Terror to come?

For many Filipinos, the deteriorating security situation in Iraq spurred by the advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Syria (ISIS) terrorist group presents just two clear threats: first, to the approximately 2,000 overseas Filipino workers living and working in the area, and second, to the price of petroleum products.

On June 19, the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a directive ordering the mandatory repatriation of OFWs in affected territories. Last week oil companies in the Philippines subsequently hiked the prices of oil and petroleum facing a new round of protests from Leftists and nationalist groups.  

A long-term threat to Philippine security is however on the rise. 

Uncurbed and undetected, it puts at risk the prospects of sustaining peace in the soon to be established Bangsamoro autonomous community in southern Mindanao brokered between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The seeds of resurgent terrorism in the future appear in the process of being sown. 

On June 11, government security forces wounded Abdul Basit Usman, a bomb making expert identified with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist group – Southeast Asia’s link with the Al Qaeda network – when the military raided a Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) lair in Maguindanao province. A week later, a joint Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and military team killed BIFF commander Basir Kasaran in Basilan province – a known Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) stronghold. These incidents indicate that the BIFF – a splinter group of the MILF which has opposed MILF’s peace talks with the Philippine government – is not only working with the ASG but also with JI operatives.  

Prior to the signing of an agreement with the government, the MILF is known to have provided JI terrorists training sites in their camps in Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces which form part of JI’s Mantiqi 3 operational structure. Manatiqi 3 countries are JI training grounds in contrast to Mantiqi 1 and 2 countries which form the terrorist group’s core conflict zone. Intensified counter-insurgency operations in Indonesia have, however, reduced JI violent activity. 

Family and kin linkages

The BIFF-ASG connection exposes another source of threat: the family and kin linkages that cement social ties and relations between Muslims in the south. With the dominant MILF faction under pressure to neutralize other armed groups in Mindanao, partnership, especially between families with cross-cutting ASG and BIFF affiliations, is likely to deepen in the immediate term as joint MILF-MNLF-military operations restrict the dissidents’ resource mobilization and ground movement. 

It is noteworthy that the JI itself has woven an intricate network of family ties it can readily exploit. 

Hence, the presence of JI operatives in southern Mindanao opens a possible road for ASG, BIFF, and rogue MILF and MNLF leaders and fighters facing intensified government-MILF joint operations: the ISIL-led rebellion in Iraq and Syria.

It is worth remembering that ASG founder Ustadz Abdurajak Janjalani was himself radicalized and trained in Afghanistan and was persistently rumored to have fought in the Afghan War as a mujahedeen. Already, there have been reports and even arrests of individuals believed to have been recruiting in Malaysia and Indonesia for the ISIL.

Members of ASG-BIFF affiliated families as well as disgruntled kin-based factions in the MILF have incentives to participate in the ISIS rebellion: not only does travelling to Iraq or Syria temporarily take the heat off them, it also provides them access to the booty of the rebellion that has already succeeded in capturing not only the resources of Mosul – Iraq’s second largest city – but also popular sympathy. The challenge for the MILF and the Philippine government is to present these future jihadists with a more attractive set of incentives not to. 

Bangsamoro a global issue

The stakes are high for the coming Bangsamoro polity and for Philippine political leaders. 

Although analysts and policymakers have rightly deflected religion (i.e. Islam) as the primary cause of armed violence in the southern Philippines in favor of framing the problem in economic and political terms, the ability of Islamists to exploit religious interpretations cannot be fully underemphasized. 

Selective interpretations can be especially attractive to individuals under extreme experience of alienation – a condition that kickback-oriented and electoral victory-driven Philippine politicians are experts in inducing.  

Stimulating economic growth in and through the future Bangsamoro community that has long suffered from dire economic conditions is a step forward. But even roads, markets, computers with internet, and available services are not fool-proof inhibitors of radicalization. The ISIL rebellion which gathered jihadists not just from the Middle East but also from advanced European countries has exposed the global emergence of a militant Salafi-Wahabi political imaginary capable of linking and mobilizing radicalized and even empowered individuals to a collective cause. What they have in common, however, with their poorer fellow jihadists in Syria, is the shared sentiment of alienation. 

This should finally demolish the debate between those who claim that the Bangsamoro is a national issue and those who insist that it is more appropriately a Mindanao issue: it is now more than ever, a global issue.

It will do well for policymakers in the process of crafting the Bangsamoro Basic Law and those who will implement it to think within this global coordinates. – Rappler.com

RR Raneses is an Instructor at the Department of Political Science, Ateneo de Manila University. On academic leave this semester, he is presently a Senior Research Analyst for an Asia-wide business intelligence and risk reduction company. He blogs at http://rrraneses.wordpress.com