EDITORIAL – Training center for terror

Security forces are on alert and have been apprehending suspected terrorists. As the bombings last Valentine’s Day have shown, however, just a handful of terrorists can bring death and misery despite the tightest security measures. And as the bombings have shown, militants arrested in this country are quickly replaced in the terror hierarchy, with recruits getting extensive training in the handling of explosives.

A key reason for this constant replenishment of militants is that recruits are being trained in the ways of terror right in the Philippines’ own backyard. By most accounts, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror cell loosely linked to al-Qaeda, has been training both Indonesian and Filipino recruits in Mindanao for several years now, in camps protected by elements of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

MILF leaders who are pursuing peace with the government have consistently claimed that the training ended when their camps were overrun by government forces in 2000. Since then, however, intelligence reports, some of them based on information provided by arrested terror suspects, indicate that terrorist recruitment and training have continued in several camps in Mindanao. Yesterday the home affairs minister of Singapore warned that the training sites in the southern Philippines must be dismantled.

The MILF says that if the stories are true, only MILF renegades are involved. The government, eager to forge a peace agreement, will have to take the MILF’s word for it, since only the group’s leaders can tell the renegades from regular members.

Meanwhile, fears have been raised that Mindanao is turning into a new center for terrorist training following the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Fears have also been raised that the Philippines is becoming an exporter of terror, with some of those accused of involvement in deadly bombings in Indonesia getting their training in Mindanao. The Philippine government must deal decisively with this threat before the worst fears come true.