Terror base

The capture of Abu Sayyaf leader Commander Robot is good news. Although the possibility that this bandit group could regenerate remains, the capture of the notorious Robot is a blow well struck.

Robot has been one of the most ruthless leaders of this bandit group. He has great capacity for horror and does not hesitate flaunting it.

But that was when he was whole. Now an amputee, he can no longer run through the jungles and creep in the shadows. He can no longer wield those powers that made him a specter haunting the nation.

But let us not exaggerate Robot’s importance. In the scheme of things, he is merely a disposable pawn in the network of terror that men of greater sophistication and more profound fanaticism are trying to weave through the breadth and diversity of Southeast Asia.

When al-Qaeda operatives began establishing contacts in the Philippines in the late eighties and early nineties, they touched base with the Abu Sayyaf. The brash and violent group seemed to meet the requirements of the merchants of international terror. But the bandits, in the words of Ramzi Yousef, al-Qaeda operative and mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were illiterate, incompetent and useless for operations that require foreign deployment and a high degree of intelligence.

Al-Qaeda used the Abu Sayyaf for cheap operations: murdering a priest, taking hostages and planting bombs in churches. The serious terrorist operations – such as the attempt on the life the Pope when he visited Manila in 1995, the WTC bombing, the bombings in several East African capitals, possibly the Oklahoma bombing, 9-11 and the Bali bombing – were undertaken by Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Egyptians and Saudis.

All of the abovementioned operations, however, were planned, coordinated and executed involving operatives based at some point in the Philippines.

Al-Qaeda operatives trained pilots in the country. They experimented with explosives and tested airport security procedures in the country. One dry run involved setting off a bomb aboard a Cebu-Osaka flight in the early nineties. That "experiment" killed one Japanese national and nearly took down the whole plane.

I have been reading, the last few days, an advance copy of Maria Ressa’s book Seeds of Terror. The Manila launch of this book is scheduled for next Monday at the Glorietta 4 Powerbooks outlet.

In this book, Maria draws from over a decade of covering the region for CNN. During that period, she has gone over voluminous intelligence documents, interviewed a wide range of contacts in the region and talked with Southeast Asian leaders directly.

This is an interesting book. Maria, in her work as a journalist, has gained the confidence of security officials throughout the region. She has seen what the officials know. But beyond that, she has been able to compare and integrate information on a regional level – something that we’re not sure the region’s security officers do.

This is a disturbing book as well. It provides a wealth of information on a matter many of us would rather not think about.

From the independent vantage point of a journalist, Maria found it easy to draw the conclusions demanded by the facts. That is an exercise not easily performed by security officials who might need to compromise conclusions with political correctness.

Indonesia, for instance, tried to play down the perils posed by the growth of extremist Islamic movements within its borders. That despite a mounting series of attacks, one of which was directed at the Philippine embassy in Jakarta that nearly killed our ambassador.

Then the Big Bang happened. Failing to execute original plans to bomb either Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, the operatives of al-Qaeda in the region hit Bali. That was followed shortly thereafter by the bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta.

It was only recently that Indonesia acknowledged the threat posed by terrorist cells that have embedded themselves in existing, more mainstream, Islamic movements. But acknowledging the problem is only the first step. It needs to be followed by a demonstration of political will to crack down on extremist Islamic movements in a predominantly Islamic country.

Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the Philippines, Manila has had difficulty dealing with the threat posed by terrorist cells.

Since the early nineties, it was clear that international terrorist cells were operating in the country. They did bomb that plane from Cebu, didn’t they? The traffic of Middle Eastern "missionaries" to Mindanao was evident. The plot to kill the Pope, blow up 12 planes in the air and bomb the World Trade Center were all hatched in dingy little apartments in Manila.

When former President Joseph Estrada decided to launch an assault on MILF camps on strong evidence they were being used not only by criminal gangs but more importantly by foreign terrorist cells preparing suicide bombers for missions, that decision was strongly criticized as a "militarist solution" to a complex social and historical problems. Subsequently, the task was left half-done. For a while, the al-Qaeda inspired Rizal Day bombings were blamed on him.

When former Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, acting on the same information, decided to mount an offensive to dismantle training camps that prepared foreign militants for missions of destruction worldwide, he too was met with strong criticism.The criticism came from the usual peaceniks as well as from factions within the armed forces. He eventuality relinquished his post.

When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared that the threat posed on our society by international terrorists was both real and imminent, leftist groups berated her for being a flunkey of American imperialism. The peaceniks and human rights advocates continue railing against a stronger response to the problem of MILF-secured training bases in Mindanao.

Subsequently, President Gloria continued the pursuit of peace talks with the MILF, desisted from assaulting the training camps with any level of decisiveness and continued muttering what is basically a piece of fiction: that it is the rowdy Abu Sayyaf and not the MILF proper that is the real, functional component of the al-Qaeda and its Southeast Asian networks.

All of us – the wild-eyed peaceniks and the politically sensitive policy-makers – must read Maria Ressa’s account and relish the wealth of information it contains. Even as I have tried to track the "Mindanao problem" for two decades now, I have learned many new things from this account.

With the information collected in this book, it will not be as easy for any thinking Filipino to buy that stupid line that the terrorist threat is merely a piece of fiction peddled by Bush the Warmonger.