Word: sayyaf
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...probably would not want their country to be compared with Afghanistan. But some are learning that if they pledge to move against terrorists operating in their territory, the U.S. will give them money, weapons and military training. No wonder Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called the island where Abu Sayyaf terrorists roam her "little Afghanistan." George W. Bush has made it clear that the U.S. will follow al-Qaeda wherever it goes. Now Americans are tracking suspects in the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia...
...special forces are on Basilan Island training Philippine soldiers to hunt down the Abu Sayyaf Group, a terrorist gang holding three hostages, including two U.S. missionaries. Green Berets and Philippine Scout Rangers are watching the gang and may try a rescue soon. But the joint exercises are just a warm-up. Abu Sayyaf is more a gang of local kidnappers than a global Islamist terrorist organization. But two larger groups linked to al-Qaeda are in the Philippines. Better-trained soldiers and intelligence agents could help contain al-Qaeda operations inside the country and in nearby Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia...
...somehow forgetting about al Qaeda is similarly misguided. Right now, 160 U.S. Special Forces troops are training local soldiers in the Basilan island jungle of the Philippines to combat a Muslim rebel group—Abu Sayyaf—that has kidnapped an American missionary couple. Abu Sayyaf is part of the Southeast Asian wing of al Qaeda. By disabling Abu Sayyaf’s training camps and eradicating their power base in the southern Philippines, U.S. troops are preventing the growth of al Qaeda in the Pacific Rim. Our presence is a crucial step towards breaking...
...residents with local wives and children. Masrie came to the Philippines in 1990 to study computer programming. In late 1994 he married. By then, according to Philippine intelligence reports, he had linked up with Ramzi Yousef who was in the Philippines between late 1994 and January 1995 training Abu Sayyaf on Basilan and later hatching the Bojinka Plot. That plot got busted on Jan. 6, 1995, when a chemical fire broke out in one of the bombmakers' apartments. Yousef fled Manila but was eventually picked up in Pakistan and sent for trial in the U.S. Masrie was detained...
...believe that Selamah was already in the al-Qaeda cell at the time of the Bojinka Plot, and has apparently become Khalifa's successor as al-Qaeda's point man in the insurgency-wracked south. Intelligence analysts tell TIME that while al-Qaeda assisted in the training of Abu Sayyaf in the mid-90s, bin Laden's network was closely monitoring the MILF as a larger and better organized vehicle for Islamic revolution. In the second half of the '90s the MILF, under the leadership of its chairman Hashim Salamat, was also developing its own contacts with Islamist and overtly...