Obama must go after Mahathir Mohamad for his inks with Abu Sayyaf Homegrown Beheading HostagesTerrorists bama

However, his attack against the Time magazine over the article was moderate as he was not personally mentioned and wanted to keep a lid on the possible links, said US diplomats.

Dealing with Misuari

Manila's inability to play straight in the matter of deporting Muslim rebel leader Nur Misuari indicates that it is still not clear on how to tackle separatism in Mindanao.

AMIT BARUAH
in Singapore

NUR MISUARI and his Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) are in the news once again. A peace accord that Misuari signed with the Philippines government in 1996 came unstuck and his followers staged a rebellion at the end of November.

On November 24, Misuari, 60, was detained in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island after he fled the southern Philippines, and since then Manila and Kuala Lumpur have been engaged in a ping-pong battle on his deportation.

More than 100 people were killed in clashes between MNLF supporters and government troops after the Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo decided to dump Misuari and support one of his opponents for the post of Governor of the Muslim autonomous region on Mindanao island. Arroyo is also engaged in peace talks, facilitated by Malaysia, with the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

One would have expected that Manila, which has charged Misuari with rebellion, would be keen on getting the Moro leader back from Malaysia as soon as possible. But that was not to be. Filipino leaders sent out conflicting statements on whether or not they wanted him back, giving rise to speculation that Arroyo would prefer to let Misuari remain outside the Philippines.

The Misuari issue has put some strain on the Philippines' cordial ties with Malaysia; it led to statements from Kuala Lumpur that Misuari may have to be sent to a third country if Manila refused to take him back. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, however, put the blame for the problem on Misuari rather than on Manila: "It is Misuari who has put Malaysia in a spot. Why can't he run away somewhere else... It (his presence) sours relations with neighbours."

CHARLIE SACEDA/REUTERSA recent picture of Philippine Muslim leader Nur Misuari.

Manila's flip-flop on Misuari, however, was in a special category. After Misuari was arrested on Arrival at Sabah, the Malaysian authorities stated that he was not wanted for any crime. The only charge, a minor one, was of entering the country without valid travel documents.

On December 11 Arroyo made a strange statement: "What the (Malaysian) police said is they don't have enough evidence. (The report) doesn't say they cleared him... We also checked with Malaysia last night. That (report) is at the level of the police. That's not at the level of the Prime Minister." She went on: "I have said before that we are ready to take Misuari back... we are already preparing his jail cell, his charges and the mode of arresting him."

The statement can only be interpreted as one full of hope. That Mahathir Mohamad would disagree with his police officers and arrest Misuari on some charge appeared to be Arroyo's fervent hope.

For reasons not yet spelt out, the Philippines government is of the view that Misuari at home can be a bigger problem than Misuari abroad. The government possibly believes that Misuari's return could lead to more violence and a trial could be used for political purposes. However, after linking Misuari with terrorist Abu Sayyaf, it is surprising that the Arroyo government does not want him back. Without doubt, the Philippines under Arroyo is a leading partner of the United States in countering terrorism and U.S. military advisers are working closely with Filipino security forces.

Misuari's links with Abu Sayyaf are doubtful, and if he does have any ties with Sayyaf, should not Arroyo and her government be keen on securing his immediate deportation to Manila? Finally, after even considering Libya as a possible asylum destination for Misuari, the Foreign Ministers of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines met in Manila on December 20 and agreed that the MNLF leader should be returned to the Philippines.

A joint statement issued by the three Foreign Ministers said: "The Philippines recognises the need to treat Nur Misuari with humanitarian consideration that he deserves as a signatory to the 1996 peace accord, even as he will be subject to the judicial process."

Just before the solution was announced, Roilo Golez, National Security Adviser to the Philippines President, said Libya was seen as a possible destination for Misuari. It is apparent that a "law and order" approach to the issue of 'Muslim' separatism in the southern Philippines has not worked. Playing one group against another has not worked' nor has it led to the creation of a viable authority in Mindanao in which the Moro people have trust.

By opening talks with the MILF, the Arroyo government has taken a positive, first step. But the 1996 peace accord with Misuari and his MNLF is dead. That is not a good sign for the Philippines - the November violence would indicate that Misuari and his supporters still have fight left in them.

While Misuari's critics say that he has achieved very little for the Moro people in the years he served as Governor, others believe that the "Christian" government in Manila did not provide sufficient resources to the autonomous authority. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that the Arroyo government continues to face a serious challenge to its authority in Mindanao. A political settlement must be inclusive, one which includes all factions to the conflict barring Abu Sayyaf's, which specialises in kidnapping, extortion and murder.

A distinction must be made between the terrorism of Abu Sayyaf and the problems of the Moro people. The movement for autonomy and a genuine demand for rights cannot be treated as a law and order problem.

Waffling on Misuari has revealed the contradictions in Manila's approach. Its inability to play straight in dealing with the Misuari issue reveals that the Philippines is still not clear how to tackle separatism in Mindanao

 Mahathir Mohamad was unusually moderate in his attacks against two articles which appeared to criticise his government in the Time and Fortune magazines in early 1995 as he was “not personally mentioned in the stories”.

Also, Mahathir was not keen to pursue his attacks against the Time magazine article in particular as it involved his government’s alleged links with the Abu Sayyaf movement from the Philippines.

“Given the murky general history of Moro-Malaysian dealings, he may feel it best not to go into too many details,” wrote US diplomats based in the US embassy here in their confidential cable to the US State Department in Washington. The confidential cable was dated April 13, 1995.

The cable was leaked by whistleblower site WikiLeaks and handed over to FMT today.

The US diplomats felt that Mahathir was quick with his anti-West attacks when the two articles were published, especially since the general election was imminent then. However, they noted his reaction was “moderate and apparently shortlived”.

The US diplomats felt the main reason for Mahathir’s muted attack on Time and Fortune was largely due to the fact that he was not personally targeted in the two articles.

The diplomats also mentioned that Mahathir could have been mindful that his recent anti-British and anti-Australian outbursts had not given him clear-cut victories.

They said that they felt that the Malaysian government did not wish to make an issue of the Time article, especially considering the historical ties between the Moro movement and Malaysia.

The Time article appeared in its April 10, 1995 issue, alleging that Southern Philippine Muslim extremist group Aby Sayyaf was receiving arms, money and training for Islamic groups in various countries, including Malaysia.

The article further claimed that Abu Sayyaf used training camps in Malaysia and was expecting arms shipments from Malaysian supporters.

Western media campaign

Mahathir’s reaction to the article was to immediately label it as “part of a campaign by the western media to discredit Malaysia” to deter investment and tourism.

The Time article came just after another article in the Fortune magazine which had said that the Malaysian currency was facing risk.

US diplomats said that Mahathir was worried of the negative impact that the two articles could cause Malaysia.

However, they said that no one from the government had formally or informally complained about the Time article to the US embassy.

They added that Mahathir had ordered a delay in the distribution of the Time issue but did not ban it, and indicated that they were informed by observers that the magazine would be allowed to go on sale in two weeks’ time.

The US displomats noted in the cable that Mahathir’s anger against Time was “moderate and short-lived” and was nothing compared to his actions against other publications in the past.

They pointed out that he had denied contracts to British firms in response to an unflattering articles in the British press.

Beheading hostages is the grisly signature of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamist extremist group with a strong criminal bent operating in the southern Philippines.

On June 11, two days after Congress proclaimed Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III the winner of a presidential election, three Christian loggers working in a forest on the far southern island of Basilan fatally crossed paths with a group of Abu Sayyaf gunmen. They were abducted and beheaded hours later. As there was no ransom demand, authorities believe the killings were in retaliation for military operations against the terror group across Basilan. Only a week earlier in a nearby municipality, Abu Sayyaf militants executed three kidnap victims whose families could not pay the ransom. And in April the same faction, led by Puruji Indama, who gained notoriety for decapitating the corpses of 14 Philippine marines ambushed on Basilan in 2007, was blamed for bomb attacks in Isabela City, the island's provincial capital, in which over a dozen people were killed.(Read "The Next Aquino: Can Noynoy Save The Philippines?")

Such depredations are not uncommon in Abu Sayyaf's stomping grounds on a chain of Muslim-dominated islands in the Sulu Sea, but this month's killings were a gruesome reminder of the security challenges that the new administration faces. As well as countering Abu Sayyaf's brand of homemade terrorism, Aquino will oversee newly restarted peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's largest Muslim separatist rebel group, to end a long-running separatist insurgency in the South that has claimed over 120,000 lives.

Aquino, who takes the oath of office on June 30, has yet to present in any detail his administration's road map for tackling terrorism and insurgency. But security analysts anticipate more emphasis on economic-development initiatives in conflict-affected areas to undermine local support for militant groups, as well as pushing the military's campaign against the terror group. "With the growing recognition from the military establishment that countering terrorism needs to go beyond the use of military force, Aquino's presidency will likely be expected to pay more attention to soft approaches," says Rommel Banlaoi, head of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. As the head of the armed forces' civil-relations service told reporters last week, despite gains in the military's war on terror — like the recent capture of Kaiser Said Usman, an Abu Sayyaf commander on Basilan — military solutions alone cannot eradicate the group. There is "still a need to re-examine government policy in annihilating the group," said Brigadier General Francisco Cruz.(See pictures of life inside the Philippines military.)

The once al-Qaeda–linked Abu Sayyaf is blamed for the country's worst terrorist attacks — including the 2004 bombing of a ferry near Manila port that killed 116 people — as well as a revolving door of ransom kidnappings of Filipinos and foreigners. The group, to be sure, is no longer in its prime. After 9/11, U.S. troops, many with specialist training, were sent to the southern Philippines to support in noncombat roles the local counterterrorism effort, and several hundred U.S. special forces continue to be rotated there. The Philippine military estimates the now faction-split Abu Sayyaf's strength at around 350 members, well below its peak of over 1,000 a decade ago.

But the escalated attacks on Basilan are a sharp reminder that Abu Sayyaf is far from a spent force. "Despite the deaths of several commanders and multiple Philippine military offensives, this latest spate of violence and kidnapping in Basilan is a testament to the group's resiliency and brutality," says Pete Troilo, a security analyst with risk consultants Pacific Strategies and Assessments. Indeed, the militants continue to find willing fighters among disaffected young Muslims hoping to cash in on ransom kidnappings. "The leaders are generally ideologues, but the followers are loot seekers," Colonel Daniel Lucero, assistant chief of staff for the Philippine army's civil-military operations told a recent gathering of counterterrorism experts in Manila. In its recruitment drive, says Lucero, families are paid around $650, or about a year's income for a casual laborer there, to "release" their sons. As Troilo puts it, "All too often Abu Sayyaf is the only local employer."

Most of the Philippines' poorest provinces are in Muslim-majority regions on the main southern island of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, a legacy of economic neglect, weak governance and the lingering insurgency. On Basilan's smaller neighboring island of Jolo, a hotbed of Islamist extremism and lawlessness, a 2003 government figure put the life expectancy there at just 52, compared to the national average of 70.

Only a few years ago, Basilan, a six-hour ferry trip from Mindanao's port city of Zamboanga, enjoyed a considerable measure of peace. The Philippine-U.S. cooperation adopted an aggressive counterterrorism strategy there of combining military hard power with the soft power of humanitarian assistance and delivering basic services to woo locals in areas infested by militants. Crucially, that effort had the cooperation of the island's most powerful politician Wahab Akbar, a Syria-trained Islamic teacher, who is said to have influenced the formation of Abu Sayyaf in the early 1990s as a fundamentalist group fighting for Muslim self-rule in this mostly Christian country. As one retired army general puts it, "You can't govern there [Basilan] unless you have a reputation." But Akbar's death in a bomb blast in November 2007, which some say has lost momentum in civil-military operations, created a vacuum. According to Banlaoi, a quarter of Basilan's 187 villages are now affected by Abu Sayyaf.

It is, of course, too early to tell whether the Aquino administration will succeed in promoting a culture of peace in this deeply troubled corner of the Philippines. Troilo points out that Aquino already faces a "cumbersome multitude of policy priorities." But concluding a peace agreement with the MILF, would be a huge support to that effort. And not least because it should give the MILF's generally moderate leadership more control over its hard-line members with links to Abu Sayyaf and foreign jihadists. But as Aquino's newly appointed peace adviser, Teresita Quintos-Deles, told reporters after accepting the post, "It's going to be a very challenging area."