Tagged: Philippines

October 18th, 2018 Related News

India, Pakistan, Philippines among 5 countries with most terrorist attacks in 2017

(GULF NEWS) — Almost 59 per cent of all terrorist attacks in 2017 took place in five Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, a US report said Thursday. The other three countries, according to the The annual State Department Country Report on Terrorism, include Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines.

The total number of terrorist attacks worldwide last year decreased by 23 per cent. Similarly, the total deaths due to terrorist violence decreased by 27 per cent, according to the report.

The decline in terrorist violence was largely due to dramatically fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Nathan Sales, State Department Coordinator of Counter-terrorism, said during a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

“Although terrorist attacks took place in 100 countries in 2017, they were concentrated geographically. Fifty-nine percent of all attacks took place in five countries. Those are Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Similarly, 70 per cent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries, and those are Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria,” he said.

The report, he added, notes a number of major strides that the United States and its allies made to defeat and degrade terrorist organizations in 2017. “We worked with allies and partners around the world to expand information sharing, improve aviation security, enhance law enforcement and rule of law capacities, and to counter terrorist radicalization with a focus on preventing recruitment and recidivism,” Sales said.

However, despite these many successes, the terrorist landscape grew more complex in 2017, he said. “ISIS [Daesh – the extremist terrorist group], Al-Qaida, and their affiliates have proven to be resilient, determined, and adaptable,” Sales added. He said foreign terrorist fighters were heading home from the war zones in Iraq and Syria or traveling to third countries to join Daesh branches there.

“We also are experiencing an increase in attacks by home-grown terrorists – that is, people who have been inspired by Daesh but have never set foot in Syria or Iraq. We’ve seen Daesh-directed or Daesh-inspired attacks outside the war zone on soft targets and in public spaces like hotels, tourist resorts, and cultural sites,” Sales said.

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May 5th, 2018 Breaking News

Former ISIS Fighter: Islamic State Will Return With More Rigid Ideology

(OANN) — A former ISIS fighter issues a warning to the U.S. the ideology of the Islamic State will not go away.

Thursday, a Belgian man claiming to be one of the first foreign members of ISIS, gave an interview from a terrorist prison in Syria.

He warned of continued plots and splinter groups that will arise from the now defeated Muslim caliphate in Syria.

He said fighters were already planning to organize break away terror groups before the fall of Raqqa.

Reports show, many displaced ISIS fighters from Syria and Iraq are now moving to areas of the Philippines, where one in five residents are Muslim.

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July 3rd, 2017 Related News

Marawi battle only latest chapter in long, fraught history of Islam in Philippines

(REAR VISION) By Annabelle Quince and Patrick Carey

The occupation of the Philippine city of Marawi by Islamic militants has been a regular fixture in the news cycle for over a month now.

The recent shooting of ABC journalist Adam Harvey by militants linked to ISIS brought it brutally close to home for many Australians, but conflicts of this nature are not a new phenomenon in the Philippines.

Islam has been a potent force in the country since the 1400s, predating even Christianity’s arrival.

So, as tensions in the predominantly Catholic nation are reaching boiling point, we take stock of the long and volatile history of Islam in the Philippines.

Islam’s arrival

Islam officially arrived in the province of Sulu, a small archipelago in the south, in the 13th Century. Some insist it came even earlier with the rise of Arab traders in the 10th Century.

Either way, there were well established sultanates (periods of time when sultans ruled) in Sulu and Mindanao by 1450.

As commentator Victor Taylor, who’s worked in the Muslim majority areas of the Philippines for the last 50 years, puts it:

“The country we know as the Philippines did not come into existence until the end of the 16th Century. So Islam, not just as a religion but as a political force … antedated the Philippines by a century or more.”

Patricio Abinales, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii, says the sultanates were relatively civilly advanced for the time.

“The sultans that dominated this period spoke six languages, were trading with China and familiar with other sultanates in the maritime South-east Asia region,” he says.

But Filipino writer and journalist Criselda Yabes argues this progress came at a cost. “They were an economic superpower, they were wealthy, because of slavery,” Yabes says.

Invasion by the Spanish

When the Spanish arrived in 1521, they quickly became established in the central and northern regions of what is now the Philippines. They faced strong resistance though, when they attempted to move south.

As Dr. Abinales says, the Spanish were essentially “in a defensive position vis-a-vis the Muslim sultanates, especially because the sultanates were conducting so-called slave raids into central and the northern Philippines very frequently, and the Spanish couldn’t stop it”.

Only towards the latter part of 19th Century did the Spaniards get a foothold in certain Muslim areas — but they never had effective sovereign control.

In fact, it wasn’t until the arrival of the Americans that Sulu and Mindanao fell under foreign control.

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June 27th, 2017 Breaking News

Islamic State jihadist insurgency exploding in the Philippines

(TERROR TRENDS BULLETIN) — The Islamic insurgency in the southern Philippines is taking a turn for the worse as the Islamic State has its sights set on waging violent Jihad there…

The reported presence of foreign jihadists in Mindanao, particularly in Lanao and nearby provinces, is being validated by concerned government agencies, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said.

Esperon issued the statement in response to the series of intelligence information reaching The STAR, claiming that Indonesian and Malaysian jihadists, along with their Middle East counterparts, have entered Mindanao through the country’s southern backdoor.

These foreign jihadists allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are reportedly occupying the former base of the Jemaah Islamiyah at Mt. Cararao in Butig, Lanao Del Sur.

Other reports claimed the foreign jihadists have linked-up with IS-inspired Maute terror group who for more than two weeks has been the subject of massive military and police operations.

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