Largest bastion of Abu Sayyaf in Basilan now 'peace zone'

COTABATO CITY — What was touted as the largest bastion of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan, birthplace of its leader who was killed during their 2017 siege of Marawi City, is now a "peace zone," cleared from the presence of terrorists fomenting hatred for non-Muslims.  

Local executives and moderate Muslim clerics in the island province, representatives from the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade and the Basilan Provincial Police Office together celebrated on Tuesday, right in Lantawan town in the island province, its having been made “Abu Sayyaf  free” via multi-sectoral peace and security initiatives supported by former members of the group, who had pledged allegiance to the government years before.

In statements released to reporters on Friday, Lt. Gen. Roy Galido, commander of the Philippine Army, and Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, separately said that they are grateful to police units in Basilan, the 101st Infantry Brigade under Brig. Gen. Alvin Luzon, to Gov. Hadjiman Salliman and the league of mayors in the province for having embarked on peacebuilding projects that resulted in Lantawan’s having been cleared from presence of the Abu Sayyaf.

“Actually that liberation effort began about five years ago with local government units, the military and the police’s having cleared the mountain ranges in the Sampinit Complex in the center of Basilan from Abu Sayyaf terrorists where a highway is being constructed now to connect that area to different towns in the province and to its two cities, Lamitan and Isabela,” Galido said.

Tanggawohn told reporters on Friday that credit for Lantawan’s having been cleared from Abu Sayyaf presence has to go to its mayor, Nasser Abubakar, to the Salliman administration and barangay officials in the municipality, the provincial police and military units in the province.

“They did it the Filipino `bayanihan’ style, along with the police and units of the Armed Forces there,” Tanggawohn said.

Lantawan, birthplace of the Tausug Isnilon Hapilon, the last leader of the Abu Sayyaf who was killed by soldiers during their siege, along with the Maute terror group, of Marawi City from May 23 to Aug. 16, 2017.

The Maranaw founders of the Maute group, Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, and Hapilon perished in an encounter with pursuing soldiers on Aug. 16, 2017. This ended their three month-religious adventurism in Marawi City that ruined a dozen historic barangays, displaced more than 300,000 villagers and left 1,198 people dead, 134 of them soldiers, policemen and members of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit.

Interior barangays in the now markedly peaceful Lantawan, one of the 11 towns in Basilan, were scenes of deadly clashes between state forces and Abu Sayyaf terrorists during the 1990s.

Abu Sayyaf’s founder, the radical cleric Abdurajack Janjanali, grew up in Barangay Tabuk in Isabela City in Basilan, where he studied elementary and high school before he became an overseas worker in the Middle East and studied Islamic theology in Syria. He subsequently returned to the province and established the Abu Sayyaf that was about to expand in different towns in Sulu, now also a peaceful province.

Janjalani was killed in a brief clash with personnel of the Basilan PPO in Barangay Tumakid in Lamitan City on Dec. 18, 1998.

More than 300 Abu Sayyaf members in Basilan had surrendered in batches to the police and military since 2015, reintroduced to mainstream through the joint efforts of various government agencies, the Western Mindanao Command and the office of Salliman, who is chairperson of the Provincial Peace and Order Council.