Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Daesh, appears to be trying to gain a foothold in the Philippines. It has also claimed responsibility for successful and unsuccessful attacks in Indonesia and Malaysia in recent years, while Singapore and Thailand are also on high alert.
As coalition forces advance and Daesh loses ground in the Middle East, the danger of a spillover from the horrible war in Iraq and Syria has, for me, never felt so close to home.
Daesh seemed to try, in January 2016, to establish a splinter group in the southern Philippines comprising four local Islamist militant groups, including Abu Sayyaf. The supposed leaders posted a video on a jihadi website, declaring a wilayat, or province in an area that includes the islands of Basilan and Jolo. They also pledged their allegiance to the ISIS gang leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Filipino security authorities dismissed the video as propaganda, saying some of the people in the video had been already been killed. I too have seen the video on YouTube and it looks very unconvincing -- check out the makeshift obstacle course made from bamboo. However, the possible link between the notorious Abu Sayyaf and the cult of ISIS cannot be ignored. Many terror groups in the Middle East and Africa also train on makeshift obstacle courses using whatever material they can find.
Despite its small size, Abu Sayyaf is one of the most violent jihadi groups in the southern Philippines. It is the group that bombed a ferry in Manila Bay, killing 116 people in 2004. If Abu Sayyaf is using Daesh backing to legitimise its separatist claim, there is potential that it could attract more fundamentalists in the region by stressing a link with ISIS. However, others argue that local militants in Malaysia and Indonesia who have embraced Islamist ideology would rather travel to Syria and Iraq than fight in the Philippines.
Even though only 5% of the Philippine population is Muslim, it is concentrated in the impoverished southern islands far from the capital, perfect conditions for international terrorist groups to exploit people who feel disenfranchised. Abu Sayyaf might also hide behind ISIS masks to up the ante in its frequent kidnappings for ransom; in any case, the poisonous ideology of Daesh is already being exploited in our region.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, was the first Southeast Asian country in which Daesh claimed an attack, at a Jakarta shopping centre in January 2016. In Malaysia, authorities have foiled nine ISIS terrorist plots since 2014 but this does not mean that the threat is over for them and others in Asean. Singapore, meanwhile, has foiled a number of ISIS attempts including an August 2016 plot to attack the Marina Bay Sands resort with rockets from the Indonesian island of Batam.
Is Daesh actively recruiting in the region? Last month, Indonesian suspect Gigih Rahmat Dewa admitted that he was instructed by ISIS to set up a travel agency on Bintan as a cover to facilitate the safe passage of would-be recruits.
More than 40 ISIS attacks have occurred outside its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq since September 2014. But as that territory shrinks, many of the criminals who went there might be looking to get out and join terrorist groups elsewhere.
Thailand has endured 13 years of violence in the deep South, with nearly 7,000 deaths, since a dormant insurgency was revived in response to heavy-handed actions by the administration of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK), one of the armed wings of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Koordinasi (BRN-C), which orchestrated various attacks on civilians, still has no known link to ISIS, but southern Thailand could become a destination for returning ISIS fighters. The increase in attacks this year is not encouraging.
The kicker is that one of the six people arrested by Malaysian authorities in February near the Thai-Malaysian border on suspicion of belonging to Daesh was a Thai national said to have also had involvement with a separatist group in the southern provinces. One of the Malaysian IS suspects who escaped arrest is linked to gun-running and has repeatedly entered and left southern Thailand.
The best we can hope for is a peaceful solution to the forgotten war in southern Thailand. The current government should step up its negotiation efforts and propose a realistic timeline for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of insurgents to reduce the risk that they too will be exploited by international terrorists.
