Milf Warn Against Ji Infiltration In The Philippines

The largest Islamist insurgency group in the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), has issued strict instructions to its members not to link up with any members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who may be entering the southern island of Mindanao in order to lie low following their bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta. According to a September 13 report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, MILF chairman, Murad Ibrahim, issued the call out of fears that ongoing peace talks with Manila to end a 30-year conflict that has killed 120,000 people might be compromised.

Manila has previously accused the MILF of offering its bases to the JI for training the Indonesian militants, and launched punitive strikes against the southern secessionists, despite previous cease-fire agreements. In the recent period the MILF has successfully negotiated for the withdrawal of Filipino troops, the dropping of criminal charges against over 100 rebels, and the presence of international ceasefire monitors in Mindanao. Now it feels its gains are under threat.

Hence the strenuous attempts to demonstrate its bona fides by agreeing to begin talks on October 10 on practical measures to help the military track and arrest JI militants and kidnap gangs operating in its territory. The talks are to firm up ‘guidelines’ for joint action, which will enable MILF policing actions of this kind to have proper legal underpinning (Reuters, September 16).

The action is timely, since they come at a time when Police intelligence reports in Mindanao have been highlighting movements of JI members over the last two months, including at least 30 at a training camp in Mt. Cararao in Lanao del Sur, a known MILF base. Unverified reports claim sightings of suspected Indonesian and Afghan bomb trainers and manufacturers in Maguindanao, which have lead to fears of JI car bomb attacks in Davao City or General Santos City. The MILF have made strenuous attempts to counter the reports, calling for an open investigation by the Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities. But it acknowledges that its warning to avoid contact with JI members may be dismissed by ‘lost commands’ in the movement, who remain sympathetic to JI’s aims.