News Story: Philippines, Australia conduct maritime patrol in Sulu Sea

ANZAC class Frigate like HMAS Parramatta

By Roel Pareño

ZAMBOANGA CITY — The Philippine Navy and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) conducted joint maritime patrol exercises in the Sulu Sea, the site of frequent cross-border kidnapping and hijacking attacks by militants linked to the Abu Sayyaf group.

Rear Admiral Rene Medina of the Naval Forces Western Mindanao (NFWM) said the three-day exercise started Friday between Del Pilar Class Frigate BRP Ramon Alcaraz (FF16), under Cmdr. Glen Dizon, and its counterpart Her Majesty Australian Ship (HMAS) Parramatta of the RAN.

He said Australian Embassy in the Philippines' defense attaché Capt. Bradley Ian White headed the delegation of HMAS Parramatta.

BRP Alcaraz is currently under the operational control of Naval Task Group-Tawi-Tawi of the NFWM that is guarding the border under orders from President Rodrigo Duterte.

Medina said the exercises were designed to strengthen the defense relationship of both navies through an established communication while conducting joint maritime patrols in the region.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Report: Philippines Anticipate Long Struggle Against Muslim Rebels

Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Philippine residents are settling in for a long war against Muslim rebels entrenched in a southern Philippine city, despite government pledges of a speedy end, analysts say.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and military officials have promised to quickly defeat the Maute Group at its base, Marawi city. Analysts say fighting in the city on the embattled island of Mindanao could go on as long as that group or its sympathizers pose a terrorism threat, and there is no sign of the threat abating. Rebel violence has killed about 120,000 since the 1960s on Mindanao and curbed the largely impoverished island’s economic development.

“Sometimes it’s contradictory when they say there are only a few barangays (neighborhoods) that are controlled by the Maute Group, but still they cannot stop,” said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman.

The government may have miscalculated the rebels’ reach when the battles began in May, she added. Their funding and support network could also extend to other cities and countries, making them harder to beat, scholars in the Philippines say. About 20 other rebel groups also operate on Mindanao to demand more autonomy from the Philippine government.

News Story: Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia plan meet on international terrorism

By Alexis Romero

MANILA, Philippines — The leaders of the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia may meet to discuss international terrorism, President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday, as Filipino troops plan their final assault against Islamic State-styled militants in Marawi City.

Duterte said he and Indonesian President Joko Widodo are still awaiting word from Malaysia President Najib Razak on the meeting.

“Widodo and I have yet to hear from Najib. He wants us, the three of us to meet somewhere to talk about this new phenomenon of international terrorism,” the president said during the oath-taking of newly-promoted police officials in Malacañang.

“It seems that we are back into the stages of the old world. Like pirates, of which they are really are… They kill and they just want to destroy,” he added.

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News Story: Japan, UN group to work to combat pirates in Philippines

VIENNA -- Japan is set to join hands with a U.N. organization in combatting pirates belonging to an Islamic extremist group in the Philippines, it has been learned.

The Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf, which is apparently loyal to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, has attacked numerous commercial vessels off the Philippines. As part of its efforts to step up countermeasures against terror in Asia, Tokyo will support maritime police forces in the Philippines and other countries to prevent extremist groups from expanding.

The latest move is part of an action plan on anti-pirate measures that Japan and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) signed in Vienna on Aug. 28.

Read the full story at The Mainichi

Think Tank: Mindanao - a new hub for Islamic State?

Peter Chalk

In May 2017, a band of militants connected to the Maute group (MG) attacked and laid siege to the city of Marawi in the southern Philippines after security forces attempted to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of one of two factions of the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG). The assault and subsequent occupation, which took several weeks to end, has once again raised national, regional and international concern that Mindanao and its surrounding islands are rapidly emerging as a beachhead of religious violence.

A particular fear is that the so-called Islamic State (IS) will seek to ‘hijack’ this wider region in order to establish a new province or wilayah from which to launch attacks across the country and throughout Southeast Asia. However, it’s too early to conclude that the southern Philippines is devolving into a centre for transnational jihadist fanaticism or, indeed, that IS is even looking to operate from that part of the country.

Islamist extremism in the southern Philippines revolves around three principal clusters. The first is the ASG, which is primarily based in Basilan and Sulu and which for the past few years has been actively trying to find a new religious identity to define its struggle in Mindanao. In 2014, a dozen ASG cadres uploaded a video on YouTube in which they read out an Arabic statement that pledged ‘loyalty and obedience’ to IS—a bayat that Hapilon reiterated in 2016.

News Story: Duterte, US envoy discuss counterterrorism

By Alexis Romero and Pia Lee Brago

MANILA, Philippines - The United States yesterday renewed its commitment to help the Philippines in its fight against terrorism as the fighting in Marawi City entered its seventh week.

US Ambassador Sung Kim relayed his country’s commitment to President Duterte during their meeting at Malacañang yesterday afternoon, where they discussed combating terrorism and the rehabilitation of battle-ravaged Marawi City.

“Great discussion with President Duterte: Shared concerns regarding terrorist threat; reaffirmed our support for C/T (counterterrorism) and rehabilitation efforts in Marawi,” Kim said in a tweet.

Malacañang has yet to issue a statement about the meeting.

The US embassy has confirmed that American soldiers are providing technical assistance to government troops in Marawi.

Philippine officials clarified though that no American serviceman was directly involved in combat operations, as prohibited by the 1987 Constitution.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Report: Philippine, US Navies Patrol Together Despite Duterte’s Hostility to Washington

As violent extremist militias in the southern areas of the Philippines step up attacks, joint patrols by US and Philippine navies have been initiated, in spite of anti-America posturing by the country’s President Rodrigo Duterte.

According to a US Navy spokesperson, the USS Coronado and a Philippine Navy frigate, BRP Ramon Alcaraz, on Saturday completed a four-day joint patrol in the southwestern Filipino waters of the Sulu Sea, following a request by Manila.

Recently there has been an uptick in acts of maritime violence in the region by Abu Sayyaf extremists, particularly as Malaysian, Indonesian and Vietnamese tugboat and cargo ship crew members are kidnapped and held for ransom.

The US Navy spokesperson described the coordinated patrols as "safe and routine," according to Stripes.com.

It is not known where in the Manila government the request for US maritime assistance originated, as Duterte has recently placed a large order for Chinese weapons and publicly castigated Washington, including calling former US President Barack Obama a "son of a whore."

News Story: ‘100 foreign Islamic militants slipped into Mindanao’

By Jaime Laude and John Unson

MANILA, Philippines -  Some 100 foreign Islamic militants – mostly Indonesians – have slipped into the country in groups to help Maute terrorists fight government forces in Marawi City.

“They entered the country in batches through the southern backdoor,” a source told The STAR, referring to Mindanao. Some of the fighters were from the Middle East, the source added.

The foreign militants, the source said, penetrated the tight maritime security cordon around the Sulu Sea, jointly set in place by the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

He said the entry points of the foreign jihadists were Palawan, Tawi-Tawi and the Davao gulf area.

The arrival of the militants, according to the source, may have been prompted by Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s call on sympathizers around the globe to proceed to the Philippines instead of to the Middle East so they could help the besieged Maute terrorists in Marawi.

Another source revealed that the Philippines’ close coordination with Malaysian and Indonesian authorities may have limited the arrival of foreign militants.

“A series of anti-terror operations in Malaysia and Indonesia foiled the IS plot to flood Mindanao with their volunteer-fighters,” he said.

President Duterte earlier linked the Maute gunmen to the Middle East-based IS. It was one of his justifications to place the entire Mindanao under martial law.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: Is ISIS looking to expand its toehold in Southeast Asia?

By: Mike Yeo

SINGAPORE — The prospect of the Islamic State expanding into Southeast Asia has become a much more distinct possibility in the last few weeks, as Philippine government forces make heavy going of an operation to oust militants who have seized a city in the country’s south.  

Granted, there is virtually no possibility of the ISIS-linked militants successfully holding on to an ever-shrinking part of Marawi City in the Lanao del Sur province on the southern island of Mindanao against the ongoing military assault. But regional defense and security watchers fear that the perceived success of the Maute group in keeping the Philippine military at bay for even a protracted period could raise the group’s profile, making it a more attractive proposition to potential donors and recruits.  

The result is that regional defense ministers and other security officials and professionals that lost territory in Iraq and Syria for ISIS might spur trained foreign fighters from the Middle East to make their way to the southern Philippines in an attempt to regroup.

Roots of the crisis

The current round of fighting in Marawi began on May 23, when the Philippine military and police mounted an operation to capture Isnilon Hapilon, named by an Islamic State newsletter in 2016 as "emir of all Islamic State forces in the Philippines." The operation failed and a shootout ensued with militants of the Maute group, one of several insurgencies from the area that have pledged allegiance to ISIS. The group then proceeded to seize the city of 200,000 and its weapons, driving out the local police and city administrators.  

According to Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, the ISIS attackers included 260 Maute militants, 100 Abu Sayyaf militants under Isnilon Hapilon and roughly 150 from local militant organizations. 

Read the full story at DefenseNews