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Terrorism in the Southern Philippines: Contextualising the Abu Sayyaf Group as an Islamist Secessionist Organisation*
Charles Donnelly Formerly School of Government, University of Tasmania The Abu Sayyaf1 Group (ASG) is the most recent and vociferous Islamist secessionist organisation in violent confrontation with the Philippine government. Since their formation in the early 1990s, the ASG has perpetrated a series of brutal acts in Western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago and were the first Philippine group designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State.2 The purported aim of the ASG is to establish an independent Islamic homeland in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago based on the shariah3 or Islamic law. The method adopted by the ASG to achieve secession is jihad4 (struggle in defence of Islam), which is realised mainly through kidnapping for ransom, indiscriminate bombing, extortion, murder and piracy. These activities earn the group money and raise their notoriety.

This paper was presented to the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Canberra 29 June-2 July 2004. It has been peer-reviewed and appears on the Conference Proceedings website by permission of the author(s) who retain(s) copyright. The paper may be downloaded for fair use under the Copyright Act (1954), its later amendments and other relevant legislation.

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The predominantly Catholic Philippines has a five per cent Muslim minority, mostly concentrated in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Over the past three decades, three main Muslim groups have engaged in insurgency and rebellion against the central government. The first major group to be established was the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the early 1970s. The second group to form was the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 1984. The third and smallest is the two hundred and fifty to five hundred strong Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). This group is closer to the MILF than the secularly orientated MNLF. The leaders of the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front profess the establishment of an independent Islamic state in Mindanao and Sulu based on the shariah. Unlike the MILF, the ASG lack a comprehensive strategy to attain their objective. Considered more as a criminal bandit organisation than as a legitimate secessionist entity by the Philippine government they are an extramural reality that has always been dealt with militarilyalbeit ineffectuallyby the Armed Forces of the Philippines. A Context of Confrontation and Inequity In explaining why minorities rebel, Ted Robert Gurr maintains that peoples discontent about unjust or relative deprivation is one of the primary motivations for political action.5 Lake and Rothchild go one step further in suggesting that competition for scarce resources typically lies at the heart of ethnic conflict.6 In conceiving the root causes of Muslim disaffection in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, it is useful to understand the historical context of confrontation and inequity. Widespread sectarian conflict erupted in the southern Philippine Island of Mindanao in the 1970s. The conflict flared between a militant Muslim intellectual elite and the Marcos dictatorship. The separatist intellectuals who formed the Moro National Liberation Front in the early 1970s incorporated the once pejorative Moro tag for their struggle. Moro or Moor was the name applied to all Muslim populations of Southeast Asia by the sixteenth century Spanish conquerors of the northern Philippines, with scant regard for ethno linguistic or cultural difference.7

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From 1972 until 1975, an almost full-blown civil war ensued between MNLF and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The devastation was immense. According to government estimates approximately 120,000 casualties were recorded. With the signing of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement,8 the MNLF abandoned their separatist aspirations in favour of autonomy within the state. This development is pivotal as it caused a rift between pro-Islamic and pro-national forces within the MNLF. Pro-Islamic forces led by Hashim Salamat broke away to create the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 1984. MILF territorial strongholds are located within the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur. The MILF now fields an army numbering somewhere between twelve thousand to fifteen thousand combatants and has known links to al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyya. In the early 1990s Abdurajak Janjalani followed the MILFs example and broke away from the MNLF to create his Abu Sayyaf Group. From the provinces of Basilan and Jolo, Janjalani was able to exploit widespread disenchantment with the MNLFs secularist tendencies and acceptance of the governments autonomy formula as his primary recruitment themes. The groups vision for full independence initially found support in the disaffected male population born in the martial law era, the so-called martial babies.9 Like the Moro National Liberation Front before them, the ASGs insurgency is rooted in the inequity and economic imbalance of Western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. There are legitimate grievances for the 5 million strong Muslim communities in the predominantly Catholic Philippines. 1998 United Nations human development indicators rank Basilan and Jolothe territorial domains of the ASGrespectively seventy third and seventy sixth, out of the Philippines seventy seven provinces.10 In Basilan for instance, a staggering 400,000 firearms circulate the island. This is all the more alarming considering the population is yet to reach 300,000. The uneven distribution of land between the native Muslim inhabitants and Christian settler populations is but another catalyst for a reactionary confrontation imbedded in religion. On the island of Basilan for instance: Muslims constitute seventy one percent of the population;

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Christians own seventy five percent of the land and the ethnic Chinese control seventy five percent of local trade.11 Entrepreneurial Bandits of Violence Piracy and banditry are historically renowned practices within the Sulu Archipelago. In his study entitled Bandits, Hobsbawn cites rapid disintegration of state power as a common historical thread for the rise of endemic, and sometimes epidemic, banditry.12 As a contemporary manifestation of this trend the Abu Sayyaf Group function as both a predatory (or criminal) bandit group and a social bandit group. Effectiveness as a predatory bandit groupespecially through kidnap for ransom activities procures the ASG with all the requisite capital that is necessary to perform their role within sympathetic and depressed Muslim communities harbouring an aversion to government. Consequently, the group secures good will, safe houses and informants from which they can harbour weaponry and guerilla members. This helps the ASG evade military operations. Congressman Amin, reiterates what is obvious to insiders and unseen by outsiders: Muslim people in Jolo have developed a hatred of government and its easy money. This is the point that in Jolo, a man like Robot [former ASG commander] is something like Robin Hood.13 With the shooting of leader Abdurajak Janjalani by police in 1998, the Abu Sayyaf split into two or three roving units and fell further into decline. A protracted kidnap for ransom campaign involving both Filipino and foreign nationals has attracted the group international media coverage, which it uses as an outlet to legitimate its aims. MILF-ASG Relations: Comparative Aims and Strategic Detachment Despite similar aims and comparable origins, the Abu Sayyaf Group and Moro Islamic Liberation Front are unaligned organisations characterised by different approaches to jihad. Unlike the ASG the larger MILF strategically plans for the creation of a sovereign Islamic homeland. Since 1995, the MILF has consistently denounced the ASGs policies, strategies and methods as unIslamic and maintain to have no formal or informal contact with the ASG.14

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The seriousness of the MILFs separatist agenda is clearly evident from the fact that they have already implemented their first twenty-year phase entitled Jihad in the Way to Allah, 15 and are now into their second, fifty year phase. The programme covers Islamization; strengthening of the MILF organisation; military build-up and self-reliance. The international news media attention that is generated from the ASGs criminal activities has cast a wide enough shadow for the much larger MILF to operate in from the early 1990s. Contrary to popular belief, it is the MILFnot the ASGdriving political Islam in Mindanao. The Regional and International Character of the ASG A narrative involving the 1994 bombing of a Philippine Air Lines plane together with an aborted assassination attempt on the Pope links the Abu Sayyaf Group to al Qaida. Behind these attacks was international terrorist linchpin, Ramzi Yousef, operational leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In planning these attacks Yousef was accompanied by Abdul Murad and onetime bin-Laden companion, Wali Khan Amin Shah. Although the ASG were not directly involved in these attacks they are guilty by association for two reasons. Firstly, there existed allegations that Yousef imparted his bomb-making expertise to the group. Secondly, bin Ladens brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, is reported to have provided direct financial aid to the ASG whilst living in the Philippines in the early 1990s. The ASG have performed peripheral and supporting roles for members of al Qaida. Links to al Qaida have offered Abu Sayyaf encouragement and some financial backing. The international news media overplayed this connection in the aftermath of September 11. Evidential state weakness marked by penetrable borders, widespread corruption, non-computerised immigration and tax data bases, poor regulation of the banking and financial sectors has provided loopholes for members of both al Qaida and Jeemah Islamiyya to exploit the Philippines. US Forces in Mindanao The Abu Sayyaf Groups links with the al-Qaida network, its kidnapping of an American missionary couple from the island of Dos Palmos in 2001 and classification as an Foreign Terrorist Organization by Washington aligned the group as the second target in the US-led war

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on terrorism.16 When the air strikes of September 11 penetrated US sovereignty, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo phoned President George W. Bush on that day declaring that the Philippines stands behind him and is ready to do what needs to be done. 17 As such pundits were not surprised when the American-led war on terrorism widened the net to include the quasi alQaida connected ASG, after combating the Taliban regime of Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002. Six hundred and fifty American soldiers, including one hundred and sixty Special Forces units were deployed on the island of Basilan during February 2002 for the Balikatan 02-1 joint military exercises. The exercises were designed to improve the Armed Forces of the Philippines ability to impair the ASG. Constitutional restrictions on the Philippine government prohibited US Forces from engaging in open warfare with the group and thus hindered their effectiveness. Arguably the greatest outcome of the Balikatan 02-1 exercises has been the enduring diplomatic and military courtship between Malacaang and Washington. The Bush administration has granted the Arroyo administration with $100 million in security assistance; $20 million to modernise the Philippine armed forces; $10 million in Defense Department goods and services; $1 billion in trade benefits; up to $430 million in debt relief; guarantees for up to $150 million in agricultural exports; $40 million in food aid; and $29 million in poverty alleviation18 The Impact of Islamic Resurgence in Mindanao Islamic resurgence in Mindanao in the postwar era is attributable to two dissimilar educational initiatives. As part of the first initiative, nearly eight thousand scholarships were granted to Muslims to study in Manila. Set up by the Commission for National Integration, the programme ran from 1958 to 1967. Only 1,391 students gained professional degrees. The Moro National Liberation Fronts founder, Nur Misuari, entered the University system under this initiative. The second initiative involved the granting of more than two hundred scholarships to Philippine Muslims to study in Egypt. Part of the pan-Islamic vision of Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser this programme ran from 1955 to 1978. Hashim Salamat, the leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was a recipient of this initiative.19 The ASGs ideologue and founder, Abdurajak Janjalani, studied Islamic jurisprudence in Saudi Arabia and theology in Libya. Janjalanis secondary school headmaster, Father Angelo Calvo

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from Claret College in Basilan, believes that foreign Islamic schooling produced a new generation of leaders whose ideology and cultural attitudes come from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. 20 All these countries were heavily influenced by the wave of Islamic resurgence spreading from the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Battleground experience of some three hundred to five hundred Muslim Filipinos as mujahideen (soldiers of the jihad) in the 1979-89 Afghan-Soviet War heavily influenced the direction of Filipino Islamist secessionist organisations in the post Cold War era. It is reported that Abu Sayyaf was Janjalanis Afghan fighting name. 21 In adopting the name of Abu Sayyaf, Janjalani was paying tribute to Abdul Rasool Sayyafthe Afghan mujahideen leader under whom he fought in the Afghan-Soviet War. Americas most wanted public enemy Usama bin Ladenalso knew Abdul Rasool Sayyaf; albeit on a much closer level than Janjalani.22 Whilst the nature of the relationship between Janjalani and bin Laden is unclear, it is important to realise the extent to which a jihadist milieu was forged within the International Islamic Brigade in this theatre of war. Conclusion As the most recent Islamist secessionist organisation in violent confrontation with the Philippine government, the two hundred and fifty to five hundred strong Abu Sayyaf Group wages a jihad for the creation of an independent Islamic state in Mindanao based on the shariah. On this basis, they are more like the twelve thousand to fifteen thousand strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front than the secularly orientated Moro National Liberation Front. When the violent and criminal means of the ASG are compared with the comprehensive strategies of the MILF, their justifications emerge more as convenient rationalisations for lucrative ends rather than genuine measures for self-determination. The ASGs liberal interpretation of jihad has consistently attracted condemnation from both revolutionary fronts. The Philippine government regards the Abu Sayyaf Group as a rebel group with no real sense of ideology. As a bandit and criminal group the ASG remain outside the Philippine governments locus of negotiations and are dealt with militarily. Despite facing overwhelming military odds, the group displays an uncanny knack to evade capture, regroup and restrike. It is therefore improbable that a military solution will produce a long-term solution to an entrenched problem.

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Endnotes
1

Translated from the Arabic, the name Abu Sayyaf literally means, Father of the Sword. Foreign Terrorist Organizations is a report compiled every two years by the Office of the Coordinator

for Counterterrorism. U.S. Department of State, 2001 Report on Foreign Terrorist Organizations, (Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism: October 5, 2001), <http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fto/2001/5258.htm> (8 May 2002).
3

Islamic law, literally the Way or Path of Islam as prescribed by the Quran . The term jihad, which is generally defined as a holy war, literally means exertion. There are four

methods in which a Muslim can fulfill his jihad duty: by his heart; his tongue; his hand; and by the sword. It is the fourth method that inspires armed confrontation or war. W. K. Che Man, Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 16 - see footnote 7. The fourth method is representative of the jihad being waged by the ASG and the MILF.
5

Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts, Washington, D.C.:

United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993, 123.

6

David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, Ethnic Fears and Global Engagement: The International Spread

and Management of Ethnic Conflict, Policy Paper 20, California: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGGC), January 1996, 9.
7

Thomas M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the

Southern Philippines, (California: University of California Press, 1998), 80-1.

8

The terms of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement were finally enacted with the signing of a Peace Accord with

the Philippine government in 1996. The secularly orientated Moro National Liberation Front is now politically accommodated within the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and is no longer considered a threat.
9

The Abu Sayyaf people are sons of former MNLF. These are the martial babies, children showing a kind

of frustration in the Moro revolutionary cause: If our cause will not be granted, then lets do this kind of thing. That is how they perceive it and they have been displaying this attitude by virtue of their behaviour ever since the beginning. Edgardo B. Ramirez, Director Peace and Development Center, Notre Dame

University, Cotabato City, Mindanao. Interview by author, 2 February 2002, Cotabato City, Mindanao. Mini Disc recording. Authors private collection.
10

The five provinces of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao are statistically the poorest in the

Philippines. Basilan statistically leads the provinces of Maguindanao, Tawi-Tawi, Sulu and Lanao del Sur in terms of human development indicators. Jock M. Baker (Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesUNHCRLiaison Office, Manila, Philippines), Consultancy Final Report. September-October, 2000, AppendixTable 1.
11

UNHCR Mindanao

Jose Torres Jr., Into the Mountain: Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf, (Quezon City: Claretian Publications,

2001), 169.
12

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits, (Great Britain: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), 12. The leaders of the Abu Sayyaf are rich beyond the dreams of most Filipinos. But they have no

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opportunity, and apparently little desire, to spend their money in conventional ways. They wear no jewellery. Cars, fine clothes and racehorses are of no use to them. Instead, they buy guns, boats and loyalty [the new recruits] remain in the background, a dormant reserve of support and goodwill. Richard Lloyd Parry, Treasure Island: A year ago, an unknown terrorist group in the Philippines made world headlinesand $50 million in ransomafter kidnapping 21 foreign tourists. But what can a bunch of bush rebels do with all that cash? The Australian Magazine, March 31-April 1, 2001, 25.
14

The nations: Philippines: We are open to talks: A conversation with the MILFs military chief, Asia

Week, 20 May 2000.

15

The Jihad in the Way of Allah programme sought to provide: Islamisation in all aspects in the lives of

the Bangsamoro; military build-up and self-reliance; strengthening and improvement of organisational, administrative and managerial capability. MILF Leader to Nidaul Islam (an interview with Salamat Hashim), Nidaul Islam , Issue 23, April-May 1998, <http://www.islam.org.au> (25 August 2001).
16

The first US-led military campaign as part of the war on terrorism was against the Taliban regime of

Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002.

17

Phil Zabriskie, Interview with the President: To Sacrifice and To Suffer, Time (Asia), January 28,

2002, 18.

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18

Zachary Abuza, Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror, (Boulder & London: Lynne

Rienner Publishers, 2003), 205-6.

19

Hashim Salamat died of natural causes on 13 July 2003. Hadji Murad now leads the MILF. Parry, Treasure Island, 22. Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism, (Great

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21

Britain: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1999), 136.

22

Usama bin Laden was providing financial support (at the age of twenty two) to the Afghan mujahideen

leader, prior to the Soviet invasion. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 255, 237. No evidence exists to indicate if a personal relationship existed between Abdul Rasool Sayyaf and Janjalani. It is likely that Janjalani fought under Sayyafs command.