After two years of U.S.-backed assaults, the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf is reviving itself as the Islamic Movement, returning to fundamentalist roots and plotting urban bombings to lure recruits and foreign funding, Philippine officials say.
``It's like a last hurrah. They want to say they're still around and that they're not irrelevant,'' Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.
The Muslim extremist group, with a 13-year history of kidnappings and beheadings, appears to be trying to shed its image as a band of criminals to focus more on bold attacks by radical Islamists, authorities said.
The group claimed it planted a bomb aboard a ferry that was gutted by a Feb. 27 fire after a loud explosion, killing 100 people. Investigators have not determined the fire's cause.
The claim was followed by the arrests a month later of six suspected Abu Sayyaf guerrillas with a stash of TNT. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said one suspect admitted putting a bomb on the ferry.
This month, Abu Sayyaf members led a prison breakout by 53 suspected militants. The incident embarrassed Arroyo, who has claimed progress against criminal groups as she faces a re-election vote in a month. Polls show her in a dead heat with action film star Fernando Poe Jr. Abu Sayyaf is now trying to attract recruits and funding from foreign Muslim organizations like the Southeast Asian group Jemaah Islamiyah, security officials said.
More attacks
Two years ago, Arroyo allowed US troops to train and arm Filipinos said to be fighting Abu Sayyaf. The US assaults whittled the guerrillas from a few thousand to fewer than 400. The group then turned to urban bomb plots, officials said.
``They don't need an army. It just takes a man to mingle in a crowd, take out a grenade from his pocket and cause trouble,'' Ermita said.
In 2000, Abu Sayyaf factions embarked on two years of mass kidnappings for ransom, taking 140 hostages. Most escaped or were ransomed. Others, including an American tourist, were beheaded.
More recently, the Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for urban at-tacks in Zamboanga, including blasts that killed seven people in department stores and a deadly explosion at a Roman Catholic shrine in October 2002. Abu Sayyaf rebels bombed a roadside eatery there the same month, killing an American Green Beret and two Filipino civilians.
Several former hostages have said Abu Sayyaf members tend to be peasants motivated more by money than religious convictions, though leaders appear committed to the group's Muslim separatist agenda.
The leader of Abu Sayyaf's main faction, Khadaffy Janjalani, seems to be trying to bring the group back to its religious roots.
Janjalani is reviving the group under its little-used alternative name Al Harakatul Al-Islamiyah -- the Islamic Movement -- with recruits trained by foreign and Filipino insurgents in guerrilla warfare, ex-hostages, captured guerrillas and security officials have said.
``They're trying to shed the bandit tag,'' said a senior security official who has monitored Abu Sayyaf for years. The group continues to plan kidnappings to raise money, he said.
Janjalani's faction is based on Basilan and Jolo islands, but reportedly has established links with radical Muslim converts on the main northern island of Luzon.
These northern recruits could use their familiarity with the Christian-populated region, including Manila, to mount attacks, according to a security report.
A family matter
Abu Sayyaf guerrillas arrested last month allegedly belonged to a terror cell that was plotting to bomb the US and Israeli embassies in Manila as well as malls, passenger ships, an oil depot near the presidential palace, a power plant north of the capital, TV stations, hotels, churches and airports, according to the government document. Some of the suspects told investigators they failed to execute the attacks because they were waiting for operational funds.
Janjalani allegedly designated a Filipino emissary to al Qaeda who arranged a visit by three Middle Eastern militants in 2001 who trained recruits in explosives handling and gave $10,000 to Janjalani, the security official said. This emissary, Arshaf Kunting, was arrested in 2001 and turned over to Philippine authorities.
Former hostages reported seeing training activities in Jolo last year by two Indonesians, believed to be from Jemaah Islamiyah, who taught recruits to make bombs set off by cellphones or alarm clocks.
Security officials say one man arrested in the Manila plot received such training.
Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic insurgent groups are based in the impoverished south, home to a Muslim minority in this pre-dominantly Roman Catholic nation.
Loosely organized in the early 1990s by Janjalani's brother Abdurajak, Abu Sayyaf included a motley band of radicals who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets as well as disgruntled members of other separatist groups. Abu Sayyaf proclaimed its goal as turning a string of southern islands into an Islamic enclave.
After Abdurajak Janjalani died in a 1998 firefight, the teenage Janjalani, who speaks Arabic and attended an Islamic school, succeeded his brother despite reservations of some older commanders. One ranking Abu Sayyaf leader, now captured, recalls him as a ``young boy who prepared coffee for us,'' a security official said.
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