Eradicating Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines

In August 2009, the jihadist insurgent Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) grabbed news headlines when its fighters ambushed a Philippine marine detachment on its way to reinforce a beleaguered army commando unit that was attacking the militants' training camp in Basilan, off the southern most external pagePhilippine island of Mindanaocall_made. During this clash, 150 al-Qaida- linked militants engaged the combined marine/army contingent in a 24-hour clash resulting in the deaths of two Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) officers and 21 enlisted men. In these and numerous previous armed encounters with the ASG and other insurgent groups, the Philippine military suffered its highest casualties in recent years.

Shocked by the heavy casualties inflicted by the ASG on government forces, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered that the 'war on terrorism' on the island of Basilan should rapidly be concluded and all military efforts should be focused on annihilating the threat. While this is not the first time that the Philippine government has declared its intention to stamp out the ASG, all major military efforts have resulted in heavy casualties for government forces.

The Islamic militant group's existence and its resilience in the face of eradication efforts raise some fundamental questions about the nature of this 'enemy': What is the ASG? How did it originate? What is its ideological orientation? And how do its actions impact other Muslim insurgent groups in the southern Philippines? 

ASG origins

The ASG is a jihadi group that challenges the Philippine state's authority not only over a given population (the Filipino Muslims in Mindanao) but also because it sees the central government as a usurper, an illegitimate infidel institution in control of Muslim lands. Its origins can be traced back to the Afghan war when hundreds of Filipino Muslims went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join the mujahideen. Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, of the Tausog ethnic group, from the island of Basilan was among them. A former member of the secessionist (but secular) Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Janjalani went to Pakistan in 1987 to join the anti-Soviet resistance. During his stint as a mujahideen, he met Osama bin Laden and befriended Abdur Rab Rasul Sayaaf, a religious scholar, and Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani jihadi who conducted the first bombing of the World Trade Center in the early 1990s. Through these affiliations, Janjalani came to believe in a brand of Sunni jihadism that advocated the physical and violent defense of the Muslim faith and people.

In 1989, Janjalani returned to Mindanao and sought to wage a jihad to create an Islamic state in the Philippines. Upon his return to Basilan, Janjalani and seven of his followers became disenchanted with the more moderate MNLF and formed the ASG. Janjalani persuaded a number of MNLF provincial commanders that the group and its leaders were not waging a real jihad against the Christian settlers in Mindanao. From 1990 to 1995, the ASG staged ambushes, bombings, kidnappings and executions of Filipino Christians in Basilan and western Mindanao. Because of these terrorist activities, the ASG gained notoriety and the support of criminal gangs, undermining the reach and authority of the MNLF in southern Mindanao.

By April 2000, the ASG had begun to kidnap foreigners in order to extract ransom payments. It raided a tourist resort in the Malaysian state of Sabah and kidnapped 21 foreigners on 23 April 2000. In May of the following year, the group again raided a tourist resort on the Philippine island of Palawan and kidnapped 20 people, including three Americans. In these two kidnapping cases, the group killed some hostages and released the other captives after ransom payments were paid.

In early January 2009, ASG militants kidnapped three representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Patikul, Sulu, southern Philippines. The following month, ASG operatives abducted three teachers in Zamboanga City in the main island of Mindanao and two employees of a lending company in Basilan Island. Although all the victims were subsequently released, only substantial ransoms, often paid by relatives, secured this peaceful end. This pattern of ASG behavior points to the group's gradual transformation from an Islamic militant movement to a bandit group whose primary motivation is financial gain, not ideological or religious purity.

ASG ideology

The ASG defines its ideological and operational agenda as an assertion of Islamic global dominance through armed struggle. A 30-page pamphlet captured from an ASG camp in Basilan clearly articulates the group's adherence to a transnational jihadist ideology. Pseudonymously written by Abu Ramadan, "Jihad in the Philippines" contains some of the ASG's main ideas regarding the conduct and rationale of jihad in the Philippines. The pamphlet encapsulates the ideas of the late Palestinian jihadi and Bin Laden- associate, Dr Abdullah Azzam and the lectures of the ASG founder and first leader Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed in a clash with the Philippine police in 1998. It states the need for a continuing jihad as an integral part of the Islamic faith. The author quotes liberally from the Quran to rationalize the sole purpose of a mujahideen to "wage the jihad against the infidels until they embrace Islam." By emphasizing the significance of the mujahideen in jihad, the author is clearly influenced by Azzam's notion of an al-qaeda al-suhbah or "the vanguard of the strong," who would set the example for the rest of the Islamic world, thereby galvanizing the Islamic community against the infidels. Furthermore, "Jihad in the Philippines" provides an explicit ideological justification for the group's involvement in kidnap-for-ransom, hostage-takings, extortion of peasants, businessmen and fishermen and even the cultivation of marijuana.

The pamphlet stresses that the ultimate goals of jihad should not simply be limited to liberating Mindanao from the grip of the predominantly Christian establishment in Manila, but should be directed at overthrowing the Philippine government and converting the entire Filipino nation to Islam. This advocacy of the Islamization of the entire country separates the ASG from the two other Muslim secessionist movements: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and its secular predecessor- the MNLF. While the MNLF calls for the creation of a secular Moro state (bangsa) in Mindanao, the MILF espouses Islam as the basis of its struggle against the Philippine state, seeking the establishment of an Islamic state without questioning the foundation of the Philippine state as a whole.

The author also asserts that jihad in the Philippines should have a transnational dimension. Such a struggle must never be confined to a simple secessionist goal but must be tasked with spreading the faith throughout the world and annihilating man-made laws and governments. The ASG shares this revolutionary belief in creating a transnational Islamic world order with other transnational jihadists, including al-Qaida. Although the ASG is apparently motivated by mercenary instincts and not by a religious agenda as such, "Jihad in the Philippines" articulates a peculiar agenda that attempts to place the group firmly in the fold of a global jihadist network with al-Qaida as its symbolic core. However, the band's recent decent to almost pure banditry indicates a lack of cohesion and direction within the group. Although the group continues to legitimize its criminal acts by religious rhetoric, it is evident that any shred of religious or ideological authenticity has been abandoned for hard, material gains.

Confronting the ASG challenge

The Philippine army has explicitly declared its aim to crush the ASG. Sustained AFP operations have reduced the number of militants from an estimated 1,200 in 2001 to approximately 400 in 2006. Moreover, sustained combat operations against the group have resulted in the reduction of its operational and support base in the Mindanao and Sulu islands in the south of the country. However, the ASG's religiously couched appeals, flexibility and mobility and capability to raise money through kidnapping activities have replenished its ranks and allowed the group to stay active.

The AFP's campaign against the ASG is an incremental and gradual process of attrition that needs significant investments of time, attention and human and material resources. However, aside from sustained combat operations efforts to eradicate the ASG and other insurgent groups in the region should also involve convincing the ASG's leadership that its political goals are unachievable or too costly for the expected benefits. This entails the application of unremitting military and political pressure on these militants; pressure that will force them to disband or capitulate.

The most intense political pressure than can be applied against the ASG is not the use of force, but the government's ability to redress the underlying politico-economic causes of discontent that fan the flames of Islamic militancy. The Philippine state must address popularly held grievances that feed the Islamic insurgency in the south: economic underdevelopment, bad governance and lack of personal security. Mindanao's storied history of political fiefdom, banditry and blood feuds are just some of the biggest problems facing the region's inhabitants. An effective counterinsurgency strategy means eliminating not just the militants themselves, but the conditions that allow the ASG and other groups like it to thrive in the impoverished and ungoverned areas of Muslim Mindanao.