E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Rifqi sez JI training with MILF
In other news, dog bites man ...
A regional terrorist network linked to al Qaeda has continued to train its militants in the southern Philippines, aided by local Muslim separatists, police and intelligence sources said.
Tap, tap, there goes my surprise meter.
The militants, all Indonesians, are training at a camp established three years ago and now operating under the protection of rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, according to intelligence sources and a summary of the interrogation of Taufiq Rifqi, an Indonesian militant who was captured here last month.
I actually suspect that there may be more than one of these camps given how much al-Qaeda/JI (the difference between which is a matter of semantics) infrastructure there seems to be in Mindanao. Better give Rifqi some more giggle juice and see what he says.
Rifqi’s testimony startled Philippine officials, who assumed they had deprived al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah, of its primary training ground three years ago when government soldiers overran its base. It also raises the stakes for peace talks aimed at ending the 31-year insurgency on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Diplomatic and security sources said a peace deal could close Mindanao as a vital center for the training and transit of foreign terrorists — what a Western official in Manila called "a kind of Afghanistan east."
That’s a pretty apt description. MILF is an al-Qaeda/Saudi project that the Filippino government takes way too seriously for fear of being perceived as acting against the interests of its Moro citizens. Autonomy is one thing, but allowing roving bands of krazed killers like the Pentagon Gang and Abu Sayyaf (which seem to be MILF hard boyz with false moustachios by all accounts) kidnapping or killing people is another. Of course, given the coup attempt back in July and rumors of another one in the air, the government probably figures that they’ve got bigger fish to fry, at least for awhile.
Within three weeks of Rifqi’s arrest, police backed by military forces raided two safe houses that contained handwritten notes in Indonesian on making biological weapons, diagrams of amateur rockets, components for jury-rigging explosives and other documents and bomb-making materials.
Thereby placing him above the rank of cannon fodder well into the area of capo. My guess would be that JI has already done at least some work in the chemical or bio weapons area, given that when Yunos got picked up the Filippino intel said that he was the man to talk to within MILF about anthrax.
The capture of Rifqi, who security officials said was Jemaah Islamiah’s treasurer and logistics chief in the Philippines and arrived in Mindanao in 1998, was a wake-up call for the government, which had been "in denial about the existence of Jemaah Islamiah in Mindanao," a Philippine intelligence official said.
So when are they gonna, y’know, do something about the place?
"We are open in saying that the Jemaah Islamiah is a major threat," Defense Secretary Eduardo R. Ermita said in an interview. "We know the Philippines is a good target for their activities."
They also appear to be a major shareholder of sorts with the local Wahhabi insurgency and so long as they can use it to train new krazed killers Southeast Asia is going to remain a terrorist target.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Asian and Western intelligence officials have unearthed extensive details about the operations of al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian affiliate. Under interrogation, suspects have described a geographic division of labor in which Indonesia serves as the primary theater for attacks — two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali were bombed a year ago and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, the capital, was hit in August. The Philippines was designated as the main training ground.
Not that anyone has actually decided to do anything about it. Does the US even consider MILF a terrorist organization?
Until 1995, Southeast Asian terrorists were training in Muslim mujaheddin camps in Afghanistan, but Jemaah Islamiah’s leaders decided to seek a location closer to home. Hundreds of militants, mainly Indonesians, slipped into the Philippines by fishing boat and other vessels through unregulated borders and trained at the main Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp. That site was destroyed by government troops during an offensive in mid-2000.
That would be Camp Abubakar, IIRC.
What officials did not know was that a new camp — Jabal Qubah — was set up almost immediately. Rifqi told interrogators that groups of 15 to 20 Indonesians have been attending 18-month training courses at the new site on the forested slopes of Mount Cararao in Maguindanao province, according to the interrogation summary and intelligence officials. There, in a few huts, Indonesian instructors have been teaching Indonesian recruits how to build bombs, fire weapons and read maps. Physical training and religious studies are part of the program.
NYT also said that larger numbers of the JI flunkies are training at regular MILF camps back in May. My guess would be that those are the cannon fodder and that those who are sent to Jabal Qubah are officer corps material. No doubt Eid Kabalu will be along any minute now to issue pious denials.
The camp, several hours’ walking distance from a Philippine rebel base, has operated under the protection of a rebel commander, identified by an intelligence official as Gordon Syaifullah. The training weapons were provided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces, according to the interrogation. Jemaah Islamiah members in Indonesia financed the camp by transferring money through ATMs. Including the instructors, about 30 militants — all Indonesians — have been training at the site, Rifqi told investigators. "Our intelligence tells us because they know the military is on their trail, some may have left," said Ermita, the defense secretary. He added that about 20 Indonesian militants from several locations had fled the country in recent weeks, leaving about 30. Indonesian police agree that militants who trained in the Philippines have been returning to Indonesia.
"Too late, LeGume. The bird has fled."
Although security officials said they had learned of no specific attack planned for the Philippines, they were worried about the prospect of a bombing in the period from the current month of Ramadan through Christmas and New Year’s. In December 2000, 22 people died in Manila in a series of blasts that police later attributed to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Jemaah Islamiah. Rifqi coordinated logistics for those attacks, a senior police official said. Military commanders in Mindanao are planning a strike against the camp, security officials said. But senior Philippine officials, concerned that this could disrupt a four-month-old cease-fire with the rebels and undermine peace talks, have yet to approve the operation.
Makes you wonder if that's the reason MILF's so interested in peace talks at the moment, doesn't it. And they don't seem to be going anywhere...
Any offensive "should be surgical and not shotgun. There’s something very important to protect here. That’s the peace process," said a Philippine military official.
And now that this has been published in a major Western newspaper, my guess is that Cararao will already be cleaned out by the time that the military gets there and JI will just set up shop somewhere else.
Rebel leaders piously deny that their forces are providing sanctuary to Jemaah Islamiah militants... More to the point, Philippine and Western officials say, is that the Front’s leadership cannot control all its local commanders, some of whom maintain ties with Indonesian militants. The Front’s chairman, Al Haj Murad, is struggling to consolidate his authority after replacing Hashim Salamat, who died after a heart attack in July, Philippine and Western officials said.
Uh-huh. Murad has this huge militia force reckoned in the low thousands, does he not? Why does he allow this kind of insubordination when there is a very good chance that these type of antics could bring the US down on his head before ever gets to make himself king of Mindanao?
In fact, Murad had ordered his followers to evict all Jemaah Islamiah militants from the training camp, a Philippine intelligence official said. But Murad lacks the organizational and religious standing of Salamat, who was an Islamic scholar trained in Egypt, officials said.
Um, Salamat was the one who set up the ties with international terrorist groups to begin with ...
Ermita, the defense secretary, said of the report that the rebels had disassociated themselves from the terrorists: "We take that with a grain of salt. It seems the local commander doesn’t believe in negotiations and doesn’t necessarily follow orders from Haji Murad."
Or it could be that Murad and Kabalu are lying, a feat of diplomatic subtlety that appears unfathomable to the Manila elites.
Security officials point to mixed signals being sent by the rebels. They said a commander in Lanao del Sur province in Mindanao gave sanctuary to the fugitive Jemaah Islamiah bomb-making expert Fathur Rahman Ghozi after he escaped from a Manila prison in July. But security officials said that rebel sources also provided information to the government about Ghozi’s whereabouts before he was tracked down and shot dead by security forces in Mindanao last month.
The bounty might have had something to do that. Most of these commanders are generally bandits in Abu Sayyaf or the Pentagon Gang when they aren’t in the jihad business, so it’s not like they wouldn’t sell out one of their own for profit. Nobody ever said there was honor among these thieves ...
A Philippine intelligence official also confirmed that Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, Jemaah Islamiah’s operations chief arrested in Thailand in August, told his U.S. interrogators that he had sent money to a Moro Islamic Liberation Front contact a month earlier for an attack in the Philippines. But the intelligence official warned that Hambali might have been lying.
But there is far more of a likelihood that he was telling the truth ...
Ermita said the Philippine government was preparing to provide rebel leaders with a list of criminals and Indonesian terrorists believed to be in areas under their control. Under an agreement last year, the Front is required to "neutralize, interdict and isolate" so-called lawless elements
And they’ve done such a good job at it, too.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-11-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=21329