Abu Sayyaf fronting for MILF bombings

Tuesday was the Muharram, the moveable Islamic New Year that coincides with the eve of Christendom’s Lent. Were it not for the blast that killed 21 and wounded 160 well-wishers at the airport, it would have been like any day in Davao, the country’s safest and one of Asia’s most liveable cities. The timing, setting and blight of the bombing would thus have made any terrorist proud. Strangely the Armed Forces’s main suspect, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is denying responsibility. And the group that defense and interior officials dismiss for it, the Abu Sayyaf, is exerting all effort to claim the dishonor.

The military has big reason to point to the MILF. Soon after soldiers overran the Islamic separatists’ Buliok camp in Maguindanao last month, intelligence men intercepted a retaliatory plot to destroy civilian facilities. MILF chief Hashim Salamat, whose headquarters was captured, somehow confirmed it when he called on radio for all Muslim males with long arms to fight to the death. On Feb. 26 rebels grenaded the Abaga power plant in Baloi, Lanao del Norte, where stragglers from Buliok had retreated. The sabotage plunged most of Mindanao in darkness. Although there were no casualties, civilians trembled as cellphone text messages of simultaneous attacks circulated. Col. Danilo Lucero, AFP-South Command spokesman, said the MILF "main mission is to sow fear and anxiety."

Then came the Davao burst, followed minutes later by another in nearby Tagum, and a third the next day in a mall in General Santos City. The bombings were anticipated. Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte was livid that police-military units did nothing to prevent terrorists from entering his turf. But officers reasoned that while they knew of the plot, they had no info on specific targets.

The morning after the Mindanao-wide blackout, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu called all the radio stations he could to disclaim responsibility. Muslims, Christians and Lumads alike were denouncing the sabotage that hit both big factories and small sari-sari stores. "There is no such order to our troops because these are anti-people activities," Kabalu pleaded for sympathy. "They are counter-productive for us." Without elaborating, he said "other interested groups" could have taken advantage of the running battles between the AFP and MILF in Lanao, Maguindanao and Cotabato.

As if on cue Hamsiraji Sali, head of an Abu Sayyaf faction, called the press to own up to the blackout. Claiming to be in Central Mindanao, he said the Abaga bombing was the handiwork of 90 young recruits who go by the band’s original name, Al-Harakatul al-Islamiya. The "new breed," trained by the MILF in 1993 at Camp Abubakar which the AFP has since taken, supposedly has forsaken killings and kidnappings for which the Abu Sayyaf gained notoriety in Basilan and Sulu islands. "We will conduct sabotage to weaken the economy and government," Sali said.

Military analysts pooh-poohed Sali’s claims when he overdid it. He said his faction was receiving guns and money from Iraqi sources close to Saddam Hussein. He bragged of an arms shipment from Cambodia and Vietnam to Mindanao via Malaysia. Secularist Saddam is known to be virulently anti-Muslim religionists, be they mainstream or extremist. It is unlikely for him to mix up with a group that once had links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. The analysts acknowledged that Iraq may abet acts against the US military, like November’s bombing of a bar in Zamboanga in which an American GI was killed and another maimed. For that, RP expelled the Iraqi embassy’s second secretary Husham Hussain, since his cellphone was called several times from another that was used to trigger the bomb inside the bar. Still, Sali, who often sends surrender feelers but reneges after receiving "earnest money," seemed to be up to his old tricks. Analysts surmised he could still be hiding out in Basilan, where posses are closing in on him. His claim to be elsewhere could be, as Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes put it, "merely diversionary."

Two days after the Davao blast, Sali went out of his way to have a television interview. He again owned up to it, but surprisingly apologized to the victims. He said the intention was only to scare, not to hurt and kill. The bombers couldn’t enter the tarmac and thus left the bomb in a bag at a waiting shed outside the airport, then triggered it with a cellphone call. For it, Sali said, his "new breed" would be punished, "perhaps even executed" under Koranic law. Again the military dismissed his claim. Nine suspects, five of them confirmed members of the MILF, have been taken into custody.

Could the Abu Sayyaf be fronting for MILF bombings? Very likely, a police intelligence officer said: "In fact, the MILF has tapped the Abus and Pentagon Gang kidnappers many times to own up to its terrorism and extortion." Abu Sayyaf and Pentagon leaders willingly comply in exchange for bullets, food and, most importantly, sanctuary when under hot pursuit.

The officer explained that the MILF needs to project itself to potential donors in Arab and Muslim states as "legitimate revolutionists." It thus takes extra effort to publicly dissociate itself from common criminals. He likened the strategy to that of the communist New People’s Army, which strives to present an image as a defender of the downtrodden. "But what does it do," he said, "if not execute barangay officials, collect revolutionary tax from farmers, or bomb cellphone towers."

Speaking of the NPA, the officer added, communist guerrillas held joint training on explosives with the MILF at Buliok sometime in 2001. Since then, they have conducted joint ambushes at Compostela Valley. The AFP has gathered witness’ accounts that NPA rebels stood as lookout for the MILF bombers of the Abaga electricity station.

The need to get stooges like Sali to front for MILF terror acts has to do with the terror tag itself. Once labelled as an international terrorist group, the MILF would lose its bid for observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the officer said. Worse, its bank accounts could be confiscated under the Anti-Money Laundering Act. It was this scenario that Presidential Adviser on Special Concerns Norberto Gonzales used to convince Ibrahim al Haj Murad, MILF vice chairman for military affairs, to resume peace talks in 2001.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturday, 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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