang, also known as Commander Robot, joined the MNLF for a while after working as a driver and bodyguard of Sulu Governor Sakur Tan.

SIPADAN: ANDANG, SUSUKAN’S SHOW

The raid at Dos Palmas was some sort of redemption for Khaddafy Janjalani and his Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf forces. The raid came almost exactly on the same day they fled from Basilan a year ago to escape a massive military operation. The military was trying to free a group of teachers and young schoolchildren they had held captive for more than two months.

The kidnapping of more than 50 teachers and schoolchildren in Basilan in March 2000 signaled the start of the violent rampage of the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao. The beheading of two teachers and the summary execution of a Catholic priest capped the Basilan kidnapping episode. But it did not end there. The drama shifted to Sulu because of the Sipadan kidnapping. Janjalani’s group also fled and sought sanctuary in Saheron’s camp in Patikul.

The Sipadan kidnapping produced many folk heroes among the lesser known Abu Sayyaf field commanders. Thus Andang and Susukan became household names in Sulu. Saheron and other high-profile Abu Sayyaf personalities also gained more prominence than Khaddafy himself. Even Abu Sabaya, who only served as a spokesperson, is more widely known and recognized than his master.

The Sipadan kidnapping episode was a show run by Andang and Susukan despite efforts by some Abu Sayyaf leaders to get a piece of the action. Andang and Susukan are businessmen who both want quick money. But the other ASG chieftains, including Saheron and a certain Commander Global, wanted to inject ideological issues.

These led to the delay in the negotiations for the release of the hostages. At times, Andang and Susukan gave in to the political interests of the “real” ASG leaders in Jolo. After all, these leaders had more people and weapons than the two. But things changed, however, after ransom was paid.

The military claimed Janjalani, Sabaya, Andang, and Susukan were on the same boat that took hostages from Dos Palmas, another proof of the growing “business” partnership between Janjalani’s Basilan group and Andang and Susukan’s Jolo-based group.

The success of the Sipadan kidnapping had brought the four together. These Abu Sayyaf leaders share almost similar backgrounds. They were never revolutionaries yet they were in the Abu Sayyaf because they all share the same passion for violence and criminal notoriety.

To some extent, Khaddafy’s group sought protection under Saheron’s group in Jolo and hid the criminal nature of their activities behind the mask of Islamic fundamentalism. Initially, the group tried to sow deeper religious animosity between Muslims and Christians in Basilan by targeting religious symbols. Thus, the young Janjalani’s group started kidnapping Catholic priests and nuns, and other Christian missionaries; bombing and burning religious buildings; and destroying other symbols of Christianity.