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Death Toll Grows in Fighting in Philippines
Army battling Muslim Rebels (i.e., murderers and kidnappers) on Island of Jolo
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6937649/
MANILA - The death toll neared 60 in three days of fighting between the Philippine army and two groups of Muslim rebels on the southwestern island of Jolo, the military said on Wednesday.
The military had launched an offensive against militants from Abu Sayyaf, a small group linked to al Qaeda, and renegades from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), said army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Buenaventura Pascual.
Both groups have strongholds in the mountains and jungles of Jolo. The MNLF signed a peace deal in 1996, but some disgruntled members joined Abu Sayyaf and were involved in several cross-border kidnappings in 2000.
Since Monday, we have lost 20 soldiers, but we killed about 40 rebels in our punitive actions, Pascual told reporters.
More than 30 soldiers were wounded, he said.
The violence erupted on Monday when hundreds of rebels ambushed a convoy of soldiers in Patikul town. They also staged attacks in three other areas of Jolo.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is due to restart peace talks with the government in March after breaking away from the MNLF in 1978, said its members were not involved in the clashes on Jolo.
'Peaceful solution'
We remain committed to a peaceful solution, said Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the MILF, the largest Muslim rebel group in this mainly Roman Catholic country.
The clashes on jolo are unlikely to affect talks between the government and the larger MILF set for next month in Kuala Lumpur, although security analysts see the potential for some MILF members to break away as a peace deal draws nearer.
Kabalu said the MILF, mainly based on Mindanao island, had a minimal presence on Jolo. He said the MILF was ignoring calls from other rebel groups to abandon the peace talks and continue fighting for a Muslim state in the southern Philippines.
We respect their position, Kabalu said by phone. We have our own strategy to deal with government.
On Tuesday, Abu Solaiman, an Abu Sayyaf leader, called on the MILF to drop the peace talks being brokered by Malaysia.
To our brothers in the MILF, dont waive our nations honor, dignity and right, Solaiman said in a radio interview. No amount of development can pay for our homelands illegal and immoral occupation or annexation.
Pascual said six more planes and helicopters were deployed to Jolo to provide close air support for the soldiers.
Rebel positions shelled
Army howitzers started shelling rebel positions on Wednesday morning as 3,000 troops staged ground assaults. Helicopters fired rockets and OV-10 planes dropped 500-lb (227-kg) bombs on rebel bunkers, Pascual said.
Abu Sayyaf, estimated to have about 500 fighters, was best known for kidnapping foreigners and Filipinos for ransom until it killed at least 100 people with a bomb on a passenger ferry at the mouth of Manila Bay in February 2004.
The army said the MNLF renegades had joined forces with Abu Sayyaf to put pressure on Manila to transfer the detention of separatist leader Nur Misuari to the southern province of Sulu.
Misuari, a political science professor at a state university, organized the MNLF in 1968.
He was elected governor of a semi-autonomous Muslim region after the 1996 peace agreement, brokered by Indonesia, but staged a rebellion in 2001 after the government refused to support his re-election.
Misuari tried to escape to Malaysia but was deported to the Philippines in January 2002. He is detained at a police camp south of Manila and stands trial on rebellion charges.
-Manila Sends More Troops South; 90 Dead in Fighting
Fri Feb 11, 2005 05:00 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7602549
By Manny Mogato
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine army flew more troops to the remote southern island of Jolo on Friday, the fifth day of fierce fighting with two groups of Muslim rebels, as appeals for a truce by local leaders fell on deaf ears.
The military said nearly 30 soldiers and about 60 rebels had been killed in clashes since Monday. At least 7,000 villagers have poured into Jolo town to escape the fighting.
Lieutenant-General AlbertoBraganza, the most senior commander in the southern Philippines, said it was beyond his authority to contemplate a ceasefire.
"I have a mission to accomplish on the ground," he told reporters. "I will finish what the rebels had started."
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who said on Thursday the operations on Jolo were aimed at "terrorists and criminals," on Friday referred media questions about a truce to the military.
Nearly 4,000 soldiers, including several hundred recent reinforcements, have been fighting about 800 militants from the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group and rogue members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) since a rebel ambush on Monday.
Abu Sayyaf, mainly known for kidnappings, has also been blamed for several bombings, including one that sank a ferry near Manila Bay in February 2004, killing more than 100 people.
After the MNLF signed a peace deal brokered by Indonesia in 1996, some disaffected followers of former separatist leader Nur Misuari formed alliances with Abu Sayyaf.
While the clashes on Jolo are the bloodiest since 2001, when 500 people were killed in a failed uprising led by Misuari, they are unlikely to affect peace talks with the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which broke from the MNLF in 1978.
But Julkipli Wadi, a professor at the University of the Philippines' Institute of Islamic Studies, said there were risks the violence could escalate and threaten the 1996 peace deal that granted autonomy to five Muslim-dominated provinces.
"The government should intervene and facilitate a ceasefire," he said. "The military alone cannot resolve this problem."
"VERY TENSE"
The MILF, expressing concern about the displaced civilians and mounting casualties, offered to help broker a ceasefire.
"We believe we have the modest capacity to do this because we are in a peace negotiation with government and we have an open line with our brothers in the MNLF," Mohaqher Iqbal, the MILF's chief peace negotiator, said in a statement.
The MILF, which has its strongholds on Mindanao island, has said it remains committed to the peace process despite calls this week by an Abu Sayyaf leader to rejoin the war for a Muslim state in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.
Jesus Dureza, the presidential assistant for Mindanao who was sent to oversee relief efforts for civilians on Jolo, said a demand that Misuari be moved from a police camp near Manila to detention on Jolo could only be handled by the courts.
Local Muslim leaders, recalling the burning of most of Jolo town at the height of the secessionist campaign in the 1970s, called for the government to step in.
"The situation here is very tense," said Ulka Ulama, a community leader. "Our national leaders should stop the fighting because the problem might escalate into a full-blown war."
Despite a superiority in numbers, the military is likely to have trouble boxing in the rebels, who often use warrens of caves and thick jungle to escape after hit-and-run attacks.
Security analyst Rex Robles, a retired naval officer, said Arroyo had to "act right away" to end the violence.
"There's no other way to go but peace talks," he said.
It was around 10 a.m. on September 22 when the raid on the pig farm began. Accompanied by fire and sanitation officials, a police team entered the compound at the foot of the extinct volcano Mount Arayat, north of Manila, on the pretext they were conducting a safety inspection. They didn’t find any pigs. What they did uncover, in a hangar larger than a football field, was a raised platform supporting a diesel generator, an industrial chiller and distillation equipment – all for the production of the highly addictive drug methamphetamine. The industrial-sized laboratory, the police report said, was capable of producing at least 200 kilograms a day of meth. Around that time, a kilogram of meth had a street value of $120,000, the police said.
THE CHINA CONNECTION: A drug-control agent guards two Chinese nationals who were arrested during a raid on a meth lab in the northern Philippines in early September. The lab was constructed in a piggery, which helps to disguise the strong smell given off by meth production.
Philippine law enforcement authorities had been alerted to the farm by locals who reported spotting vehicles with “Chinese-looking men” entering at night and leaving before dawn. During the raid, police arrested Hong Wenzheng, a 39-year-old Chinese national from Fujian province who is now in prison awaiting trial. Four other men believed to be Chinese nationals escaped and are the target of a manhunt. The piggery bust points to an uncomfortable truth for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte as he wages his “war on drugs”: The problem he’s fighting is largely made in China, the country he is embracing as a potential ally at the expense of longstanding ties with the United States.
The arrest of Hong, who has pleaded not guilty, added to the ranks of Chinese nationals seized in the Philippines on narcotics charges. Of 77 foreign nationals arrested for meth-related drug offenses between January 2015 and mid-August 2016, nearly two-thirds were Chinese and almost a quarter were Taiwanese or Hong Kong residents, according to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA). Known in the trade as “cooks” and “chemists,” meth production experts are flown into the Philippines from Greater China by drug syndicates to work at labs like the one at Mount Arayat. China isn’t only a source of meth expertise – it is also the biggest source of the meth and of the precursor chemicals used to produce the synthetic drug that are being smuggled into the Philippines, according to local drug enforcement officials. “It’s safe to say that the majority of the meth we have comes from China,” said PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon.
REHAB RIGORS: Drug users exercise at a rehabilitation center in the northern Philippines in October. The Philippines has few treatment facilities.
China’s dominant role in the Philippine meth trade has not dissuaded President Duterte from cozying up to Beijing, even as he declares drugs to be his country’s greatest scourge. Duterte is waging a brutal anti-narcotics campaign that has killed more than 2,000 people and led to the arrest of more than 38,000. Police are investigating some 3,000 more deaths. During a trip to Beijing in October, the Philippine president announced his “separation” from the United States and declared that he had realigned with China, casting doubt on the almost seven-decade alliance between Washington and Manila. The pivot to Beijing has bewildered some drug-control officials at home, who say China’s leaders have provided little help over the years in stemming the flow of drugs into the Philippines.
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