Philippines - Terror Trail
September 2003 - 21'38" min
Fishermen
Music
00:00
Williams: As dusk falls over the Southern Philippines fishermen heave to for another night on the Sulu Sea.
00:12
For centuries boats like these - and the basnigeros who’ve worked them - have crossed Asia’s watery borders to eek out a living.
Skipper of boat Skipper: We make about 100 pesos each a catch – so that’s a few hundred a week—maybe 500. It’s hard work… we don’t earn much.
00:32
Boats on sea
Williams: But a decade ago these boats returned with a more lucrative and deadly catch - Muslim militants who’d fought in Afghanistan – including those who would form the region’s most feared group - Jema’ah Islamiyah. This is terror’s transit route and it’s still being used today.
00:44
For the first time JI speaks out from militant camps here in the southern Philippines and we reveal how open sea borders, government corruption, and a network of support are allowing Muslim militants to move freely across the frontiers of Asia.
01:10
Even if you had the U.S. seventh fleet in there you couldn’t control the area, you just couldn’t.
01:35
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator I mean unless you literally stop everyone and question him and you will go bananas because there will be thousands going back and forth every day.
01:41
Southern Philippines
Williams: Politically, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are separate independent states, but geographically this archipelago has hidden links. The southern Philippines island of Mindanao flows to its neighbours through a chain of islands that for hundreds of years has been a Muslim trading route.A militant haven known for the ferocity of its Islamic gunmen is at the heart of these islands - Sulu – and it’s here that we start our journey.
01:55
Music
Sulu
Williams: From the air these islands look idyllic – but Sulu’s main town Jolo is known for two things -- smuggling and kidnapping, especially by the militant group the Abu Sayyaf. So while here we’re ordered to stay at military headquarters. Our guardian is it’s commanding officer Colonel Alexander Yapching.
02:34
Jeep leaves base
Williams: Leaving base is only with full security – but it’s as much for them as it is for us. These are Christian soldiers in a predominantly Muslim region.
03:04
Registration for elections
More Abu Sayyaf militants have been caught here in town than in the hills – so even at the registration for local elections the army can’t be sure who is friend and who is foe.
03:17
Yapching: The military cannot get the real report -- not because the people are not supportive to us, to the military, the government -- and not because they are very supportive to that group.
03:33
Yapching
They just want to evade violence or encounters that might happen.
03:44
Noralyn’s home
Williams: But from her home in Jolo, journalist Noralyn Mustapha has spent a lifetime reporting on the militants. She says army abuses have destroyed the people’s trust.
03:51
Noralyn: Because of the so-called military abuses, the unwarranted arrests, the killings.
Williams: Why do the Abu Sayyaf have community support?Noralyn: Naturally, because they are of the community. Their families are there they belong to the clans, they’re members of the community and they don’t do the people any harm, in fact they protect the people.
04:02
Williams: It’s this militant environment that’s been infiltrated by foreign fighters including Jema’ah Islamiyah.
04:28
Yapching
Yapching: When I was still in the intelligence unit, we gathered reports that these people, these terrorists are being supported or being trained by foreign terrorists.
Williams: Here in Jolo?
Yapching: Yes.
04:34
Sulu mountains
Singing
04:52
Abu Sayyaf members in jungle
Williams: Sulu’s mountainous interior provides perfect cover for armed rebellion. The most active here, the Abu Sayyaf, are known for kidnapping and beheading foreigners. But, they say, they’re fighting for autonomy -- their leader calls himself Ahmad.
05:11
Music
Ahmad
Ahmad: We are the sons and grandsons of Muslim fighters. Our aim is not to create chaos but we’ll protect our families and properties from outsiders who are claiming to protect us, but are trying to throw us off this land.
05:40
Abu Sayyaf members in jungle
Williams: It’s in groups like these that foreign members of Jema’ah Islamiyah are both now training themselves and recruiting others.
05:53
From within this camp we have obtained the first statement by an active JI operative.
Mahmud Bobby: I am Bobby Mahmud from Java, Indonesia. We are here in the Philippines to unite armed Muslim fighters. We belong to the group Rabitatul Mujahidin, the armed group of Jema’ah Islamiyah. Our intention is to establish an Islamic nation in South-East Asia.
06:09
Abu Sayyaf camp Williams: Bobby claims to have met Osama bin Laden and insists the arrests of JI’s leaders will not weaken their resolve.
06:46
Mahmud
Mahmud: If you ask what kinds of firepower we have, ours can make you deaf and blind. Our group is not affected by the arrests and death of our martyrs. God is great! God is great! God is great!
06:54
Sulu
Williams: JI is not operating here in isolation. Sulu is now the base for at least 3000 militants from several groups with strong ties to the Middle East.
07:15
Abu Sayyaf members
Osmena: Whether they’re JI or whether they’re Abu Sayyaf or whether they’re MILF or MNLF, they’re really one homogenous group
07:35
Williams: Opposition Senator Sergio Osmena is an anti-corruption campaigner and specialist on the militant south.Osmena: The United States military did recruit many, many, many young Filipino Muslims to fight in the Afghan war.
07:44
Osmena And when that war was over these guys came here, but they had been trained and they converted into local Muslim insurgents and later on, some groups splintered off and just became bandits and kidnapping syndicates like the Abu Sayyaf.
Music
07:53
Jolo hospital
Williams: To see why the militant message resonates here – you just have to visit Jolo’s hospital.
08:30
Music
Williams: Even compared to the poorest Christian village – staff say the shortage of medicines, equipment and beds mean it’s far worse for children here.
08:39
Duty doctor Radan Ikabala says Muslim families are kept poor by army operations and the increasing Christian domination of the local economy.
08:55
RadanSuper: Dr. Radan Ikabala
Radan: Every day there are military operations in the mountains, so these people cannot get to the fruits the mangosteens, durians, coconuts because of those operations.
Williams: How do local Muslims feel about the services. They can’t get their fish, they can’t get treated at hospital.
Radan: Depressed.
Williams: Angry?
Nadan: The young ones are mostly angry.
09:09
Mosque
Williams: Not surprisingly then, many of Sulu’s young seek meaning at the Mosque. Among them, 22 year old Sharif Harrin Abu Bakar. After prayers Sharif joins a Koranic study group called Jema’ah Tabligh.
09:36
Sharif
Sharif: Jema’ah Tabligh is just duty. We’re just working for the duty of being a Muslim.
Williams: Often schooled by radical missionaries from Pakistan and India,most of these young men have bachelor degrees, but no work.
09:56
Young man
Young man: We do not have work at this point in time, so we embrace our time in this work. So our mission is to connect with him, we are concentrating on the hereafter.
Noralyn: They feel powerless they feel disillusioned they feel alienated and then here comes the leader who tells them we can bring about change.
10:13
Noralyn
Who knows how to conceptualise a kind of ideology that is based on a very powerful unifying faactor, which is religion.
10:38
Port village
Williams: Jolo’s port reveals the ease with which foreign preachers and JI operatives alike can move in to this region.Thousands of so-called pump boats ply these open straits - a security risk the military admits it cannot control.
10:58
Yapching: There are lots of sizes of pump boats – pump boats that carry a maximum of eight personnel -- and there are also bigger pump boats than can accommodate up to thirty passengers.
Navy boat
Williams: And are they faster than the navy?Yapching: Yes – but sometimes it’s not the mobility that is the problem. The real problem is how to detect and distinguish them from any ordinary sea-farers.
11:35
Patrol boat
Williams: Jolo’s single aging patrol boat is barely able leave port – let alone chase fast craft on the high seas.Today it intercepts a small ferry, mainly for our camera.But at times these navy vessels are deployed not for security, but corrupt personal profit.
11:50
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator Osmena: The equipment of the navy is used to smuggle by senior officers of the navy. So we have very few vessels and they’re used for private gain. So you’ve got even less vessels patrolling the area
12:21
So you’ve got a practically open border between the Philippines and Malaysia, the Philippines and north Borneo. Once they get into this country they’ve got free rein they can go anywhere that they want and they won’t be stopped.
Ferry approaches Zamboanga
Williams: On mainland Mindanao Zamboanga is an international port through which Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians can all easily pass.
12:53
Osmena: You can’t tell the difference. They’re of the same ethnic group, they all speak the same language.
Osmena And so how do you block or interdict anybody who’s coming in when they come in dressed like everybody else and speak the same dialect.
13:18
Ferry
Williams: Twice a week the Donica Joy ferries thousands between Zamboanga and Sandakan in Malaysian Borneo – all via the militant haven of Jolo.
13:28
This is now the known route of many foreign fighters moving to Muslim training camps in Mindanao. Passports are given a cursory check at best - but that doesn’t mean much.
13:43
For prosecutor Ricardo Cabaron the local cocktail of guns and corruption makes this wild west frontier
Cabaron: People travelling from these places have easy access.
14:11
Cabaron
So long as they have money and they can afford to hire these fast sea craft, they can travel to and fro without even them presenting their passports if they can evade and avoid authorities.
MILF gathering
Williams: Mindanao’s open coast has enabled the survival of Asia’s biggest and longest running Muslim insurgency – the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. When we were here five years ago, its main base at Camp Abu Bakar was in full swing, a place that trained thousands of Filipino guerillas. But according to court testimony and the Philippines security chief, Camp Abu Bakar also trained JI fighters, including some of the Bali bombers. –
14:33
ReyesSuper: Angelo ReyesNational Defence Secretary
Reyes: Camp Abu Bakar is the veritable training ground for regional terrorism.
Williams: Including JI? Reyes: Yes. Yhey were really grooming it to be the centre of training for JI in the region.
15:16
MILF
Williams: The army has raided the main camp - but with 12,000 guerillas, the MILF have regrouped for what they insist is a legitimate struggle for Muslim rights.
15:33
Its military commander - Al-Haj Murad is now the group’s supreme leader. He denies organisational links with JI, but admits its fighters could have been here.Murad: There have been visitors coming to Camp Abu Bakar, but these are not going there for training they are just mere visitors.
Murad We opened the door for any visitor coming to Camp Abu Bakar and we don’t distinguish whether this is from Jema’ah …because actually all this Jema’ah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda, all these groups came only after the september 11 attack in New York. Nobody knows who is Jema’ah Islamiyah nobody knows who is al-Qaeda until the september 11 attack.
16:04
MILF Camp
Williams: That’s the problem isn’t it that all these people are saying they trained here in MILF camps so it looks like the MILF has been training JI..Murad: It is possible that
16:32
MuradSuper: Al-Haj MuradMilitary Commander, MILF
some of our men have some personal relations with some members of Jema’ah Islamiyah, but these on the label of personal relations. As far as organisationally, there is no linkage between Jema’ah Islamiyah.Williams: Given what happened with Bali, do you regret the fact that MILF has had this personal contact with JI?Murad: Maybe some of our people might have known some member of the Jema’ah Islamiyah while they were in Afghanistan, but we never co-operated with them in any manner; we have no relationship whatsoever. And as far as we are concerned, we condemn such activities like what happened in Bali. We strongly condemn. And we declare that this is un-Islamic and we sympathise very much with the victims of this bombing.
16:42
MILF members
Williams: So far the United States has not proscribed the MILF as a terror group – but any insurgency is now a potential target for JI.
17:53
Reyes
Reyes: We must be worried about continued exploitation by both JI and al-Qaeda.
18:04
Village The region is a natural migration area for terrorists because a lot of pressure ahs been put on the terrorists, the international terrorists, after the Afghan war. They would hope to find more hospitable areas where terrorism can survive and grow more easily and the South-East Asian region is can offer that any time.
18:17
MILF
Williams: With the US acting as mediator, Murad is now leading efforts for a lasting peace deal with Manila, but again terror’s true allies in the Philippines appear to include government corruption.
18:45
Army officers
Music
19:03
Williams: In the early hours of July 27, 296 officers and men from the Philippines armed forces took over a part of Manila’s business district.
Their main grievances - poor pay, poor conditions and most disturbingly - that their senior officers are selling arms and ammunition to the same Muslim guerrillas they’re fighting -- a charge confirmed by the MILF.
19:18
Murad: In Philippines, weapons can be bought any place. It is just like buying fish in the market. 19:37
Murad We have been buying firearms, although we don’t distinguish whether it’s coming from the military or anywhere, but locally we are buying firearms, and it can be bought from civilians, it can be bought from the military
19:50
Osmena: They’re sold to the Abu Sayyaf, they’re sold to the MILF they’re sold to the MNLF.
20:11
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator
So I mean these are not individual types of sales, small time retail type – this is wholesale.
20:18
Children in village
Music
Williams: For as long as that level of corruption continues in the Philippines, there’s little hope of an end to Islamic insurgency here.Noralyn: That will make their so-called fight against terrorism a never, never ending saga.
20:35
NoralynSuper: Noralyn MustaphaJournalist
It’s like you’re filling up a bottle with water that has a hole in the bottom. Okay. So you can never fill up that bottle.
20:56
Ferry
Williams: Further afield we’re told the arrests of Hambali and the Bali bombers go far in crushing Jema’ah Islamiyah. But with its open borders, militant camps and government corruption – the Philippines remains one of the most resilient breeding grounds of Asia’s Islamic terror.
21:11
TERROR TRAIL
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Geoffrey Lye
Sound: Kate Graham
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley
(Ref: 1792)
September 2003 - 21'38" min
Fishermen
Music
00:00
Williams: As dusk falls over the Southern Philippines fishermen heave to for another night on the Sulu Sea.
00:12
For centuries boats like these - and the basnigeros who’ve worked them - have crossed Asia’s watery borders to eek out a living.
Skipper of boat Skipper: We make about 100 pesos each a catch – so that’s a few hundred a week—maybe 500. It’s hard work… we don’t earn much.
00:32
Boats on sea
Williams: But a decade ago these boats returned with a more lucrative and deadly catch - Muslim militants who’d fought in Afghanistan – including those who would form the region’s most feared group - Jema’ah Islamiyah. This is terror’s transit route and it’s still being used today.
00:44
For the first time JI speaks out from militant camps here in the southern Philippines and we reveal how open sea borders, government corruption, and a network of support are allowing Muslim militants to move freely across the frontiers of Asia.
01:10
Even if you had the U.S. seventh fleet in there you couldn’t control the area, you just couldn’t.
01:35
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator I mean unless you literally stop everyone and question him and you will go bananas because there will be thousands going back and forth every day.
01:41
Southern Philippines
Williams: Politically, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are separate independent states, but geographically this archipelago has hidden links. The southern Philippines island of Mindanao flows to its neighbours through a chain of islands that for hundreds of years has been a Muslim trading route.A militant haven known for the ferocity of its Islamic gunmen is at the heart of these islands - Sulu – and it’s here that we start our journey.
01:55
Music
Sulu
Williams: From the air these islands look idyllic – but Sulu’s main town Jolo is known for two things -- smuggling and kidnapping, especially by the militant group the Abu Sayyaf. So while here we’re ordered to stay at military headquarters. Our guardian is it’s commanding officer Colonel Alexander Yapching.
02:34
Jeep leaves base
Williams: Leaving base is only with full security – but it’s as much for them as it is for us. These are Christian soldiers in a predominantly Muslim region.
03:04
Registration for elections
More Abu Sayyaf militants have been caught here in town than in the hills – so even at the registration for local elections the army can’t be sure who is friend and who is foe.
03:17
Yapching: The military cannot get the real report -- not because the people are not supportive to us, to the military, the government -- and not because they are very supportive to that group.
03:33
Yapching
They just want to evade violence or encounters that might happen.
03:44
Noralyn’s home
Williams: But from her home in Jolo, journalist Noralyn Mustapha has spent a lifetime reporting on the militants. She says army abuses have destroyed the people’s trust.
03:51
Noralyn: Because of the so-called military abuses, the unwarranted arrests, the killings.
Williams: Why do the Abu Sayyaf have community support?Noralyn: Naturally, because they are of the community. Their families are there they belong to the clans, they’re members of the community and they don’t do the people any harm, in fact they protect the people.
04:02
Williams: It’s this militant environment that’s been infiltrated by foreign fighters including Jema’ah Islamiyah.
04:28
Yapching
Yapching: When I was still in the intelligence unit, we gathered reports that these people, these terrorists are being supported or being trained by foreign terrorists.
Williams: Here in Jolo?
Yapching: Yes.
04:34
Sulu mountains
Singing
04:52
Abu Sayyaf members in jungle
Williams: Sulu’s mountainous interior provides perfect cover for armed rebellion. The most active here, the Abu Sayyaf, are known for kidnapping and beheading foreigners. But, they say, they’re fighting for autonomy -- their leader calls himself Ahmad.
05:11
Music
Ahmad
Ahmad: We are the sons and grandsons of Muslim fighters. Our aim is not to create chaos but we’ll protect our families and properties from outsiders who are claiming to protect us, but are trying to throw us off this land.
05:40
Abu Sayyaf members in jungle
Williams: It’s in groups like these that foreign members of Jema’ah Islamiyah are both now training themselves and recruiting others.
05:53
From within this camp we have obtained the first statement by an active JI operative.
Mahmud Bobby: I am Bobby Mahmud from Java, Indonesia. We are here in the Philippines to unite armed Muslim fighters. We belong to the group Rabitatul Mujahidin, the armed group of Jema’ah Islamiyah. Our intention is to establish an Islamic nation in South-East Asia.
06:09
Abu Sayyaf camp Williams: Bobby claims to have met Osama bin Laden and insists the arrests of JI’s leaders will not weaken their resolve.
06:46
Mahmud
Mahmud: If you ask what kinds of firepower we have, ours can make you deaf and blind. Our group is not affected by the arrests and death of our martyrs. God is great! God is great! God is great!
06:54
Sulu
Williams: JI is not operating here in isolation. Sulu is now the base for at least 3000 militants from several groups with strong ties to the Middle East.
07:15
Abu Sayyaf members
Osmena: Whether they’re JI or whether they’re Abu Sayyaf or whether they’re MILF or MNLF, they’re really one homogenous group
07:35
Williams: Opposition Senator Sergio Osmena is an anti-corruption campaigner and specialist on the militant south.Osmena: The United States military did recruit many, many, many young Filipino Muslims to fight in the Afghan war.
07:44
Osmena And when that war was over these guys came here, but they had been trained and they converted into local Muslim insurgents and later on, some groups splintered off and just became bandits and kidnapping syndicates like the Abu Sayyaf.
Music
07:53
Jolo hospital
Williams: To see why the militant message resonates here – you just have to visit Jolo’s hospital.
08:30
Music
Williams: Even compared to the poorest Christian village – staff say the shortage of medicines, equipment and beds mean it’s far worse for children here.
08:39
Duty doctor Radan Ikabala says Muslim families are kept poor by army operations and the increasing Christian domination of the local economy.
08:55
RadanSuper: Dr. Radan Ikabala
Radan: Every day there are military operations in the mountains, so these people cannot get to the fruits the mangosteens, durians, coconuts because of those operations.
Williams: How do local Muslims feel about the services. They can’t get their fish, they can’t get treated at hospital.
Radan: Depressed.
Williams: Angry?
Nadan: The young ones are mostly angry.
09:09
Mosque
Williams: Not surprisingly then, many of Sulu’s young seek meaning at the Mosque. Among them, 22 year old Sharif Harrin Abu Bakar. After prayers Sharif joins a Koranic study group called Jema’ah Tabligh.
09:36
Sharif
Sharif: Jema’ah Tabligh is just duty. We’re just working for the duty of being a Muslim.
Williams: Often schooled by radical missionaries from Pakistan and India,most of these young men have bachelor degrees, but no work.
09:56
Young man
Young man: We do not have work at this point in time, so we embrace our time in this work. So our mission is to connect with him, we are concentrating on the hereafter.
Noralyn: They feel powerless they feel disillusioned they feel alienated and then here comes the leader who tells them we can bring about change.
10:13
Noralyn
Who knows how to conceptualise a kind of ideology that is based on a very powerful unifying faactor, which is religion.
10:38
Port village
Williams: Jolo’s port reveals the ease with which foreign preachers and JI operatives alike can move in to this region.Thousands of so-called pump boats ply these open straits - a security risk the military admits it cannot control.
10:58
Yapching: There are lots of sizes of pump boats – pump boats that carry a maximum of eight personnel -- and there are also bigger pump boats than can accommodate up to thirty passengers.
Navy boat
Williams: And are they faster than the navy?Yapching: Yes – but sometimes it’s not the mobility that is the problem. The real problem is how to detect and distinguish them from any ordinary sea-farers.
11:35
Patrol boat
Williams: Jolo’s single aging patrol boat is barely able leave port – let alone chase fast craft on the high seas.Today it intercepts a small ferry, mainly for our camera.But at times these navy vessels are deployed not for security, but corrupt personal profit.
11:50
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator Osmena: The equipment of the navy is used to smuggle by senior officers of the navy. So we have very few vessels and they’re used for private gain. So you’ve got even less vessels patrolling the area
12:21
So you’ve got a practically open border between the Philippines and Malaysia, the Philippines and north Borneo. Once they get into this country they’ve got free rein they can go anywhere that they want and they won’t be stopped.
Ferry approaches Zamboanga
Williams: On mainland Mindanao Zamboanga is an international port through which Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians can all easily pass.
12:53
Osmena: You can’t tell the difference. They’re of the same ethnic group, they all speak the same language.
Osmena And so how do you block or interdict anybody who’s coming in when they come in dressed like everybody else and speak the same dialect.
13:18
Ferry
Williams: Twice a week the Donica Joy ferries thousands between Zamboanga and Sandakan in Malaysian Borneo – all via the militant haven of Jolo.
13:28
This is now the known route of many foreign fighters moving to Muslim training camps in Mindanao. Passports are given a cursory check at best - but that doesn’t mean much.
13:43
For prosecutor Ricardo Cabaron the local cocktail of guns and corruption makes this wild west frontier
Cabaron: People travelling from these places have easy access.
14:11
Cabaron
So long as they have money and they can afford to hire these fast sea craft, they can travel to and fro without even them presenting their passports if they can evade and avoid authorities.
MILF gathering
Williams: Mindanao’s open coast has enabled the survival of Asia’s biggest and longest running Muslim insurgency – the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. When we were here five years ago, its main base at Camp Abu Bakar was in full swing, a place that trained thousands of Filipino guerillas. But according to court testimony and the Philippines security chief, Camp Abu Bakar also trained JI fighters, including some of the Bali bombers. –
14:33
ReyesSuper: Angelo ReyesNational Defence Secretary
Reyes: Camp Abu Bakar is the veritable training ground for regional terrorism.
Williams: Including JI? Reyes: Yes. Yhey were really grooming it to be the centre of training for JI in the region.
15:16
MILF
Williams: The army has raided the main camp - but with 12,000 guerillas, the MILF have regrouped for what they insist is a legitimate struggle for Muslim rights.
15:33
Its military commander - Al-Haj Murad is now the group’s supreme leader. He denies organisational links with JI, but admits its fighters could have been here.Murad: There have been visitors coming to Camp Abu Bakar, but these are not going there for training they are just mere visitors.
Murad We opened the door for any visitor coming to Camp Abu Bakar and we don’t distinguish whether this is from Jema’ah …because actually all this Jema’ah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda, all these groups came only after the september 11 attack in New York. Nobody knows who is Jema’ah Islamiyah nobody knows who is al-Qaeda until the september 11 attack.
16:04
MILF Camp
Williams: That’s the problem isn’t it that all these people are saying they trained here in MILF camps so it looks like the MILF has been training JI..Murad: It is possible that
16:32
MuradSuper: Al-Haj MuradMilitary Commander, MILF
some of our men have some personal relations with some members of Jema’ah Islamiyah, but these on the label of personal relations. As far as organisationally, there is no linkage between Jema’ah Islamiyah.Williams: Given what happened with Bali, do you regret the fact that MILF has had this personal contact with JI?Murad: Maybe some of our people might have known some member of the Jema’ah Islamiyah while they were in Afghanistan, but we never co-operated with them in any manner; we have no relationship whatsoever. And as far as we are concerned, we condemn such activities like what happened in Bali. We strongly condemn. And we declare that this is un-Islamic and we sympathise very much with the victims of this bombing.
16:42
MILF members
Williams: So far the United States has not proscribed the MILF as a terror group – but any insurgency is now a potential target for JI.
17:53
Reyes
Reyes: We must be worried about continued exploitation by both JI and al-Qaeda.
18:04
Village The region is a natural migration area for terrorists because a lot of pressure ahs been put on the terrorists, the international terrorists, after the Afghan war. They would hope to find more hospitable areas where terrorism can survive and grow more easily and the South-East Asian region is can offer that any time.
18:17
MILF
Williams: With the US acting as mediator, Murad is now leading efforts for a lasting peace deal with Manila, but again terror’s true allies in the Philippines appear to include government corruption.
18:45
Army officers
Music
19:03
Williams: In the early hours of July 27, 296 officers and men from the Philippines armed forces took over a part of Manila’s business district.
Their main grievances - poor pay, poor conditions and most disturbingly - that their senior officers are selling arms and ammunition to the same Muslim guerrillas they’re fighting -- a charge confirmed by the MILF.
19:18
Murad: In Philippines, weapons can be bought any place. It is just like buying fish in the market. 19:37
Murad We have been buying firearms, although we don’t distinguish whether it’s coming from the military or anywhere, but locally we are buying firearms, and it can be bought from civilians, it can be bought from the military
19:50
Osmena: They’re sold to the Abu Sayyaf, they’re sold to the MILF they’re sold to the MNLF.
20:11
OsmenaSuper: Sergio OsmenaOpposition senator
So I mean these are not individual types of sales, small time retail type – this is wholesale.
20:18
Children in village
Music
Williams: For as long as that level of corruption continues in the Philippines, there’s little hope of an end to Islamic insurgency here.Noralyn: That will make their so-called fight against terrorism a never, never ending saga.
20:35
NoralynSuper: Noralyn MustaphaJournalist
It’s like you’re filling up a bottle with water that has a hole in the bottom. Okay. So you can never fill up that bottle.
20:56
Ferry
Williams: Further afield we’re told the arrests of Hambali and the Bali bombers go far in crushing Jema’ah Islamiyah. But with its open borders, militant camps and government corruption – the Philippines remains one of the most resilient breeding grounds of Asia’s Islamic terror.
21:11
TERROR TRAIL
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Geoffrey Lye
Sound: Kate Graham
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley
(Ref: 1792)