A report by a Brussels-based think tank says Jemaah Islamiah (JI) is using connections with Filipino Muslim rebels to train replacements for members arrested after the Bali bombings. The International Crisis Group (ICG) says graduates from camps in the southern Philippines have revitalised JI ranks at home in Indonesia.
They have launched terror attacks in the Philippines itself and breathed new life into the Abu Sayyaf militants.
| Abu Sayyaf provides shelter and security for the camps, JI provides funding and training in advanced booming techniques. |
The ICG report says the Philippines is crucial to the evolving terrorist threat in South-East Asia. Since the mid-1990s, it has become a main training ground for JI and other Islamic extremist groups.
The report says weak policing, especially in the south, "continues to make it a country of convenience for ’lone wolf’ operators and cells of various jihadist organisations." Such groups, including Al Qaeda in the past, "rely on the enabling environment of long-term separatist insurgencies in the southern Philippines". The report says the most serious threat "is the possibility of international terrorism and domestic insurgency becoming ever more closely interwoven and mutually reinforcing".
The continuing connections between JI and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) could also endanger the peace process in the southern Philippines, says the report. "While the MILF leadership continues to deny any ties, all evidence points to ongoing operational and training links," it says.
| Which the Philippine government pretends it doesn't see. |
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