A description of US Special Forces in Basilan, Robert Kaplan's early work on the GWOT is reprised (Imperial Grunts) and commentary on Maria Ressa's recent article on Mindanao.  And there is some interesting history (circa. 1921 and 1935) as well.

The American disconnect in Moro Mindanao

http://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/85174-abinales-american-disconnect-in-moro-mi

'Nationalists will argue about the bad things the Americans had brought on the Philippines...but there are people whose experiences with the US have not always been that negative'

Patricio N. Abinales

Published 10:19 PM, Feb 26, 2015

Updated 10:19 PM, Feb 26, 2015

If you read Maria Ressa’s exceptional analysis of the United States’ involvement in the War on Terror in Moro Mindanaocarefully, you will find a fascinating disconnect between what she wrote and what others, especially pundits, evaluate from their Manila and American West Coast perches.

Of the latter, there is nothing good coming out of American presence in the South, with the Mamapasano massacre as just one of the many consequences of unhampered American military assistance to the Armed Forces in the Philippines in Mindanao’s war zones.

Ressa’s piece, however, suggests this relationship, admittedly secret and hidden from the prying eyes of journalists and NGO activists, has also had a positive effect not only on mutual military ties, but also on achieving some stability in these war zones. While Mamapasano was brutal and ought to be criticized passionately, it also is an exception to what has been happening down south.

Consider, for example, what Filipino-American cooperation has done to the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). When Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani formed it in 1991, this kidnapping-enterprise-masquerading-as-Islamist-freedom-fighter was able to attract as many as 2,000 followers, mainly because of the revenues coming from their hostage racket.

Janjalani was killed in 1998. When the United States decided to work with the AFP in Muslim Mindanao, especially after the kidnapping of an American missionary couple in 2002, both forces began a gradual but systematic campaign to destroy the ASG.

Soon after, ASG leaders were being eliminated: Abu Sabaya in 2002, Hamsiraj Sali in 2004, Khadaffy Janjalani in 2006, Abu Sulaiman in 2007, Albader Parad in 2010, and Umbra Jumdail in 2012. Other members are in jail: Abdul Basir Latip was captured in 2009; Madhatta Asagal Haipe was captured in 2010 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in the United States; Abdullah Ussih was arrested in Zamboanga in 2012.

The ASG could still strike terror in Basilan and Sulu, but not with the same strength that it had in 1991. Today, military sources say there are only 200 to 400 ASG members left.

The collaboration appears to be doing well, and seems to be appreciated, too. The journalist Robert Kaplan has been described as a rah-rah boy for the US War on Terror, but one cannot ignore the weight of two 2003 conversation he had with local officials in Basilan.

In Isabela, Nilo Barandino, a hospital director in Isabela, Basilan, told Kaplan to “[t]ell the American people that it is a miracle what took place here in 2002…and what was given to us by the American people, we will do our best to maintain and build upon. But there is still a shortage of penicillin. We get little help from Manila.”

Later, Kaplan met Salie Francisco, a water engineer in Maluso who was more frank in his assessment, telling Kaplan: "We are afraid that Abu Sayyaf will return. No one trusts the government to finish building the roads that the Americans started.... The Filipino military is less and less doing its job here, [but the] Americans were sincere. They did nothing wrong. We will always be grateful to their soldiers. But why did they leave? Please tell me. We are very disappointed that they did so."

Note the contrast between Barandino’s attitude toward the Americans and to Filipino leaders in the imperial capital and between American Special Forces and their AFP partners. Sure, this was way back a decade ago, but memories do not fade that fast. Francisco’s pained query why the Americans left has strong resonance to the June 19, 1921, petition by Sulu datussupporting US House Bill 12772, proposed on June 9, 1921, by Congressman Robert Bacon, to separate Mindanao and Sulu from the Philippines. The datus beseeched the American government to agree with Bacon and “not turn over Sulu to the Filipinos in the North to be governed by them without our consent.”

Two years after, the same leaders submitted the Declaration of Rights and Purposes petition asking the American government to make Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan “an unorganized territory of the United States of America.” The last of these entreaties was the Dansalan Declaration of March 18, 1935, where Moro leaders (Maranaos, in particular) vehemently opposed the formal integration of the Moroland to the Commonwealth Republic of the Philippines.

When the historian Michael Hawkins did his field research in the Lanao del Sur areas in early 2000, he again would encounter similar sentiments: his respondents inquired if it was still possible for Muslim Mindanao to become the United States’ 51st state. Hawkin has a new book available.)

There is every reason for nationalists to argue about the bad things the American “Empire” had brought on the Philippines, and history has often been on their side. But it is easy to preach to the converted, especially those who have come to learn about imperial depravities from books on American global power (of which there are countless).

However, it will take more than a slogan or a passionate essay to convince a people whose experiences with the United States have not always been that negative. It will probably involve nationalists going down to communities and making their case. They have no choice. Kaplan’s essay details the care with which US Special Forces sought to win the hearts and minds of Tausogs in Basilan. It will be quite ironic that this civic action-type approach will most likely be the model for nationalists if they want to make a dent on this resilient pro-Americanism in Moro Mindanao.

And we are not even talking yet about American civilian presence in Muslim Mindanao! –Rappler.com

Patricio N. Abinales is professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He isfrom Mindanao.

9/11 and the black flag movement

Some little known terrorism history.

I strongly recommend Maria's new book (published this past spring) From bin Laden to Facebook.

V/R

Dave

9/11 and the black flag movement

BY MARIA A. RESSA
POSTED ON 09/11/2013 9:28 PM  | UPDATED 09/12/2013 11:45 AM

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/THOUGHT-LEADERS/38692-9-11-BLACK-FLAG-MOVEMENT

12 years ago, al-Qaeda attacked and destroyed the Twin Towers, killing nearly 3,000 people. 9/11 was al-Qaeda’s coming out party: a group that harnessed Muslim anger of distinct, disparate groups and framed the battle against the West.

While there have been victories, the battle continues, and events in 2012 show how al-Qaeda central has morphed into a social movement that’s making it difficult for military and law enforcement groups globally to reframe a changing threat.

One year ago, a mob stormed the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya and killed 4 Americans, including US ambassador Christopher Stevens, and raised the black flag associated with al-Qaeda — the same flag that appeared in violent Muslim protests around the world.

That week, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, protests spread to more than 20 countries, resulting in the deaths of more than 30 people. Black flags were raised by angry mobs in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.

Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), said the attack in Libya was to avenge the killing of its Number 2, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and urged Muslims to kill US diplomats in Muslim countries.

Abu Sayyaf and the black flag

It was also in September last year that Philippine police discovered a black flag in the Abu Sayyaf camp of Khair Mundos, who carried a US$500,000 reward from the US Department of Justice. Mundos managed to escape.

As early as 1988, al-Qaeda’s financial network in the Philippines was established by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. By then, Al-Qaeda leaders, including the architect of the 9/11 attacks, had trained members of the Abu Sayyaf.

Mundos escaped from a provincial prison in 2007 and headed the Abu Sayyaf group in Basilan. During the raid in 2012, intelligence sources told Rappler that inside the camp, they found the black flag, along with training manuals from Jemaah Islamiyah, once al-Qaeda’s arm in Southeast Asia.

It wasn’t the first time the black flag surfaced in the Philippines, the symbol used by the group behind the latest spate of bombings in Mindanao.

Following the black flag shows how the threat posed by al-Qaeda has evolved since 9/11.

BLACK FLAG. Filipinos carry the black flag in the southern Philippines. Sourced by Rappler

Symbol of unity

The black flag taps into a secret motivation of al-Qaeda: a “narrative that convinces them that they’re part of a divine plan,” according to former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Ali Soufan in his book,"The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda."

Al-Qaeda believes its black banners herald the apocalypse that will bring about the triumph of Islam.

It’s based on what they believe is a hadith or a saying of the prophet Muhammad: “If you see the black banners coming from Khurusan, join that army, even if you have to crawl over ice; no power will be able to stop them, and they will finally reach Baitul Maqdis [Jerusalem], where they will erect their flags.” Khurusan is a name for a historical region covering northeastern and eastern Iran and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.

This is where al-Qaeda believes the Islamic version of Armaggedon will emerge. Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States ends with the dateline, Friday, Aug 23, 1996, in the Hindu Kush, Khurusan, Afghanistan.

Local sighting

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/THOUGHT-LEADERS/38692-9-11-BLACK-FLAG-MOVEMENT

From Chechnya to Boston: How the threat spreads

Maria is a friend and one of the best journalists analyzing this threat. I do recommend her web site and and her work. (www.rappler.com)
V/R
Dave

From Chechnya to Boston: How the threat spreads

BY MARIA RESSA

POSTED ON 04/23/2013 12:34 AM  | UPDATED 04/26/2013 12:13 AM

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/THOUGHT-LEADERS/27231-CHECHNYA-BOSTON-TERRORIST-THREAT

When the Chechen roots of Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became public, it threw me back in time to the end of September 2002 when I delved into Chechnya’s links to al-Qaeda’s global jihad.

I was in a small cubicle on the 6th floor of the North Tower of CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For nearly a week, I had spent 16 to 18 hours a day wading through 251 videotapes from Osama bin Laden’s personal collection. Afraid they’d be mistaken as members of al-Qaeda, the Afghans who found the tapes buried them again until after the arrival of US troops. Then they dug them up and gave them to CNN’s Nic Robertson and Mark Phillips.

One by one, I shook the sand out of each tape, placed it in the deck and watched the video roll, taking notes I still have today. The video was graphic, at times horrifying and extremely alarming. CNN’s investigative producer in charge of the tapes, Henry Schuster, asked me to go through all of them to look for faces and places from Southeast Asia. I watched everything closely, aware we were seeing this before governments and security agencies.

I found the first video of a training camp in Indonesia as well as many others, which all became part of our investigative series based on the “terror tapes.” It gave new insights into al-Qaeda’s organizational structure, its strategies for training, its tactics and its recruitment methods.

Personally alarming for me was tape 106 on the al-Qaeda registry: it contained my report on Pope John Paul II’s 1995 visit to the Philippines. It was chilling to know Osama bin Laden watched the way his plots played out on media, perhaps laughing at the naiveté of journalists.

All this came rushing back when I heard "Chechnya" because that conflict appeared numerous times in bin Laden’s tape collection. Looking back at my notes, I found at least 11 tapes which focused extensively on Chechnya. Tape 135 shows Arab fighters in Chechnya ambushing a Russian convoy - suggesting the cameraman was shooting from the perspective of the Chechen fighters. Several tapes focused on the activities of a key leader, Ibn al-Khattab, who personally met with bin Laden.

Khattab is killed

Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus where insurgents have been fighting for independence since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1994, the first Chechen war began, leading to 2 years of violence as Moscow responded with unbridled brutality.

In 1999, President Vladimir Putin increased Russia’s military presence in Chechnya, triggering the second Chechen war. Moscow says Khattab played a key role in leading Islamic militants in Chechnya’s neighboring region of Dagestan, right around the time the Tsarnaev family moved there.

Like Khattab, other Chechen fighters travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join the global jihad. Chechen militants trained at camps run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Chechen warlords have been added to the US list of terrorist suspects.

Khattab was killed in 2002, but in 2011, the UN included Doku Umarov, leader of the Caucasus Emirate, to the list of individuals associated with al-Qaeda.

The Boston Marathon bombing is the first time Chechnya has been linked to a terrorist attack in the United States. The reality is Chechen insurgents have largely kept their focus on Moscow, despite the links to and inspiration from al-Qaeda.

There are conflicting reports about where the two brothers were born. Kygryz media, quoting local police, suggest both were born in Kyrgyzstan, but family members said the younger brother, Dzokhar, was born in Dagestan. It seems they never lived in Chechnya but maintained close ties to its culture.

The 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in 1986. A decade ago, the Tsarnaev family emigrated to the Boston area. Tamerlan may be named after one of history’s most ferocious warlords, a devout Muslim who called himself “the sword of Islam.” Tamerlan seemed to feel disconnected from American life. “I don’t have a single American friend,” he told a photographer. “I don’t understand them.

Tamerlan’s YouTube channel gives a glimpse of what’s important to him, showing his support of fundamentalism and violent jihad. Most alarming is a video about the black flag, which has appeared in violent protests around the world and was discovered by authorities in jihadi camps, including the Abu Sayyaf, in the Philippines.

He deleted two video clips under the label “Terrorists,” which CNN says links to the Caucasus Emirate, the group led by Doku Umarov. That group has significant ties to al-Qaeda, according to a 2011 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The evidence of the Caucasus Emirate’s integration into global Jihad is overwhelming. Umarov has repeatedly associated the Caucasus Emirate with the global Jihad,” the study said.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/THOUGHT-LEADERS/27231-CHECHNYA-BOSTON-TERRORIST-THREAT