MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The United States is scaling down a taskforce that has been training Philippine troops to hunt down local al-Qaida extremists, Manila’s defense chief said Thursday.
The group of 500 to 600 American service personnel rotating through the strife-torn southern Philippines was cut back to 200 starting this year, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told reporters.
“They were never permanent. They just teach, they train our people and they are satisfied with what we have learned so they are reducing their numbers,” he said.
The US-Philippine cooperation had weakened local Islamic extremists “to the point where they have largely devolved into disorganized groups resorting to criminal undertakings to sustain their activities,” a US government statement said.
Read the full story at DefenseNews