Word: mindanao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...TRAINING The U.S. has pledged to help overhaul the country's military. The Philippine constitution bars U.S. troops from engaging in combat unless fired upon, but about 300 U.S. soldiers are providing counterterrorism training to Filipino troops fighting Muslim separatists in Mindanao...
There was nothing furtive about the dozen or so men who checked into the Sardonyx Plaza hotel in the city of Cotabato on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on Oct. 1. Their leader, a small, cherubic-looking young man who signed the register as Eric Yacub, said more men would be joining them the next day. The group then ate a hearty dinner, ordering food "like there was no tomorrow," recalls hotel employee Marietta Sandayen. As it transpired, there wouldn't be much of a tomorrow for Yacub?at least, not the kind of day he was expecting. Around...
...resources or the navy to protect them, so [terrorists] come and go at will." Other senior government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say materials gathered from the safe houses indicate that there are "hundreds" of "heavily armed and well-financed" JI members on the island of Mindanao. Most of these operatives are Indonesian, reveals an official who has access to classified intelligence reports. "They are a parasite in our midst," the official says. "We have to recognize this problem openly and deal with it, or it will get worse and worse...
...difficult battle to root out terrorism in the Philippines, a task that is further complicated by the predominantly Catholic country's longstanding warfare against two other terrorist groups: Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic gang of kidnappers, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a homegrown Muslim separatist organization in Mindanao with some 12,500 members. While attempting to harass Abu Sayyaf into extinction, Arroyo has also been trying to end years of bloodshed by negotiating a peace treaty with the MILF...
...peace negotiations have been made more fragile by assertions that Mindanao is JI's principle training ground and bolt-hole. Evidence from the several hundred JI operatives arrested and interrogated in the region over the past two years indicates that the MILF has maintained close links with JI?including offering training facilities for hundreds of its recruits?almost since JI's inception in the mid-1990s. JI's alleged former operations chief Riduan Isamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali, made this clear to his interrogators after his Aug. 11 capture. "Large numbers of Indonesian members of Jemaah Islamiah are hiding in the Philippines...