Word: sayyaf
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...Causes for Concern Neither U.S. nor Philippine officials are claiming the fight is over. Abu Sayyaf members have vowed never to end their struggle and claim the group is rebuilding. Earlier this year terrorists attempted to bomb soft targets in Zamboanga city. The city's police director, Colonel Lurimer Detran, believes an attack in April, when bombs were planted at the Catholic cathedral and at a bank in the city, was definitely the work of Abu Sayyaf operatives. "We identified the suspects from composite sketches," he says. While no one was hurt in those attacks, on May 30 a bomb...
...While Abu Sayyaf's leadership seems to be lying low in the face of the rewards program, replacements have been found. Abu Sayyaf's latest leader is believed to be Yasir Igasan, an Islamic preacher in his 40s who was one of the group's founding members. According to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, Igasan has ties to wealthy donors abroad who could "recharge the flow of foreign funds" to the group. Authorities also believe J.I. members being sheltered by Abu Sayyaf are trying to recruit Filipino suicide bombers...
...Congressman Jikiri agrees that any talk of Abu Sayyaf's demise is premature. "How can anyone say they are destroyed when they are still there and are still very active?" he says. "In fact, they have been conducting fresh recruitment." Jikiri is a senior official of the Moro National Liberation Front, a former separatist group that gave up armed struggle in the late 1990s. Its peace deal with the government secured autonomy for some Muslim areas, which the group now governs. Jikiri is skeptical about the Manila-led effort to win local people's trust. "Life in Sulu is still...
...Shady Connections A former Abu Sayyaf member says that, faced with the government's successes, the group is now waging a hearts-and-minds campaign of its own. "They are going back to basics, meaning recruitment and propaganda," the man says. "The goal is to avoid military confrontation for two years so their recruitment efforts will not be compromised. [Igasan] is busy recording audio and video propaganda messages...
...Another concern for the government has been Abu Sayyaf's shifting alliances with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (M.I.L.F.), another Muslim independence movement of which Abu Sayyaf was an offshoot. The M.I.L.F. has been involved in on-off peace deals with Manila for almost a decade, though a special group set up in 2002 to facilitate intelligence-sharing between the M.I.L.F. and the government "atrophied in mid-2007," according to the International Crisis Group. In the past two years, M.I.L.F. members have rescued several Filipinos and foreigners kidnapped by bandits, and the organization remains in uneasy peace mode. But some...