To Take a Stand
Rafael M. Alunan III
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte received overwhelming support from Congress last Saturday for the extension of martial law in Mindanao until Dec. 31 on the recommendation of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Congress, in joint session, voted 261 in favor and 18 against the proposal to extend.
He warned Congress of more attacks by Islamic State-inspired extremists in Mindanao in the coming days in his July 18 letter to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III and House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, in seeking an extension of five months to deal with extremist groups such as the Maute group, the Abu Sayyaf, Ansarul Khilafah Philippines, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, which are still capable of violent attacks in Mindanao.
He wrote further of validated reports disclosing that Hapilon and the Mautes have provided operational funds to ASG sub-leader Furuji Indama for the purpose of launching attacks in Basilan, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos City, and Zamboanga City, referring to Abu Sayyaf head Isnilon Hapilon, who was appointed as the “emir” in Southeast Asia, and brothers Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, who were still at large.
According to the Institute for Policy Analysis (IPAC), the battle for Marawi in the southern Philippines is likely to have long-term repercussions for extremism in Southeast Asia.
The ability of pro-ISIS fighters to occupy an entire city and hold the country’s armed forces at bay for almost two months has already inspired violence elsewhere in the region and may lead to more attacks in the region’s cities; a more coordinated regional strategy among extremist groups; and strengthened capacity among pro-ISIS cells in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The report has extensive new evidence on how the chain of command functioned between Syria and Marawi, with a crucial role played by the Malaysian professor Dr. Mahmud Ahmad. All foreigners wanting to join the East Asia Wilayah — as the command structure in Marawi refers to itself — had to go through Dr. Mahmud. He also arranged for ISIS funding for the Marawi operations to be laundered through Indonesia, using operatives of Jamaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD).
Despite calls for more regional counter-terrorism cooperation in light of the Marawi siege, there are formidable political and institutional obstacles at work, including Philippine-Malaysian distrust that inhibits information sharing.
Nevertheless, there are some quick fixes that could be easily put in place across the region, such as a better integrated watch list of terrorist suspects, coordinated maritime border patrols, and persistent counter-terror offensives within their borders.
Society must adequately attend to Marawi’s evacuees and to its reconstruction to ensure that local resentments are held in check. Big business, in fact, is already aiding our troops and their families, and a number are gearing up to help in Marawi’s rehab and recovery. But there’s also a strategic need to retool mind-sets and behavior of unreliable local officials and captured communities that facilitated the infiltration of ISIS.
In every conflict area, there will be always be casualties, destruction, and evacuees (“bakwits” in local parlance), and there will always be a need to provide:
• employment, educational assistance, and free services to dependents of slain and totally disabled soldiers and policemen.
• free PTSD therapy, medical treatment, and prosthetics to war victims, military and civilian.
• constant medical civic action in evacuation centers.
• sufficient water, electricity, and emergency toilet/bathing facilities.
• meals ready to eat (MREs), halal and non-halal.
While Marawi is now entering its third month of urban warfare, which is the most difficult and bloodiest kind of warfare, the NPA has also been rampaging in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. That’s because an alliance exists between them and Islamic extremists who share the same ideology of gaining power behind the barrel of a gun. That alliance was detected decades ago. It has held because of weak governance and irresponsible citizenship that we’ve failed to correct.
Years of negligence, inefficiency, incompetence, plunder, corruption, entitlement, injustice and impunity, without any concern for the consequences, have simply fueled resentments that resulted in armed clashes and terrorism around the country without any end in sight. As the nation remains divided by all that, they’re taking full advantage of it to attain strategic victory.
I believe the government should level with the people about the imminent threats posed by foreign invaders and local jihadists, aided by allied communist insurgents. The President needs to mobilize the “whole-of-nation” to decisively defeat the “whole-of-terror” network that’s posing a clear and present danger to our safety and security.
What I find especially disturbing is the imminence of terrorist attacks in urban areas, and I’m not certain about our state of readiness to deal with various scenarios. Preparedness and prevention are key. Here’s what I think the government should do:
• Develop the urban warfare capability of our armed forces. Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) units must be properly backed by tanks, attack aircraft (manned and unmanned, rotary and fixed-wing), fast patrol craft, and precision munitions.
• Beef up Humint, Elint, Sigint to know all their plans; and counter-intelligence to get all their spies and infiltrators.
• Firm up logistics capacities, supply lines, and international anti-terror networking.
• Build force multipliers — CAFGUs, Reserves, police deputies; win back conflicted communities through good government and development.
• Amend/reinforce Human Security Act; stop ISIS/NPA on-line recruitment; disrupt their communication lines; prevent the ingress-egress of terrorists and radical ustadzes/imams; control madrassahs and curricula; close collaboration with the ummah to monitor radicalization in mosques.
• Stop the inflow of terrorist financing at the source and local circulation of suspect funds from all criminal sources.
• Reform the Criminal Justice System.
• Professionalize/modernize mind-sets, skill sets and tool kits of national and local governments, and of local society to foster peace and development.
• Resolve the root causes of discontent — exclusion from governance, justice, delivery of basic services and the fruits of development.
• Sustain funding of all operations to ensure sufficiency of quality manpower, capital assets and technical resources.
Rafael M. Alunan served in the Cabinet of President Corazon C. Aquino as Secretary of Tourism, and in the Cabinet of President Fidel V. Ramos as Secretary of Interior and Local Government.
rmalunan@gmail.com
map@map.org.ph
http://map.org.ph
