Word: sayyaf
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There's a concrete wall behind the Torres Memorial Hospital in the dusty village of Lamitan on the southern Philippine island of Basilan. In the middle of it is a door, only 1.5-meters high. Seven months ago, roughly 60 members of the dreaded Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang led by chieftain Abu Sabaya were barricaded inside with about 20 hostages, including three Americans, definitively surrounded by the Philippine military. Their careers as terrorists seemed to be coming to a bloody conclusion. That is, until the early evening of June 2, in circumstances that are shadowy but undoubtedly scandalous, when...
...That's the door that opened the second front in the U.S.'s war on terrorism. More than 200 U.S. troops are in the southern Philippines ready to join the fight against Abu Sayyaf, technically as mere "advisers." They're here to train and equip their Philippine partners and walk shoulder to shoulder with them through the jungle scouting out terrorists, pinning them down - and making sure the swinging doors and security holes that have kept Abu Sayyaf in business for so long are finally bolted shut and boarded over...
...Ostensibly the Abu Sayyaf are Islamic freedom fighters, but in reality they're hardy jungle extortionists. Just after midnight on June 2, 2001, a squad came out of the jungle seeking medical treatment for injured fighters. They stormed the Torres hospital and holed up inside. The police and army mounted a day-long siege, exchanging fire with Abu Sayyaf fighters stationed behind hospital windows and in the bell tower of neighboring St. Peter's Church, where Father Cirilo Nacorda, who himself had been an Abu Sayyaf hostage for two months in 1994 (and who now keeps two guns...
...armed forces' leaders contend it is not incompetent or corrupt despite charges that begin with ineptitude and run all the way to collusion. "The Abu Sayyaf has been lucky, but sooner or later their luck will run out," says Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, a retired general. But why hasn't the military already brought this ragtag band to heel? Brutal terrain and a lack of equipment are the most cited explanations - the first soldiers on the scene in Lamitan didn't have radios. This is not a wealthy nation, of course, but one retired general in Manila points to corrosive...
...pays for all this corruption and ineptitude? Guillermo Sobero, for one, an American hostage who was beheaded a week after the siege. The three remaining hostages of Abu Sayyaf - two of them American - could also end up paying with their lives. Then there are those who live in Lamitan, where 70% of the people are below the poverty line and where children's faces darken when they hear mention of Abu Sayyaf. Better off are the seven youngsters, the eldest 16, recently released by Abu Sayyaf after spending two years carrying bullets and scouting for them. And, perversely, a mother...