Word: basilan
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...American troops in harm's way in Afghanistan?and now the southern Philippines, where last week an American MH-47 Chinook helicopter went down in the shark-infested waters between southern Negros and northern Mindanao after ferrying soldiers and supplies to fight on the small island of Basilan. As of last weekend, three crew members' bodies had been recovered and seven more were unaccounted for. That this second front in the war on terror has turned costly was to be expected. The U.S. is helping Philippine soldiers stomp out Abu Sayyaf, a kidnap-extortion gang on Basilan holding two Americans...
...life. They cruelly murdered Pearl because he was an American and a Jew. This ideology is found within the al Qaeda organization but is also espoused widely throughout the Muslim world. Preachers of and believers in this ideology are found in the madrassas of Pakistan, the dense jungles of Basilan, the slums of London and Paris, the capitals of Damascus and Teheran and the villages of the West Bank. The results of this ideology at work can be found in oppressive regimes, murdered tourists, fallen towers and blood-splattered pizza parlors...
...second front in the war on terror officially began last week when 660 U.S. soldiers got marching orders to accompany their Philippine counterparts into the jungles of miniscule Basilan Island on the fringe end of the Philippines. Their mission: to help take out the dreaded kidnap-extortionists known as Abu Sayyaf. What is not written in the "terms of reference" signed last week between Washington and Manila: let's turn a blind eye to the country's real terrorist threat to the north, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF...
...Manila's generals have known for years that the MILF is the real challenge in the region. It has a couple of hundred guerrillas on Basilan, compared to the 80 hard-core stragglers that now make up Abu Sayyaf. And on the island of Mindanao, the vast heartland of the southern Philippines, it has up to 12,000. Its dedication to carving out an Islamic state from the predominantly Catholic Philippines is real. (Abu Sayyaf traded that ambition for lucre years ago.) It's got guns, training camps, an ideology?and, it now appears, more current and substantial links...
...send the engines to a tinder fire when the jungle to the north is smoldering dangerously? One reason is that Abu Sayyaf is a more squashable threat. Although its Basilan contingent has evaded 6,000 poorly trained Philippine troops for the past year and currently holds two Americans hostage, it's an operation that can be wrapped up in months, rather than years. (A bomb and grenade went off in public areas in the south over the weekend, probably a protest of the U.S. troops' role...