December 17, 2010, [1st appearance on Bulatlat archive page] Abu Sayyaf’s Links To Police, Military Traced, by Carlos H. Conde,

December 17, 2010, [1st appearance on Bulatlat archive page] Abu Sayyaf’s Links To Police, Military Traced, by Carlos H. Conde, 

"How can a band of criminals with no military training to speak of withstand the full might of the armed forces, slip through the troop cordon and conduct kidnapping right under the very noses of government troops?" An exasperated senior military official asked this question a few years ago by way of noting the Abu Sayyaf's connections to the police and the military.

(Editors' note: This article was originally published, under the author's pseudonym C.C. Hidalgo, by the Pan-Philippine News and Information Network early last year, before the Sipadan kidnapping occurred. Minor changes have been made.)

From the time its leader, Abdurajak Janjalani, died in 1998, the extremist Abu Sayyaf hadn't entered the public consciousness as deeply as it does nowadays. The public only got to know about the group's activities by the occasional news that a teacher or a Chinese businessman in Western Mindanao had been kidnapped and that the police and the military were certain the Abu Sayyaf had been behind it.

Suddenly, on March 20, 2000, the Abu Sayyaf hit the news big time – probably the biggest since it was accused of leading the sacking of Ipil town, Zamboanga del Sur, on April 4, 1995 – when it abducted 51 people, most of them school children, in Sumisip, Basilan. The incident was jarring in its magnitude. But what was striking about the abduction was the Abu Sayyaf's next moves, which were uncharacteristic thus suspicious.

It suddenly became accessible to the media, showing off their military hardware before television cameras, issuing threats and warnings to the authorities and the families of the hostages. But what exactly did the Abu Sayyaf want in the kidnapping? If it wanted ransom, as they had allegedly done in the past, it was not made clear. There were negotiations but what was the Sayyaf’s demand?

Then the tragedy suddenly shifted to tragi-comedy: the Abu Sayyaf wanted actor and Islam convert Robin Padilla to negotiate with it. This after Basilan congressman Gerry Salapuddin -- who was tasked initially to negotiate the release of the hostages, 18 of whom actually went down the mountain with him -- inexplicably threw up his hands and walked away from the crisis. As of Monday, April 10, the Abu Sayyaf was at it again, threatening to behead the male hostages, one of them a priest, if Padilla was not allowed to go to their lair within 72 hours.

"What is going on here?" is probably the most asked question nowadays. And precisely because the situation is muddled, because no one is certain what the crisis is all about, speculations abound, foremost of which is this: Is the Estrada administration wagging the dog in Mindanao, deflecting attention from the ever unpopular Estrada to the one place in the country that has historically been used by politicians to 1) muddle things up in this country and 2) to score brownie points with the public?

If Malacanang is not wagging the dog – that is, creating a little war in Mindanao to snatch attention away from the perceived incompetence at the Palace – could it be encouraging the war, even provoking Moro rebels and extremists into action? After all, the March 20 kidnapping occurred just a few days after the battle in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, which hardly stole the spotlight away from President Estrada's troubles. Could it be…?

And because the newspapers just couldn't get enough of Estrada, was Robin Padilla factored in for good entertainment measure, to stretch this drama further, to provide a heavy dose of entertainment that would hopefully glue the public, including reporters and editors, to their TV screens – and perhaps forget about everything that's been going on by the Pasig River?

Speculations such as these could be, of course, unfair to Malacanang. But consider this: the Abu Sayyaf is capable of doing these things. In fact, according to a book scheduled for launching this week, the Abu Sayyaf has been conveniently used by the military for all sorts of purpose.

The book Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao by veteran journalists Marites Danguilan-Vitug and Glenda Gloria gives credence to suspicion that the Abu Sayyaf was a military creation. It details enough incidents and quotes convincing testimony from credible and named sources to bolster such a suspicion.

In fairness, the book does indicate that the vision of Abu Sayyaf leader Abdurajak Janjalani was for the fundamentalist group to be the alternative to the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) whose leader, Nur Misuari, the young and charismatic Janjalani particularly disdained. Janjalani had wanted to struggle for an Islamic state to bring Moros closer to the Koran – indeed, to make Koran the center of the life of every Muslim in Mindanao, even to the extent of exterminating the Christians that get in the way because such an act, Janjalani would tell his followers, is allowed by the Koran.

Janjalani's fundamentalist vision had brought the Abu Sayyaf close to forging an alliance with the MNLF's National Islamic Command Council (NICC) – a plan that was botched, however, after the sacking of Ipil in 1995. According to the book, the NICC, which surfaced only a few weeks ago, had long wanted to break away from the MNLF. Its leaders were MNLF officials who had grown disgruntled with Misuari, who had by then shown a predisposition to negotiate with and to be co-opted by the Ramos government.

Troubles

For a while, the Abu Sayyaf was respected in the Muslim community, particularly in Basilan, owing largely to the young Janjalani's fiery charisma (he would have been 37 by now). Its troubles started when Edwin Angeles, who was there from the very beginning, earned Janjalani's trust and confidence, and started flirting with the authorities. Angeles, the book says, facilitated the provision of military hardware to the Abu Sayyaf courtesy of corrupt soldiers within the AFP. Angeles was an acknowledged police agent who may have, according to the book, tipped the authorities off on Janjalani, who was killed in 1998.

And Angeles had also grown very close to Janjalani's brother, Khaddafi, who took over the leadership of the group after Janjalani's death. It is assumed that Angeles may have influenced Khaddafi in more ways than one; the latter even trusted the former so much that he agreed to facilitate the planned surrender of his brother to the PNP in 1995.

"Many observed that it was only when Angeles came into the picture that the Abu Sayyaf turned to banditry and kidnapping," the book says.

It also quoted Melham Alam, a friend of Janjalani's who leads the NICC, as saying "I was advising him (Janjalani) against Angeles. He never listened."

Anti-Terrorist Campaign

By this time, the police and the Department of the Interior and Local Government under then secretary Rafael Alunan III, had been using Angeles for their anti-terrorist campaign, using him as a guide once to the hideouts of suspected foreign terrorists who had slipped into the country. (He would later turn against his benefactors by accusing them of planting firearms on arrested Arab nationals.)

"He's a crazy guy who deals only for the sake of money," the book quotes Maj. Gen. Benjamin Libarnes, a retired military top spy. "I don't know why they (the PNP) used him."

Vitug and Gloria wrote: "The man knew the ins and outs of the Abu Sayyaf and the dynamics within the Muslim armed movement in general. Though dangerous, Angeles appeared to be of some use to the PNP at the time, so the gods played with him."

Chief Rodolfo "Boogie" Mendoza, the officer whom Angeles later implicated in allegedly planting firearms against the Arabs in the police's custody, was quoted by the authors as saying that "I received orders to handle him…. I had the impression he was also being handled by somebody higher." Angeles, according to the book, worked for the PNP intelligence throughout 1995.

Planned Surrender

One of the events that highlighted Angeles' links to the PNP, the book reveals, was the planned surrender of Janjalani to the police. Using television reporter Arlene dela Cruz as a conduit to the PNP, Angeles arranged Janjalani's surrender, even showing his "sincerity" to the PNP by sending Janjalani's brother Khaddafi to meet then PNP chief Recaredo Sarmiento. The surrender never took place.

"The negotiations turned into pure money talk," dela Cruz said a year after the fiasco, adding that the PNP gave whatever amount Angeles wanted to effect the surrender. Angeles' duplicity would later show when it was revealed that he had also arranged Janjalani's surrender with the Army's Southern Command, which didn't have any idea of the planned PNP surrender.

The book also alleges that the Marines in Basilan used Angeles and the Abu Sayyaf. "A senior Army general assigned to Basilan says that the Marines on the island used Angeles to the hilt, believing that propping up the Abu Sayyaf through him would neutralize the MNLF in the province and in the whole Western Mindanao," the book says.

The MNLF was convinced, according to the book, that the Abu Sayyaf enjoyed the support of the military. An MNLF commander told Vitug and Gloria that one time, his group called the Abu Sayyaf to help them to repulse the Marines who had raided an MNLF camp in Kapawayan, Isabela. The Abu Sayyaf did respond but "they just made their present felt and no single shot was fired from (the Abu Sayyaf)." The MNLF commander said he was shocked when Angeles radioed the Marines "to clarify to them that the encounter was not with the Abu Sayyaf but with the MNLF." The commander said he was so enraged he nearly shot Angeles right there and then.

The MNLF chief in Tawi-tawi, Damming Hadrijul, was quoted by the authors as saying that the Abu Sayyaf was trying to win over MNLF commanders for P20,000. Hadrijul said the Abu Sayyaf was a military creation. "When there's no war, there's no business for the military, right?" he told the journalists.

Military's Role

AFP officials had likewise grown suspicious of the military’s role in Abu Sayyaf, particularly the skill with which the Abu Sayyaf had evaded the military. “How can a band of criminals with no military training to speak of withstand the full might of the armed forces, slip through the troop cordon and conduct kidnapping right under the very noses of government troops?” asked Lt. Col. Ricardo Morales in a 1994 article for the Army journal, portions of which the book used. "Something is terribly wrong with our Armed Forces," he declared.

More specific was Army Capt. Rene Jarque who told the authors that that Abu Sayyaf's ability to evade military operations "for too long in a tiny island lends credence to reports that military units have been ordered to halt operations when the Abu Sayyaf head, Janjalani, is already within reach." In 1995, the book notes, military officers would wonder why the Abu Sayyaf "knew when they were going to be attacked, and Janjalani was always able to escape even a very tight dragnet."

After the death of Janjalani in 1998 and of Angeles in early 1999, things seem to remain the same for the Abu Sayyaf, which appears crafty as ever in evading the military in Basilan despite the supposedly intensified operations in the wake of the March 20 kidnapping.

The book notes that, in 1995, after the Ipil raid, cynicism greeted the government's announcement that the Abu Sayyaf was behind the sacking. Vitug and Gloria have an acceptable explanation for this. Because, they wrote, "for all the warring it has done supposedly in the name of Islam, there is so much confusion and mistrust surrounding the Abu Sayyaf, whose leaders had flaunted their ties with the police and the military."