INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.TV

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Australia’s sworn enemy in the region, JI, is one of the most aggressive and entrenched terrorist organisations in the world, with the U.S. State Department estimating that its membership numbers in the thousands. Like all paramilitary groups, JI depends on experienced cadres to discipline and train recruits. Many of JI’s veterans cut their teeth in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s and later joined armed conflicts in Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1990s. These cadres have much to teach potential terrorists about how to protect themselves against intelligence and military operations, and offer expertise in the delicate arts of bomb manufacturing and detonation.

JI is like an Islamic Ku Klux Klan on speed. They are violent bigots who hate race-mixing and multi- culturalism, even if they will exploit
the West’s pluralism to further their aims, and who are fighting to bring large portions of South-East Asia under the sway of their own intolerant brand of Islam – a brand similar to that of their former benefactors, the Taliban.

And while much is made of poverty and lack of educational opportunities as ‘root causes’ of terrorism, many of JI’s luminaries lack these excuses. One of the senior Bali-bombers, Dr Azahari Husin, is a scientific author who studied engineering in the UK and lectured at university in Malaysia, yet still managed to fit in explosives training in Afghanistan and the Philippines.

Experts like Dr Azahari and his accomplice, Dul Matin – believed to have built the larger of Bali’s two bombs – have a habit of becoming known, so to avoid arrest they spend much of their time beyond the reach of the law. Since the mid-1990s, JI’s best and brightest have chosen to kick back in the picturesque mountains, swamps and jungles of the southern Philippines, within large regions controlled by Muslim rebels. There, JI has joined forces with elements of South-East Asia’s toughest guerrilla army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (or MILF), and its most extreme, the head-lopping, bomb-planting, anti-Christian marauders of the Abu Sayyaf Group.

As Investigate revealed last March, members of the Australian Federal Police are in the Philippines, helping local authorities with counter-terrorism measures. The United States is more heavily involved, running the controversial ‘intel-fusion’ program which sees American military operatives stationed in terrorist hot zones to provide local armed forces with target information gathered via high-tech means such as state-of-the-art communication intercepts. This has caused a backlash from the shrill anti-American lobby in the Philippines, who paint the U.S. as greedy puppet- masters every chance they get. However, there are also concerns within the military about the intelligence’s accuracy. A general spearheading the war in central Mindanao’s terrorist heartland told me that the information is better for ‘storytelling’ than for war, because it is often out of date. He said that relying on the U.S. advice has led to botched raids, needless deaths, and could undermine the chances for peace in Mindanao.

But, in the ever-shifting alliances and deals in the war on terrorism, it turns out that the military is also getting help from the dominant faction of JI’s Philippine patrons, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The MILF is increasingly split between those who are open to a peace deal that will deliver land rights for their tribes, and the extremist commanders who will not abandon what they see as a religious war, and who embrace JI, the Abu Sayyaf, and al-Qa’ida.

This means that in some areas the military is getting tip-offs from the MILF which enable them to launch strikes on terrorist suspects inside rebel-held areas. A pro-peace MILF spokesman even told me that his organisation gave the police the information they needed in 2003 to trap and kill one of JI’s most formidable bombers, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi. This is a remarkable betrayal, given that al-Ghozi, an esteemed Afghan veteran, had been very close to the MILF, establishing the JI training camp within their territory in the mountains of Mindanao and conducting joint JI-MILF terrorist attacks.

Yet in other areas the military seems to get nothing from the MILF and sits in idle observance of the current ceasefire, even with strong suspicions about terrorist recruitment and training taking place a stone’s throw from the frontline troops.

The Mountains
At a machine gun nest on a high ridge in the malarial mountains, the world divides between the known and the unknown.
Behind lies a beautiful and fertile valley, its lowlands lined by forested peaks as it widens toward the warm waters of the Moro Gulf. Ruins from the valley’s previous inhabitants dot the climb to this outpost. Back down to the left I can see the bombed-out remains of a large reinforced concrete building we hiked through. My hiking companions pointed out the proliferation of doors – most rooms had multiple entries and exits – and as fighting men, they saw meaning in this. The soldiers also showed me tunnels leading back into the mountain. They showed me cramped chambers with barred ventilation holes high on the walls and hooks hanging from the ceiling. Torture, they said. This is what they do to their own. This side of the ridge hosted the Bali bombers of JI when they practised the art of terrorist bombings, and it has since been picked over by the government forces that captured it four years ago.

Now all attention is directed north of the ridge into lands still controlled by thousands of Islamic rebels.

We crouch behind sandbags and gaze ahead into the vast volcanic wilderness of the Mount Kararao region, watching mists and low cloud drift across the jungle.

The reconnaissance company’s young commander, Lieutenant Jeriko Roman P. Sasing, tells me that worrying sounds often echo from the mountains. ‘We hear them playing with their bombs; their terror explosions’, says Sasing, whose few dozen men are charged with guarding this rugged frontier.

Sasing’s men are perched on the border of lands under the control of the MILF.

The Government has been unable to defeat the MILF despite three decades of fighting, so it has offered the rebels a ceasefire while the two sides discuss how much sovereignty the Republic of the Philippines is willing to cede.

The MILF fields about 12,000 full-time, uniformed fighters armed with automatic rifles, heavy machine- guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns and intimate knowledge of Mindanao’s rugged terrain. It can also call on tens of thousands of irregulars from the region’s farming men. More than a half-million people turned up to a MILF forum in May.

Full-scale fighting with the military breaks out every couple of years, but more often than not the ceasefire (signed in 1997) maintains the conflict as an armed stand-off punctuated by skirmishes which kill a mere dozen or so. About 120,000 people have been killed since the modern Muslim rebellions kicked off in the early 1970s. Having the ceasefire-protected time and space to be ‘playing with their bombs’ has been terrific for the MILF’s civilian-targeting units and their Indonesian friends from JI, who moved their training from Afghanistan to rebel territory in Mindanao in the mid-1990s.
The leaders of another al-Qa’ida affiliate, the Abu Sayyaf Group, hide in MILF areas and have merged their terror operations with JI.

Together, Mindanao’s bomb crews have killed hundreds and wounded thousands in Indonesia and the Philippines over the past few years. Including, of course, the 88 Australians at Bali three Octobers ago.
Disturbingly, reports have lately emerged from captured terrorists that the jihadist groups have been training together to strike shipping in the Asia-Pacific region, a threat that should be taken seriously after the Abu Sayyaf’s sinking last year of a passenger ship leaving Manila Bay. The bombing of the Superferry 14 killed an estimated 130 people and stands as the deadliest-ever maritime terrorist attack.

Yet as accomplished as they are, Sasing, who walks everywhere with an M16 slung over his back and whose eyes never stop moving, doesn’t much care for his neighbours. Not only are they noisy, they’re also pushy.
‘We had to withdraw from there’, he says, pointing about 100 metres up the ridge to a thickly-forested summit sporting an abandoned system of trenches and lookouts. ‘It was too dangerous. The enemy was harassing us’, says Sasing, using the military euphemism for being shot at. The MILF know these outposts well; they built them – the trenches, the sleeping huts.

‘Could they be sitting there watching us?’ I ask.

‘Yes, possibly.’

‘Do you patrol forward of here to see what they’re doing?’

‘No, that would be a breach of the ceasefire. Also, they have laid landmines and it is too dangerous’, Sasing says.

Ropes run along the perimeter of the outpost, and at likely jump-in points the soldiers have strung bottles of rum, each empty except for a bullet suspended inside to rattle if the ropes are bumped.

‘Sometimes deer sound them. The men up here hunt deer when they can, because all food and water has to be carried in and it can be very basic. But the enemy know this, and once when a soldier heard a deer call and went forward to hunt it, it was the enemy making the call’, says Sasing, cupping his hand over his mouth and simulating the animal sound. ‘They captured the soldier and cut off both his heads, above and below, then put them together and dumped him in a sack. No one here wants to be taken alive’, he says.

Sasing’s enlisted men receive about A$8.20 per day for their work. If the situation erupts, such as it might if they weren’t ordered to withdraw when harassed, then their combat bonus would be another 20 Australian cents per day. Their equipment is antiquated – this outpost’s main weapon is a World War II machinegun – and many soldiers are sick.

‘I have about 12 men in hospital with malaria’,
laments Sasing, as the rains come in. They used to receive anti-malarial pills, but ‘now there are shortages, so we rely on mosquito repellent’, he says.

I ask how frustrating it is for he and his men, all aged in their twenties, to camp for months and months on the edge of enemy territory, within which terrorists freely practise their trade, watching each other succumb to malaria.

‘We can only do what we are ordered to. The military is just a tool of politics. You know, on clear nights we see spotlights from [the MILF’s] Camp Sultan’, says Sasing, pointing across the jungle to a mountain obscured by clouds.

The enemy are close. The first contingent of guerrillas is one kilometre away – ‘just there’, says Sasing, jabbing a finger down the hill - and another six bases have been identified in the region. The most notorious of their bases is Jabal Quba, where JI moved much of its training after the valley behind us, formerly known as Camp Abu Bakar, fell to the Government in 2001. About 100 soldiers died on the road into Abu Bakar, yet now Government troops are restrained by the ceasefire, reduced to watching as fresh MILF forces move into the area each month and others leave in a rebel troop rotation.

Sasing leads me back down the ridge, slipping and sliding on trails now turned to mud. ‘It rains every day,’ he says, picking up his thongs and walking barefoot.

Once again we pass the ruined complex of the late founder of the MILF, Salamat Hashim, where an Islamic crescent moon rises from the broken roof. Soldiers have graffitoed the building with lists of battles and military campaigns; one artist’s work depicts a particularly acrobatic sexual feat.

Sasing is careful about what he says, but other senior military sources report their bitter frustration with the peace process. One senior army officer tells me that the ceasefire even prevents the military from building fences around MILF areas in the hope of hindering guerrilla troop movements and arms shipments, and that they likewise cannot conduct reconnaissance flights over the Mount Kararao region to see what JI, the Abu Sayyaf and their MILF hosts are up to.
These restraints remain despite a backdrop of continuing terrorist attacks. Bombers have hit the CBD of Manila and locations in two other major cities, Davao and General Santos City, as recently as Valentine’s Day, killing about a dozen and injuring almost 150.

The triple bombing followed the military’s airstrike on suspected JI and ASG leaders in Mindanao’s vast marshlands.

Romero is intimately familiar with Abu Bakar, and he tells me over fried fish and fruits that the threat grows worse the longer the ceasefire continues. The MILF is recruiting and rearming under cover of the peace talks, and weapons shipments have been reported landing on the coast, most likely from Malaysia. He tells me that there may well be a peace deal struck sometime in the next year, but it will let the MILF keep its weapons and leave large areas under its de facto control, just like the 1996 agreement signed with another Muslim guerrilla army – the Moro National Liberation Front – elements of which continue to attack Government forces.

All of which is ideal for the terrorists and kidnappers working out of MILF areas, he says.

‘There are JI about four or five kilometres from [Government occupied] Abu Bakar. The boundaries are imaginary, but if we cross, we will be charged with violating the ceasefire … and we will be fired at’, Romero says.

The guerrillas and the terrorists learn much from each other, with JI agents absorbing the skills of insurgency on Mindanao’s frontlines. In turn, members of the MILF’s special operations group ‘are taught by JIs to make IEDs [improvised explosive devices]’, he says.

While the troops sweat it out with malaria, World War II-era guns and 20 cent-per-day combat bonuses, the enemy is cashed up. Romero says that the MILF pocket percentages of ransoms from Mindanao’s thriving kidnapping trade; that they and their terrorist allies receive money from international Islamic charities; that they seize ‘revolutionary taxes’ from farming communities; that they have their fingers in the zakat, or Islamic donations given at mosques; that they run illegal logging operations. The overtly terrorist groups, the Indonesian JI and the Filipino Abu Sayyaf, also receive large payments from foreign backers, all of which makes it easy for the jihadists to pay locals to shut up when the military comes around asking questions.

And without local sources of intelligence, the military has very little to go on indeed. ‘We are facing a face- less JI – they look the same [as Filipinos]; they have learned our dialects – so unless someone tells us, we don’t know what they are doing,’ Romero says. The Government has more than 50,000 troops in Mindanao, yet even so, ‘we have sacrificed some areas’, says Romero, telling me a story later corroborated by Australian and US sources.

He takes my map and points out substantial stret- ches of the Mindanao coast and hinterland where the military has only a token presence. ‘It’s practically a free-zone for them [JI and the Abu Sayyaf], but if we move troops from Abu Bakar, then they will take it over again’, Romero says.

The US is providing satellite imagery, communication intercepts and other ‘technical intelligence’, but as long as local civilians who could potentially supply up to date ‘human intelligence’ are more likely to encounter terrorists and rebels than Government forces, the free-zones will remain, Romero says.
‘They are getting stronger.’

The Swamps
‘If the rain continues water will cover all of this,’ says Lieutenant Rhoel C. Tremedal of the Philippine light infantry, gesturing across the lush fields we glimpse between fruit trees. The scattering of homes our patrol passes are built on stilts, and their occupants watch blankly as we walk along the riverbank.

Tremedal and his men are stationed on the edge of Mindanao’s vast marshlands, their base a checkpoint on one of the tributaries of the Rio Grande. They have a sandbagged machinegun nest from which to order passing boats to pull in for inspection, but no one is stationed on the other side of the river, nor do any soldiers take to the water for river patrols.

‘We would be too vulnerable to ambush’, says Tremedal, one of the Philippines’ many bright young men who is spending his twenties clutching a gun, sleeping rough, and surrounded by farmers who commonly stash automatic rifles wrapped in greased-rags near their houses and whose sympathies often lie with the Islamic rebellion.
The rains make everything more dangerous in the marshlands, Tremedal says. When the water level rises from rain either in the marshes or in the surrounding mountains, boats can move swiftly in almost any direction, giving the enemy extraordinary mobility. By contrast, Tremedal’s troops will be struggling to secure what they can while their bunkers fill with water.

‘We will make necessary precautions – we will protect any Government facilities in the area’, he says. With roads becoming impassable and the waterways too dangerous because of the known presence in the marshlands of the MILF, JI, the Abu Sayyaf and bandits, ‘we will just move by foot’, says Tremedal, whose handful of men operate in a municipality with a population of about 80,000.

The entire marshlands cover about 500,000 square kilometres and contain about 500,000 people, almost all of them Muslims, who have never been conquered – not during more than 300 years of Spanish colonisation, not in the half-century of U.S. rule, not during the days of the Japanese invasion, and not by their own Government in the post-WWII years of Philippine independence.

Tremedal calls the patrol to a halt when the banana and palm trees thin out and we find ourselves entering a large open plain bordered a few kilometres away by thick forest and steep hills. The infantrymen fan out and study the horizon. ‘We should not go any further’, Tremedal says.

While small-group terrorist training and operations continue in the mountains and elsewhere, central Mindanao’s huge swamp is known as the main hideout for JI and the Abu Sayyaf’s top commanders. The coastal ‘free-zone’ on its western flank allows for easy entry and exit; the terrain is excellent for hiding in and is an attacker’s nightmare.
Back in the 6th Infantry Division’s operational base for the region, outside Cotabato City, the general who plans raids and airstrikes on marshland stilt houses suspected to be occupied by terrorists, Brigadier General Horacio T. Lactao, talks me through his difficulties.

‘The ground appears from the air as if it’s a hard surface, but it’s just water lilies. If you step on it, you go under. Even the bombs are not so good – the bombs sink because it’s this high with liquid mud’, says Lactao, holding his hand at his waist. ‘And the water is above a person’s head, so even if a bomb hits 10 metres away it will not damage the structure. The rivers are their mode of movement, and a lot of routes are unknown to us.’

Lactao is one of the Philippine military’s hardened journeymen – one of those officers who have not gone bureaucratic despite decades of active service; who are instead still sweating it out in the shacks and trucks of the hot zone. Lactao asks if I mind if he has a cigarette, then leans in with smoke curling from his mouth while an enlisted man paints small pieces of wood to add to a three-dimensional map of the marshlands. The general ashes, drifts his hand across the diorama, and tells me, ‘this area has been in constant armed conflict since early times. This part of the [Philippine] islands has never been subjugated because of its social structure. It was governed by Muslim warrior kings [called] Datus.’

‘The Spanish, when they conquered one Datu kingdom, they would be surprised that another would rise up. Each of these had their own domain. There’s a natural defence system here. Now that Datuism’s not being practised anymore, there emerged another group – the MNLF, and then the MILF. Then the Abu Sayyaf. Whoever has provided the guns is the one who commands’, Lactao says.

The Government will always be at a disadvantage to militant Islamic groups in central Mindanao, an intensely religious region, Lactao says.

‘Our laws are not consistent with the Koran – which one will they follow? Not ours. The Koran provides them with their standard. When you interview the Abu Sayyaf, they say the Constitution is just provided by man’, he says.

Terrorists such as those who blew the Australians to hell at Bali fit straight into this system, using their explosives expertise, money and reverence for Allah to win over the large number of Islamic clerics commanding MILF units in the marshlands. Jemmah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf have fused operations in the marshlands and move together, Lactao says.

‘The terrorists contact the MILF’s Ustadz [military commanders who are also clerics], then move to them for protection. The MILF units of the fundamentalist leaders then form the outer ring of security around the terrorists, and because of the ceasefire we must avoid [military] contact with the MILF.’

The military has been cultivating informants in the marshlands, and Lactao says that a picture has emerged of how some of the most wanted men in the world move around. There is a group of about 37 JI explosives and logistics experts who have attached themselves to Khaddafy Janjalani, the Abu Sayyaf leader who has earned the blessing of al-Qa’ida through his ruthlessness, and enjoys a cult of personality throughout the world of jihad. Janjalani and his JI team, sometimes including Bali bomber Dul Matin, are surrounded by an inner security team of up to one hundred Abu Sayyaf fighters from the southwestern islands of Basilan and Sulu. Then that group will be surrounded by another ring of gunmen supplied by MILF commanders religiously disposed towards international jihad.

Janjalani, who has a US$5 million bounty on his head for his multitudinous outrages, always keeps his face covered, sometimes dresses as a fully-covered Muslim woman, and wears a bomb vest so that he can blow himself to atoms if cornered, Lactao tells me. ‘Then we will not have his body and someone else can become Janjalani, because that is the name that brings in large finances from foreign sources. For every bombing that [the Abu Sayyaf] conduct, they will receive US$200,000. In this way they made large amounts of money from the Superferry bombing and the Valentine’s Day bombings.’

Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf have targeted U.S. citizens and interests, and in an attempt to eradicate these groups, the U.S. has stationed military intelligence personnel throughout Mindanao in what is known as ‘intelfusion’. The Americans are not universally welcome, especially with the mayor of Cotabato City, a former MNLF guerrilla named Muslimin Sema. Sema refuses to acknowledge his region has a terrorism problem, despite multiple arrests, exposed JI safe houses, testimonies from detained militants in the Philippines and Indonesia, and the still-unsolved 2003 car-bombing of the airport.

The U.S. has plans to fund highway construction near Cotabato City, but the project is suspended due to a perceived lack of action on terrorism. Sema is pissed off about this and has plastered the city with signs and banners calling American diplomats ‘agents of Satan’, proclaiming that ‘Arabs are charitable’, and denouncing the U.S. as ‘the world’s number one terrorist’. Sema knows that the US is providing counter-terrorism intelligence assistance, so signs around town also read: ‘Reject the terroristic policies of the U.S. in Mindanao’, and ‘U.S. presence here in Cotabato get out’.

All of which make working in and around this gunned-up frontier town an uneasy experience for a Western journalist. The first assumption of everyone I speak to is that I am American military, and it is hard not to be a little edgy when walking the streets or driving through the city outskirts, the roads hazy from countless barrels of burning coconut husks. Paranoia comes easily when I am told by one of the least drama-prone, most understated intelligence sources I know to ‘stay in your room at night’, and ‘do not overdo your luck.’ Pour another San Miguel and pass the ammunition.

Lactao smiles when I ask about the value of the high-tech intelligence he receives on terrorist positions and movements from the Americans based in central Mindanao. ‘It is only good if it comes in time. If it comes late, it is just good for storytelling. Sometimes they will be sending it way after the people have left. The Americans are learning much from us – some of them don’t have any experience’, he says, tapping out another cigarette to smoke.

The general stares at me. ‘Let me tell you about some recent operations targeting Janjalani and JI, who we know are in constant contact. On January 27 we conducted airstrikes against seven targets [houses] stretching over a kilometre along the river. We believe some were wounded, but not the main personalities. Now they learn their lessons, and the leaders will be sleeping outside in a hammock or sleeping bag or a banca [small boat] 50 to 100 metres away from the structure. They let their men sleep in the house.’

The terrorists struck back a fortnight later with the Valentine’s Day bombings – blasts in Manila and two of Mindanao’s cities, Davao and General Santos City. Twelve dead and almost 150 wounded. Several other devices were discovered before they could be detonated.

Lactao then tells me that as Janjalani and the JIs kept moving through the marsh in April, the military correctly anticipated that the MILF commander who had been protecting the terrorists would sign them over to another guerrilla commander well known as a fundamentalist Islamic cleric. The vow of protection is binding, and ‘if anything happens there will be an investigation within the MILF and within the al-Qa’ida organisation’, Lactao says.

Yet the military also faces heavy political fallout when it launches a strike or raid and hits the MILF instead of JI or the Abu Sayyaf. ‘It could disturb the peace process. We have to be dead sure that we are striking the right place at the right time. If they are in this house, we can only hit this house. The people in the marsh area are very religious; they look at the ASG [Abu Sayyaf Group] as international mujahadeen. If we hit the wrong house and kill innocent civilians, then it helps the enemy’, Lactao says.

The MILF is comprised of semi-autonomous units, with each commander operating like the Datu warlords that gave the Spanish such grief centuries ago. More secular elements currently have the most sway politically, and are using all their power to convince the organisation’s independent-minded commanders to stick to the peace negotiations with the Government. Getting into shootouts with the mainstream of the MILF could set off full-scale war again, of the sort last seen in 2003. ‘We must be 100 per cent sure of our information. It should be very precise because we are constrained by the peace agreements’, Lactao says.

It was in this climate that word came in April that the terrorists were staying on a particular hill inside the marshlands. About 120 special forces in plain clothes were dispatched from Davao in nondescript vehicles to a small town on the edge of the marsh area where they assembled for the assault. There the surprise was lost, however, after a civilian spotter text-messaged the enemy with a warning about Government troops massing. ‘Filipinos are fond of texting’, Lactao says.

Yet, Lactao says that the attack may still have succeeded, but for ‘some errors in the system’. The intelligence provided by the U.S. was out of date, and caused the Philippine airborne and land units to attack one kilometre to the side of the terrorists, starting a firefight with the MILF in violation of the ceasefire.
‘Intelligence must be real-time’, Lactao says.

Three soldiers were hit before they pulled out, including one man shot in the face, and on the other side, several MILF guerrillas were killed and a dozen or so wounded. To calm the situation, the Government flew the dead and wounded rebels to hospital.

The April incident was a lost opportunity to kill or capture scores of South East Asia’s most skilled and ruthless terrorists; men in close contact with al-Qa’ida. Nevertheless, Lactao says that the combination of informers selling out the jihadists and the sudden violence their information brings is having an effect on his prey: ‘They are getting paranoid and that’s why they are asking for shabu [methamphetamine].’
Yet the US can quite reasonably argue that without the millions of dollars worth of training and equipment it gives the Philippines each year, the country would be taking even more of a hammering from
the terrorists.

Until the US ran the Balikatan (‘shoulder-to-shoulder’) joint military and development exercise across Janjalani’s home island of Basilan in 2002, the Abu Sayyaf were running rings around the armed forces, sacking Christian towns and conducting mass-hostage takings at schools, hospitals and even Malaysian resorts. (When French and Germans were taken, the European response was worse than useless – funne- ling a US$25 million ransom through Libya with which the Abu Sayyaf bought more weapons, faster speedboats, and launched a new wave of violence.) A private security consultant based in Manila told me that the US and Philippines need each other. The Philippines needs the US to keep badgering it about JI, the Abu Sayyaf and al-Qa’ida. The US needs the Philippines to learn how messy life is. One matter the U.S. State Department will not stop pushing is the need for the Philippines to enact counter-terrorism legislation, which would enable security forces to detain suspected foreign terrorists. Lactao says that without that power, the military can only watch as suspected al-Qa’ida operatives roam Mindanao.

‘We monitored a meeting where one of these Middle Eastern men was trying to convince everyone to sign on with the cause. He said that the Muslim community is the next superpower, and he praised the head of al-Qa’ida.’ Yet most suspects can only be detained for six hours, or 72 if the offence is grave, and there are strict limitations on intelligence gathering.

‘We are not allowed to tap anyone’s phones, and we couldn’t detain anyone for interrogation purposes’, he says.
With Mindanao hotly contested ground in the war on terror, the island has more than its fair share of international undesirables, but when suspects have discovered they are under surveillance, they have complained to their embassies, with the military personnel involved castigated, Lactao says.

‘According to our reports, some of these Middle Eastern men are recruiting children as young as twelve to use later’, says Lactao, stubbing out his cigarette and smiling.

Still, a few undesirables are moved on or arrested. Two Middle Eastern men suspected of involvement with al-Qa’ida arrived in the Philippines in March this year – around the time when police seized hundreds of kilograms of explosives at a Manila house, apparently ready for use in the bombing of Easter celebrations. Philippine security officials speculated that al-Qa’ida was sending in specialists to coordinate the terror campaign. A Saudi Arabian national, Abdullah Nassar al-Arifi, was deported soon after arriving at Manila’s airport due to his listing on terrorism databases, while a Palestinian, Fawas Ajjur, was arrested in Mindanao. Ajjur was allegedly identified by Abu Sayyaf prisoners as their former explosives instructor on the blood-soaked
island of Jolo (pronounced HO-lo), in the Sulu archipelago.

The Jungle
‘Don’t misinterpret this as flippant. We are sad because today we have killed people’, says Colonel Orlando E. De Leon of the Philippine Marines.

I am in a Philippines Marine base on the island of Jolo, eating raw goat and drinking ice-cold San Miguel beer as an officer croons another karaoke epic of lost love.

‘This is our way of coping with what we do,’ De Leon says.
Today the Marines shot and killed about ten Abu Sayyaf fighters in an attack on a terrorist camp just four kilometres from my military lodgings. The operation began at around 10 o’clock last night when a local informant slipped the Marines a tip about the jungle camp and said that the 30 or so ‘Abus’, as the troops call their enemy, were holding a kidnap victim.

By midnight a group of sixty Marines began to creep into positions around the camp, with everyone in place by dawn, and a ring of reinforcements waited back should the Abu Sayyaf launch a successful counterattack.

The commanding officer, Colonel Juancho Sabban, tells me that they let the terrorists relax. ‘Dawn came, so they thought they were OK. They were boiling water for coffee, which gave them away – smoke. Then we attack’, he says, declining an offer of the microphone: ‘No, my men sing for me.’

The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas returned fire, taking about 45 minutes to shoot themselves out of the trap, dragging the kidnap victim with them but leaving behind several dead, including two commanders apparently involved in the raid on Malaysia.

Relatives of the slain took some of the bodies away to prepare and bury before sunset, in accordance with Muslim custom, which causes some confusion about the number of dead. The unclaimed corpses ranged in age from teenagers to the near-elderly, and the Marines truss them on poles to carry out of the jungle. ‘Their relatives are probably afraid,’ Sabban says.

‘There were blood trails, so we know they suffered wounded’, he adds, signalling one of his privates to replenish the beer. One the Government side, only two men were hit, suffering minor gunshot wounds to the hand and foot.

The Abu Sayyaf have been known to kidnap doctors to treat their wounded, and in one infamous incident stormed a hospital in the Christian town of Basilan, taking away medical staff, some of whom were raped, mutilated and murdered.

Sabban says that they will keep an eye on doctors after this encounter, but it is more likely that the Abu Sayyaf will pack their wounds with herbs according to traditions followed for centuries by the Sulu island people, known as Tausugs. Other military and intelligence sources tell me that the Abu Sayyaf take their wounded to nearby parts of Malaysia, where they share more kinship ties than they do with the bulk of the Philippines.

Jolo is a strange place. Its volcanic peaks, freshwater crater lakes and unspoilt beaches are overwhelmingly beautiful – a traveller’s dream. Even from that icon of war in the tropics, the Huey helicopter with a gunner at each door, the island looks too exquisite and too small to be a battleground.

However, Jolo’s jungles and coconut palm forests are thick with killers and outlaws. An estimated 500 heavily armed Abu Sayyaf fighters roam the island in teams, hiding in camouflaged bunkers or visiting their families after conducting terrorist attacks elsewhere in the archipelago; stowing hostages while waiting for ransoms, and hitting the military with improvised explosive devices and snipings.
Parked near the karaoke hut is a shot-up battered truck, the legacy of a nearby ambush a few days ago which killed three Marines.

Yet the Abu Sayyaf are not the only game in town. There are also about 1200 wayward guerrillas of the Moro National Liberation Front who have resumed their rebellion in violation of the MNLF’s 1996 peace treaty with the Government. Then there are the plentiful but less-organised kidnap-for-ransom-groups (KFRGs), and any number of heavily-armed criminals of opportunity. Oh, and then there’s the reported intrusion of al-Qa’ida. All on an island with a population of about 500,000, about one-eighth that of Sydney.

Jolo has been divided into two sectors for security purposes, with the Marines working one half and the army the other. When enemy forces launch large-scale attacks, as happens often enough, these two branches of the armed forces fight together.

The day after the raw goat, I board a Huey helicopter which flies me to Hill 300, which the army is occupying after recent fighting with both the Abu Sayyaf and renegade elements of the MNLF. Chinese tombs of travellers who died here a thousand years ago sit atop the hill. The graves have become a Muslim holy site, and the trees here are covered with fluttering plastic rubbish bags which have been tied to the branches as a nod of religious respect from the locals, who would otherwise just throw their trash on the ground. One of the Abu Sayyaf commanders, an Islamic mystic known as Dr Abu Pula, conducted rituals here before the army captured the hill. His men would also hang about asking pilgrims to pay a fee before they could bring their children close for a blessing.

The officer who assumed command of the offensive after two of his superiors were cut down, Major Feliciano Tabanao, tells me locals are happy to have free entry to the site even if Hill 300 is occupied by Government troops, many of whom are Catholic.

Yet as we listen to the pinging of insects and take in the view down to the stilt houses on the shores and out to the smaller islands of the Sulu Sea, Tabanao tells me that in the last couple of weeks soldiers have been killed and wounded from ambushes and improvised explosive devices.

‘This area is a known lair of the ASG. There are about sixty or seventy of them around here – highly mobile – and we have reports that they are laying landmines. Right now I cannot guarantee your safety’, says Tabanao, who seems very tired. He talks about the dead of this mission - his colleagues and an 11-year-old child caught in the crossfire.

I join a patrol down the inland side of Hill 300. The red dirt sticks in large clumps to my boots, weighing them down. Tabanao tells me that the ever-resourceful Abu Sayyaf ride horses through these areas, moving their supplies much faster than the troops can in many parts.
‘We don’t have horses’, he says.

Eventually we come to an empty village of battered houses built over formi-dable bunkers – large excavated areas covered by a double layer of coconut palm logs. An abandoned schoolhouse still has Arabic lessons chalked on its blackboards, and Tabanao points out a large kite leaning against a wall. ‘They use the kites as signals to warn of our movements,’ he says.

One of the pilots with us says that the kites are also used as a defence against helicopters. During Government attacks, guerrillas send up kites on heavy nylon strings which get tangled in the rotors.
The soldiers are careful to contain any sign of the religious tension many of them must feel serving somewhere like Jolo, but I spot a local word for ‘pig’ written on the schoolhouse door, an obvious slight to Muslim sensibilities.

As we wait back on Hill 300 for the Hueys to return, Tabanao tells me that although the military is making life hard for the Abu Sayyaf on Jolo, the enemy is very skilled and getting more so. The improvised explosive devices that are claiming troops are growing more
sophisticated. ‘We have reports of foreigners training locals in IEDs, and reports that a handful [of locals] went to Cotabato for explosives training’, Tabanao says.

Also, while the military does not have control over the seaways, ‘the leaders of ASG can get in and out easily – they come by boat’, he says.

Concern is growing about seaborne attacks by JI and Abu Sayyaf, particularly since a man arrested for allegedly planting Manila’s Valentine’s Day bomb said that the terror groups had earlier sent him to scuba training in preparation for strikes.

The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas of Jolo and Basilan know the water better than most; many of them grew up in the offshore stilt houses where small boats are the only way to get around. The sea is their highway, one general tells me, and with their famous quadruple-outboard motor 1,000 horsepower speedboats, the terrorists can easily travel at about 40 knots.

De Leon of the Marines looks pained when I ask him about this one afternoon at a base of the Marine Battalion landing Team on Jolo’s Quezon Beach, a glorious strip of sand and crystal clear water.
‘They are faster than us. How can we compete? We can only do 15 knots,’ says De Leon, walking us over to a row of very modest little outboards with 60 horsepower engines. ‘The ASG can outrun us on water. They can get away and hide their boats in the mangroves, with leaves on top so we cannot see them. They can cross the ocean at high speed, as they did in their attack on Dos Palmos [a resort on a distant island]. We need good, fast boats for amphibious assaults. It is what we are trained to do’, he says.

Debrief
The Philippines lost about a million people in the World War II. Manila was destroyed. Since then the Filipinos have endured multiple civil wars, natural disasters, dictatorship, massive corruption, widespread violent crime, and a democracy that has failed in the eyes of a growing proportion of the population.
Against that sort of backdrop, Filipinos could be forgiven for being slow to take counter-terrorism as seriously as do many Western countries. Yet slowly the authorities have realised that their calamitous financial state is unlikely to pick up should potential investors feel they run a serious risk of face bombings, sabotage, and kidnapping if they set up shop.

Even substantial portions of the MILF seem to have realised that without peace and security, the people they claim to represent will stay poor and impoverished. Part of the MILF’s realisation is waking up to what bad friends they’ve been keeping.

The rebel’s spokesman, Eid Kabalu, admits that JI has ties to some parts of the MILF, coming clean after years of issuing blunt denials and far-fetched assertions that the Indonesians just hung around the training camps without anybody noticing.

‘Honest-to-goodness, yes, there are some elements within the MILF who were able to establish a link with this group, but now we are trying to address this issue’, says Kabalu, from his home in Cotabato City.
The new consciousness in the MILF’s progressive faction, led by Chairman Al Haj Murad, even extends to wanting in on the anti-JI attacks. The military couldn’t do it properly on their own, Kabalu says. ‘You will notice that [in Lactao’s April assault] instead of hitting their target they hit us, our men on the ground.’

Despite April’s stuff-up, the MILF has since validated the Government’s hit list and is helping work out a battle plan, Kabalu says. What’s more, Kabalu talks openly of his organisation’s hand in betraying one of the world’s most accomplished and well-connected terrorists, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, who helped establish JI’s training at Camp Abu Bakar after the shift from Afghanistan.

‘There are some MILF elements who co-ordinated with the authorities [and] that is why he was effectively pinned down’, says Kabalu about al-Ghozi’s shooting death a few months after the bomber made fools of the Government by escaping from jail the day of Prime Minister John Howard’s visit to Manila for the signing of a joint memorandum of understanding on terrorism.

The MILF’s assistance is acknowledged by the commander of the armed forces in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, General Alberto Fernando Braganza. ‘There has been information provided by them that [has] triggered our operational activities’, says General Braganza, who is approaching retirement in September and seems a little less fired up than after his instalment last year.

Perhaps frustration is taking its toll. Last November Braganza proudly told me there had been no major terrorist incidents for two years (which was true if you squint hard and overlook the 170 combined dead from blasts at Davao and the Super- ferry sinking). Mindanao is a very peaceful place, he told me then. Yet several bombs have struck since November, and now Braganza admits that although the military has neutralised some terrorists, including 10 to 15 JI members, ‘there have been persistent reports of training activities in the central Mindanao area … [and] it’s expected that they also have their bases in the urban centres as part of their support system.’

Furthermore, the interception of the Palestinian in Mindanao ‘is a clear indication of the involvement of al-Qa’ida here,’ says Braganza, whose recognition of the problem seems to have won respect from U.S. officials more used to a culture of denial.

‘Braganza’s kicking some serious ass’, says a U.S. official who pulled his hair out last year over the Government taking months (during which a national election came and went) to admit that the Superferry 14 was bombed, just as the Abu Sayyaf had detailed in public statements.
Politicians have raised hell over U.S. claims that the Philippine borders are wide open to terrorists, but Braganza says frankly, they don’t have enough boats to secure Mindanao’s borders – which an Australian official described to me as ‘non-existent’. Nor is Braganza pretending that a peace deal with the MILF will solve everything. Some terrorist groups will dissolve, but ‘we expect that there will still be some that will remain, like the Abu Sayyaf Group and the JI network,’ he says.

Braganza advocates a combination of military action with a drive to bring law, development and education to regions where generations have grown up inside a guerrilla war. US and Australian aid projects are greatly appreciated, he says.

However, the military is just a tool of politics, as the reconnaissance lieutenant said on the mountains above Abu Bakar, and Mindanao’s politics is hard core. Plans for a joint U.S.-Filipino military and development sweep across Jolo, like that which cleaned up Basilan three years ago, were shelved after fierce opposition from local politicians.

Yet, as Braganza says, almost all of Jolo’s mayors live across the Basilan Strait in Zamboanga City, which has a large military presence as the armed forces headquarters for Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago.

‘They have their residences here; their children go to school here; they have properties here’, Braganza says. As many observers see it, plenty of the region’s politicians are doing well out of the situation, so why would they want to change it?

Braganza will be gone in a few months, and his replacement will face all the difficulties of fighting cashed-up and determined enemies while the Philippine economy continues to deteriorate. Local politicians, on the other hand, often stay in power for a decade or more in the Philippines, and are often succeeded by close relatives.
So to get the views of someone who will still be making decisions when Braganza packs up, I visit a mayor – and a mayor who does live in his seat of power. Soud B. Tan is the mayor of the notorious Jolo City, where Philippine security analysts say I am almost certain to be snatched if I don’t move with substantial firepower. ‘You won’t make it three blocks’, one tells me. ‘Men will produce guns and force you into a jeepney, a car, anything. No one will interfere.’ Duly protected, I drop by Tan’s mayoral compound to hear his take on matters.

Of all the many guns I’ve seen in the Philippines, Tan’s bodyguards are packing some of the snazziest – gleaming little room sprayers in tip-top condition. With his guards stationed out the front, in the hallway, and in the office where we talk, Tan sets me straight on the negative impressions people have of his town.

‘I can tell you that Jolo is a peaceful place to live … it’s a very peaceful place. Jolo’s only a little bit congested with people coming in’, says Tan.

Yes, they are coming in, so if anyone feels like helping stop them – for all our sakes – and has a little-used fast boat or two, I know some guys who could really do with them. Anyone?

An imperfect but proactive approach is surely better than doing too little, for the jihadists will exploit any lull in the counter-terrorism campaign. If they are using all their wits and resources just to stay alive, then their potential targets – including us – are safer. If they have the time and space to recruit, train and plan, then disaster is on its way.