Word: mindanao
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...dirt-floor shanty where he spent part of his childhood. Local officials advertise the town as the most competitive middle-sized city in the Philippines. But even though carefully qualified, the slogan seems optimistic at best. GenSan is situated on the southern tip of the lawless province of Mindanao, which is wracked by separatist fighting and kidnapping. Many of the residents are poor tuna fishermen, yet growing up, Pacquiao and his family were so impoverished that their neighbors pitied them. "He was a bright boy but didn't finish school because of poverty," says Jognard Verzoza, who went to elementary...
...product that GenSan churns out in spades is fearless fighters. As in the barrios of east Los Angeles or the slums of Mexico City, professional boxing offers one of the few available routes out of the hopelessness of Mindanao. For Pacquiao, boxing may have been the only way. His parents separated when he was young, and his mother, Dionisia Pacquiao, raised her six children on her paltry income from a series of odd jobs. Manny helped out by selling bread and taking in laundry, but in his spare time he would do gofer work at the local gym or pound...
...actually training inside the JI camps, one of which is said to be guarded by 150 MILF regulars. That information jibes with details provided by Taufik Rifki, also spelled Taufek Refke, an alleged JI trainer at a camp the Dec. 8 report confirms is located on Mount Cararao in Mindanao's southwest. Rifki, a 29-year-old Indonesian who was captured on Oct. 2, gave Philippine police a detailed description of the JI camp where he was stationed. He said the camp was guarded by MILF fighters from the Iranon tribe and named several MILF contacts who he claimed provide...
...crush Islam. Jihad can also provide an escape to those mired in poverty. "Even if a fraction of 1% of [Indonesia's] population is predisposed to extremism, that's a huge number," says Ken Conboy, author of Intel: Inside Indonesia's Intelligence Service. That makes blocking the pipeline to Mindanao critical. Though Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine police all say they have stepped up patrols between Indonesia and the Philippines, their efforts don't seem to have stemmed the flow of would-be cadets. When Rifki was captured, he was waiting in a hotel in the Mindanao city of Cotabato...
...Qaeda), even the arrests of many of its leaders in the past 18 months won't cripple it, particularly as long as the pipeline of men and weapons to and from the southern Philippines remains open. "While there's enough command and control to get people to the Mindanao camps, JI is very much alive," says Zachary Abuza, author of the book Militant Islam in Southeast Asia. "Even if you manage to catch the top 10 most-wanted JI guys still on the run, you've still got a huge problem on your hands. Small fish eventually grow...