ISIS Recruits Fighters for the Philippines Instead of Syria

A video released by ISIS asks would-be fighters to go to the Philippines instead of Syria and Iraq, the latest sign that the terror group is shifting its recruiting tactics as it loses ground to coalition forces in the Middle East.

The seven-minute, English-language video, released by the official ISIS media operation late last month, includes messages from several fighters in the Southern Philippines, and scenes from battles with government troops near the city of Marawi, including the pillaging of a Catholic church.

One of the fighters calls on Muslims in “East Asia, specifically those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, and Singapore” to migrate and fight alongside the ISIS-linked militants in the Philippines.

A militant identified as “Abul-Yamaan from Marawi” proclaims: “Come forth to the land of jihad. Perform hijrah. Come forth to … Marawi.” – READ MORE </s> A video released by ISIS asks would-be fighters to go to the Philippines instead of Syria and Iraq, the latest sign that the terror group is shifting its recruiting tactics as it loses ground to coalition forces in the Middle East.

The seven-minute, English-language video, released by the official ISIS media operation late last month, includes messages from several fighters in the Southern Philippines, and scenes from battles with government troops near the city of Marawi, including the pillaging of a Catholic church.

One of the fighters calls on Muslims in "East Asia, specifically those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, and Singapore" to migrate and fight alongside the ISIS-linked militants in the Philippines.

A militant identified as "Abul-Yamaan from Marawi" proclaims: "Come forth to the land of jihad. Perform hijrah. Come forth to … Marawi."

U.S. intelligence officials and private sector analysts like Flashpoint Intelligence, which NBC News uses to track terrorist groups, say that Asia has become a new focus for ISIS. The terror group now sees the southern Philippine islands, where a Muslim insurgency has simmered for decades, as the best destination for Islamic militants, and is using videos and social media in both English and languages spoken in the southern Philippines to boast of its exploits and recruit fighters.

"ISIS wants to be seen as global and the Philippines provides them with an opportunity," said a U.S. official.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during an Aug. 1 press conference in Washington that U.S. intelligence is aware ISIS fighters from other countries are operating in Philippines.

"We already see elements of ISIS in the Philippines, as you're aware, gaining a foothold," said Tillerson. "Some of these fighters have gone to the Philippines from Syria and Iraq. We are in conversations with the Philippine government, with Indonesia, with Malaysia, with Singapore, with Australia, as partners to recognize this threat, try to get ahead of this threat."

A senior U.S. counterterrorism official noted that Philippine Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eduardo Ano said in June that among the dead in the continuing battle for Marawi were Saudis, Pakistanis, Malaysians and Indonesians. The official said there's no reason to doubt Ano's assessment.

Related: U.S. May Begin Airstrikes Against ISIS in Philippines

There are three major ISIS-aligned Islamist groups on the island of Mindanao — Maute, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), and Abu Sayyaf, formerly an al Qaeda offshoot. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon the ISIS emir of Southeast Asia in 2016.

The allied pro-ISIS groups began battling government forces in Marawi, a city of 200,000, in May, and clashes continue as government soldiers try to evict the militants from the city. More than 60 Philippine soldiers have been killed and more than 200 wounded in the fighting.

The ISIS call for jihadis to travel east to the Philippines, however, comes at a time when the U.S. is rethinking whether a significant number of ISIS fighters will relocate from the caliphate, as originally believed.

Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, said last month that U.S. intelligence has not yet seen a large flow.

"At one point, we were worried about this out-rush, outflows, massive outflows of foreign fighters once the battlefield situation changed in Iraq and Syria and that Western countries, countries in the region, would be flooded with returnees," Rasmussen said, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum. "I think now speaking kind of broadly, that's less likely than we first assessed."

U.S. intelligence officials say that instead, most fighters will likely stay in Iraq and Syria and continue to fight as insurgents. Moreover, they say, there are fewer of them, many having been killed in action.

The ISIS affiliates in Mindanao, meanwhile, also face another challenge — their former comrades.

The largest indigenous Islamist force, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had battled government forces on the island since the 1960s, reached a ceasefire deal with the government in 2014. Other groups, including BIFF, rejected the deal, and MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front found themselves fighting BIFF, Maute, Abu Sayyaf and several other splinter groups.

MILF launched an offensive against BIFF three weeks ago in a region south of Marawi.

Since 2001, the U.S. has provided military aid, mostly special operations training, to the Philippines to fight terrorism. This summer Philippine forces used U.S.-supplied gunships to attack the Islamist groups. In 2012, the U.S. launched its own airstrikes against Islamist targets in the country. As NBC News reported in August, the U.S. has recently weighed carrying out fresh airstrikes against ISIS in the Philippines. </s> Chief of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a propaganda video, asserted that the battle for Baghouz, ISIL's final bastion in eastern Syria, "is over."

Al Jazeera cited the video, published by ISIL's Al Furqan media network on Monday, in which the ISIL leader seemed to have grown a bushy grey beard. He kept an assault weapon close by and sat in a cross-legged position on a cushion along with three men by his side whose faces were blurred.

"There will be more to come after this battle," said al-Baghdadi, apparently referring to the final fight in Baghouz.

Al-Baghdadi had appeared for the first time in the propaganda video since delivering a sermon at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri, in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014, declaring a "Caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, an audio message was also put out, purportedly of al-Baghdadi, saying that the April 21 attacks in Sri Lanka, which left at least 253 people dead, was "vengeance" for ISIL's "brothers in Baghouz".

"Your brothers in Sri Lanka have healed the hearts of monotheists [ISIL members] with their suicide bombings, which shook the beds of the crusaders during Easter to avenge your brothers in Baghouz," al-Baghdadi was reportedly heard saying.

"Our battle today is a war of attrition to harm the enemy, and they should know that jihad will continue until doomsday," he mentioned in the video.

The leader further insisted that ISIL's operations against the West were part of a "long battle" and the group would "take revenge" for its members who had been killed.

Wearing a black robe with a beige vest, al-Baghdadi gave an 18-minute address in the video. However, it is unclear when the footage was filmed.

Baghouz, the last piece of populated land held by the ISIL, which once spread across a third of Iraq and Syria, is roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom and attracted 40,000 fighters to its cause.

At its peak, the terror outfit controlled huge parts of Iraq and Syria with a population of over 10 million people. However, since 2017, the terror group started losing hold on major territories in both countries to the United States-backed military forces.

Last month, US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had resumed attack against Baghouz with an objective to clear out the last traces of its self-declared 'Caliphate'. </s> Manila, Philippines - Back-to-back explosions at a Roman Catholic cathedral followed by a grenade attack on a mosque last week have swiftly ended the honeymoon for Filipinos celebrating the ratification of the Bangsamoro, a political agreement designed to end decades of violence in the southern Philippines by strengthening self-rule for the country's Muslim minorities.

The referendum that confirmed the Bangsamoro took place on January 21.

Six days later, the two bomb blasts at the church in Jolo town in Sulu province killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 100 others attending a Sunday service. Three days later, a grenade was thrown on a mosque in Zamboanga city in the middle of the night, killing two people and wounding four.

Sulu and Zamboanga are in the volatile and poverty-ridden Mindanao region in the southern Philippines, where Muslim rebels have been battling the government since the 1970s.

At least 120,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

The national government in Manila denied the attacks had anything to do with the referendum or its result.

But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which negotiated for the Bangsamoro and is expected to lay down its weapons to govern the area, says the incidents are a challenge to the peace agreement.

The Jolo bombing was "nothing but a cowardly and evil attempt to extinguish the hope for peace that we have in the newly ratified Bangsamoro Organic Law", the group said in a statement.

"The forces of extremism, wherever they may be coming from, are bent to keep us in the cycle of violence, distrust and hatred that we want to put an end to," it added.

Philippine authorities, although they initially downplayed a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, suspect the Jolo cathedral attack was the work of an ISIL-linked faction of the Abu Sayyaf armed group.

The Abu Sayyaf, based in Sulu province, is a relatively small organisation notorious for bombings, beheadings and kidnap-for-ransom operations in the southern Philippines and the seas around Malaysia's Sabah state.

Like the MILF, the Abu Sayyaf is a splinter group from the original Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the first to rebel and fight the government for an independent state in Mindanao.

But unlike the MILF and the MNLF, the Abu Sayyaf rejects autonomy.

It has also outdone both groups in terms of brutality, which is why the Abu Sayyaf is now widely regarded as mere bandits and pirates - rebels without a cause.

"You have the usual suspects, which is of course the Abu Sayyaf," security analyst Jose Antonio Custodio told Al Jazeera. "But sometimes these groups do it upon the bidding of other groups that prefer to operate in the shadows."

Aside from rebel groups, as in most parts of the Philippines, several political dynasties wield power in Mindanao. Some of these wealthy and influential clans are known to employ private armies or, in some cases, existing armed groups.

Among the provinces comprising an already existing autonomous region, Sulu is the only one where votes against the Bangsamoro exceeded those for it. Elsewhere in Mindanao, the "yes" vote won by a landslide.

However, the ratified law does not allow Sulu or any of the existing autonomous provinces to exclude themselves from the Bangsamoro; only those outside can opt in.

Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan II has formally opposed the Bangsamoro, filing a case at the Supreme Court in October and insisting the autonomy law must include an option for exclusion.

Tan has also questioned the Bangsamoro's form of government, arguing that the country's constitution prohibits regional parliaments.

The planned Bangsamoro parliament will distribute power among political parties, district representatives and sectoral groups to diminish the power of the political clans whose feudal-style rule has left the region desperately poor.

Whichever groups were responsible for the attacks, the government has decided it's the Abu Sayyaf they will pursue and punish.

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to wage an "all-out war" to "crush" the group.

Government forces have already resumed air attacks on suspected Abu Sayyaf hideouts in Sulu; the military's preferred strategy when ground combat is hampered by the difficult and remote terrain.

Delfin Lorenzana, Duterte's defence secretary, said it was difficult to fight the Abu Sayyaf because people in Sulu, whether out of fear or because they support them, were unlikely to reveal the fighters' whereabouts.

Some local officials even protect the Abu Sayyaf, Lorenzana added.

A fresh wave of violence, it seems, is heaping more pressure on the Bangsamoro even before it has begun. </s> MANILA (Reuters) - A bombing wounded 33 people during an amateur boxing match in a central Philippines province, the government said on Thursday, the second attack on a public place by unknown perpetrators in less than a week.

An 81-millimetre mortar round was detonated remotely by cellphone during the amateur bout outside a shopping mall in Leyte province late on Wednesday. Police said no suspects had been identified and no group had claimed responsibility.

It followed a Christmas Eve grenade explosion outside a Catholic church that wounded 16 people on the southern island of Mindanao, a Muslim-dominated region where a long-running insurgency is being fought.

Police said there was no indication the two attacks were linked.

President Rodrigo Duterte has warned of the threat of a proliferation of festering Islamist militancy in the Philippines and an infiltration by the Islamic State militant group if offensives to drive its fighters out of Iraq and Syria succeed.

Duterte has warned of vulnerability in the southern Philippines, where some splinter groups have pledged allegiance to Islamic State and only a small stretch of sea separates predominantly Muslim areas of the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
In an unconfirmed video, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant instructs its followers to go and fight in the Philippines instead of the Middle East.