Word: mindanao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That Mindanao seems to be morphing from being mainly a separatist issue for the Philippines into a terrorist problem for the rest of Southeast Asia has Malaysian and Indonesian officials on full alert. (Both countries have porous maritime borders with Mindanao.) Over recent weeks, Malaysian police have detained six suspects in the town of Sandakan in Borneo for arranging the transport of JI recruits to Mindanao. Meanwhile, Indonesian police say that several of the 18 men arrested for plotting and executing the Dec. 5 bombing of a McDonald's outlet in Makassar in South Sulawesi province have confessed to being...
...Indonesian, Malaysian and even Arab extremists have previously been known to take refuge in Mindanao. For example, both Agus Dwikarna and Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, two prominent Indonesian militants currently under arrest in Manila for possession of explosives, did stints in Mindanao in the late 1990s. The MILF willingly provided training facilities to foreign fighters, but in the days following the war to oust the Soviets in Afghanistan, the group's hospitality was motivated more by international Islamist solidarity than by anti-Western jihad. In 2000, the Philippine military overran all of the MILF's bases?including its two biggest...
...Mindanao again proving so hospitable to foreign terrorists? The short answer is that the Philippine government is divided over how to tackle the MILF. Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes and the army favor a military solution. But while operations like last week's take place periodically, Manila is simultaneously pursuing negotiations with the MILF leadership. For fear of derailing these talks?and despite additional pressure from the U.S., which has about 300 troops stationed in the Philippines to train the country's military in counterterrorism techniques?President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo refuses to have the MILF designated a terrorist group...
...terrorist leading this schism, according to Gonzales and Philippine intelligence, is wanted-criminal Muklis, a former religious teacher from Marawi in central Mindanao who studied Islamic jurisprudence in Pakistan. In 1993, he and al-Ghozi crossed the border into Afghanistan, gaining expertise in explosives and demolitions. After returning to Mindanao, he headed the MILF's Special Operation Group at Camp Bushra. But Muklis always served as a point man for JI within the MILF. According to al-Ghozi's own testimony, Muklis was a principal player in the wave of bomb blasts that tore through Manila...
...Recent army reports have Muklis hiding out in the cloud-swathed mountain range that rises abruptly from the placid waters of Lake Lanao in central Mindanao. "Getting into that area is very, very difficult," says Colonel Ernesto Boac, commander of the army brigade based in Marawi. Standing in front of a topographical wall map, he points to the densely wrinkled contours along the provincial border south of the lake. "It's difficult getting human intelligence out of there, and we're not picking up radio transmissions. It's a black hole." Not just for the Philip-pines, but increasingly...