EDITORIAL - Unfinished business

Whether or not the Abu Sayyaf is bluffing on the SuperFerry 14 disaster, the statements issued by the group’s leaders are a timely reminder that the government has unfinished business in the war on terror.

The Abu Sayyaf has been on the run since the joint Philippine-US Balikatan military exercises drove the terrorists from their jungle strongholds in Basilan in 2002. Flamboyant spokesman Aldam Tilao, a.k.a. Abu Sabaya, was shot dead off the Zamboanga peninsula. The leader of the faction based in Sulu, the notorious Ghalib "Commander Robot" Andang, has been arrested and another key member, Hector Janjalani, has been convicted. Yet the group’s leader, Khadaffy Janjalani, roams freely in Mindanao, still accessible to his propagandists and accomplices in terrorism.

Until Balikatan drove the group out of Basilan, the public had suspected that the military was reluctant to end the Abu Sayyaf threat. The suspicions were reinforced amid accusations that certain military officers shared in ransom payments for foreigners kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf from the Malaysian island resort of Sipadan and, a year later, from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan.

Now that the Abu Sayyaf is on the run, the public can’t understand why mopping up the remnants of the group is proving so tough for the military. Will it take another Balikatan in Mindanao to neutralize Janjalani and the new spokesman who goes by the name Abu Sulayman?

Even as Malacañang dismisses the Abu Sayyaf as a spent force, certain military officers are saying the group is using what’s left of multimillion-dollar ransom payments to recruit and regain strength. Which reminds us: has anyone bothered to find out from Andang what he has done with the $20 million paid for the Sipadan hostages?

If such questions are left unanswered and government troops lose interest in pursuing Janjalani, Sulayman and what’s left of the Abu Sayyaf, we should expect more claims of terrorist attacks from the group. And if investigators find themselves on a wild goose chase, the government has only itself to blame.