Bali blasts revive concerns over Mindanao terror sanctuaries

As Southeast Asia ponders its security after the second deadly terrorist blow to Indonesia’s Bali resort island, nagging concerns are surfacing again over whether the southern Philippines has become the region’s breeding ground for radicals.

Since most of al-Qaeda network’s camps in Afghanistan were taken out by US-led forces in late 2001, the Philippines’ Mindanao region has become a key training area for Southeast Asian militants, including those blamed for the first Bali carnage three years ago that killed 202 people, according to security officials and confidential documents.

Malaysian fugitives Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top — who Indonesian police say may have masterminded Saturday’s suicide bombings in Bali — are believed to have trained or once taken refuge in Mindanao, a vast tropical sprawl with largely unguarded jungle-clad islands, mountains and marshes. Muslim separatist guerrillas hold sway in far-flung villages.

Philippine police officials planned to show pictures of the recovered heads of three suspected suicide bombers to captured Jemaah Islamiyah militants to check if last weekend’s attackers belonged to the al-Qaeda-linked group or if they trained in Mindanao — an almost automatic suspicion that’s not without basis.

In a sarcastic editorial cartoon on Tuesday, the widely circulated Philippine STAR newspaper featured an Islamic militant holding two lit bombs and wearing a shirt labeled "Bali bomber" and a button that read "proudly RP-trained." RP is shorthand for Republic of the Philippines.

Since Jemaah Islamiyah established camps in mid-1998 in Mindanao territory controlled by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, at least three batches of recruits, each with 17-18 Indonesians, have completed 18-month-long courses in bomb-making, combat skills, weapons handling and concepts of jihad, or Islamic holy war, according to a confidential Aug. 9, 2005, report from the National Security Council and intelligence officials.

There were separate shorter courses for recruits from Malaysia and Singapore "who because of their work (some are civil servants) could not be absent for long periods of time," the report said.

According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press last month, the roster of graduates, trainers and visitors to Mindanao’s terror courses reads like a who’s who of Jemaah Islamiyah:

• Osama bin Laden’s Southeast Asian pointman, Riduan Isamuddin or Hambali, and convicted 2002 Bali bomber Ali Ghufron, also known as Mukhlas, served as instructors to the first batch that graduated in February 2000.

• Suspected Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir attended the graduation ceremony.

• Two other suspects in the 2002 Bali attacks — Indonesians Dulmatin and Umar Patek — fled to Mindanao to be with Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani, who is among Washington’s most wanted al-Qaeda-allied terrorists.

"The presence of senior leaders is giving concern to the fact that the Philippines might become a base of operations for JI because the other states in the region are much less hospitable environments," American terror expert Zachary Abuza told ABS-CBN television.

A flurry of e-mails between Dulmatin and Patek and a recently captured militant in Indonesia, Abdullah Sunata, indicated they were trying to seek funds in the Middle East for future attacks, according to another Philippine security assessment report.

Sometime in April, Dulmatin and Sunata discussed in their messages a planned shipment of explosives bought in the Philippines for an unspecified attack in Indonesia, it said.

Although the Philippine military and police say that known Jemaah Islamiyah camps have been captured and that the training was disrupted by US-backed offensives, the Aug. 9 report states that the presence of about 25 Indonesian militants in Mindanao could pave the way for a resumption of the stalled courses.

Jemaah Islamiyah, although battered by arrests of key leaders and members, has survived Southeast Asia’s crackdown in recent years and appears to have strengthened ties with other regional militant groups to make up for tactical setbacks, two senior police intelligence officials say.

They find a lot of willing comrades in impoverished Mindanao, where at least three groups, along with a growing number of Islamic converts, have been fighting a bloody war for a Muslim homeland since the early 1970s.

"The network continues to thrive in the southern Philippines owing to the support it receives," the Aug. 9 report said.