Word: jolo
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...easy to forget that the country is also ensnared in another conflict?against insurgent communist rebels and Islamic radicals in its remote provinces. On March 27, after weeks of relative calm, an explosion ripped through a Catholic-run cooperative store on the predominantly Muslim southern island of Jolo, killing nine and wounding 20. Authorities said the bomb's construction and its detonation via cell phone pointed to Abu Sayyaf, a roving band of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and kidnappers operating in the restive south. Two days later a bombing by the New People's Army, which has been fighting...
...bombings have given new urgency to the government's drive to pass a controversial antiterrorism law. "Terror never sleeps," Arroyo told legislators after the Jolo attack, calling for measures to "rid our country and the world of this grave threat." The law would allow authorities to detain terror suspects for up to 18 days without charges. (Currently, police are required to release uncharged suspects within 36 hours.) Despite pressure from the U.S., the Philippines is the only Southeast Asian nation without such a law. But Arroyo's already-besieged government may have difficulty overcoming opposition from human-rights activists...
...Jolo is one of the Philippines' wildest places. Abu Sayyaf uses it as a refuge from the law; the group's traditional base is the island of Basilan to the north. The M.N.L.F. was actually born on Jolo in the late-1960s, from which it spread its call for an independent Muslim Mindanao. In the 1970s and '80s, at least 100,000 people were killed in that insurgency through much of the south. In 1996, M.N.L.F. leader Nur Misuari signed a peace deal with the government: Misuari became governor of most of the south and the group disarmed. (A splinter...
...that things ever stay quiet in the south for long. In 2001 the government announced it would hold elections for the region's governorship?something Misuari denounced as a violation of the peace agreement; he sparked a new conflict in Jolo. Misuari fled to Malaysia, was extradited home, and is now in custody in a police camp outside Manila awaiting a trial. After the flare-up on Jolo last week, the rebels demanded their former leader be brought to the southern island of Sulu for trial. (Misuari could not be reached by TIME: his wife Tarhata said his guards...
...fighting now under way does not, however, involve the M.I.L.F., by far the largest rebel group in the south. Its spokesman, Eid Kabalu, said it wouldn't even affect the protracted peace negotiations with Manila. In fact, the M.I.L.F. last week offered to help broker a cease-fire on Jolo. Arroyo's government didn't respond to that weird offer?one group of armed rebels offering to help the government with another?so redolent of the troubled south. For the time being, restoring peace is in military hands...