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| Southeast Asia |
| Chasing Abu Sayyaf Into the Mountains |
| 2004-12-08 |
| December 8, 2004: The government believes that the most senior Abu Sayyaf leader, Khaddafy Janjalani, is hading on Mindanao island, in an area controlled by the MILF. Janjalani is not being protected by the MILF, but at the same time the army can't go into the area without risking a major fight with the thousands of MILF gunmen in the area. The MILF does not want go looking for Abu Sayyaf members in its area, because it doesn't look good for Moslems to fight Moslems. It's also thought that Janjalani bribed local MILF leaders to leave him and his escort alone. December 5, 2004: Police in the southern Philippines caught five Abu Sayyaf members in Zamboanga City. One of the men, Mahar Gahan, also known by his guerrilla name Abu Muslim, was killed. Gahan was an Abu Sayyaf leader in the area. Abu Sayyaf has been hunted intensively for so long that the organization has been reduced to a number of small, largely independent, groups. The rebels rely largely on criminal activities to support themselves. Since the Abu Sayyaf is a splinter group of the larger MILF, they get no cooperation from there. Although Abu Sayyaf professes a more hard core Islamic radicalism than MILF, few Islamic radicals in the region want to associate with Abu Sayyaf because the group operates too much like a bunch of bandits. |
| Posted by:Steve |