AMERICAN MILITARY UNIVERSITY

SPECIALIZED PROJECT:

ABU SAYYAF GROUP (ASG): ISLAMIC JIHADISM IN THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES

BY

KAYLA ROTH

NSEC 614

DR. ROBERT SMITH

24 APR 2016

Introduction

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States and much of the world engaged

in a global war on terror, a campaign built around both covert and overt military operations,

security reform and an active attempt at thwarting the functionality and funding of terrorist

organizations. As a result of the global war on terror, emphasis has been on radical Islamist

movements and Muslim extremism within the Middle East however, terrorism in and of itself, is

bigger than any one region, religion or ethnicity. Violent extremism is also more widespread than

the large umbrella groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS that have maintained large amounts of

media attention for the past decade. More often than not, these larger organizations develop a

global presence by allying with small insurgent groups in various regions. Relationships such as

these between the larger group and the smaller become mutually exclusive as the smaller groups

gain the prestige of being associated with the larger and gain resources, funding and recruits

while the larger group gains notoriety for its global expansion. The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) is

no exception to this. ASG is an Islamic separatist extremist group formerly supported by al

Qaeda and active within the southern Philippines that seeks to gain independence and establish

an Islamic state for the Muslim minority.

Terrorist Organization History and Background

The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) known as the Bearer of the Sword, originated from the

southern Philippines, particularly the islands of Jolo and Basilan and the Mindanao province.

The formation and the continued longevity of ASG can be found in the widespread poverty of

the region and the history of the Filipino Muslim minority. Although poverty is not exclusively a

trait of terrorism, the disenfranchisement of individuals who perceive injustice to themselves is a

common trait of many extremist individuals. The Philippines experience widespread

unemployment, with an estimated 30% of the population in 2003 living below the poverty level

(Hutchinson, 2012, 7). This mass poverty contributes to a pool of disillusioned, unemployed and

often unskilled military aged males who are willing to join groups such as ASG for money as

well as perceived prestige in a better existence than the one they are currently experiencing.

In order to understand the viability of ASG to the Filipino people, an understanding of the

history of the Muslim minority in the region is needed. Filipino Muslims have had a history of

civil unrest since the 17th century in which the Moros (Filipino Muslims) revolted against their

Spanish colonizers (Hutchinson, 2012, 8). The rebellion focused on the grievances the Moros felt

for Christian encroachment into Muslim settlements. Muslim unrest was again experienced in the

1970s when the Moros again revolted, this time as in the form of an Islamist movement, the

Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), demanding an independent Muslim state for Filipino

Muslims (Hutchinson, 2012, 8). The MNLF and the Philippine government undertook

negotiations which resulted in the creation of a Muslim region that was to be autonomous, in the

province of Basilan but its government administration would remain a non-Islamic system. The

inability of the MNLF to reach more agreeable terms for the Moro people resulted in the

fracturing of the MNLF into two distinct groups, the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation

Front (MILF) (Hutchinson, 2012, 8). It was from this fracturing of the MNLF that Abu Sayyaf

(ASG) was formed, a group more extreme in its tactics from the MNLF in the attempt to gain an

autonomous Islamic state within the Philippines that was governed by traditional Muslim rule,

Sharia law.

ASG is both the smallest, most active as well as most violent Islamic separatist group

active within the Southern Philippines (Anti-Defamation League, 2004). Translated to Bearer of

the Sword, the ASG emerged onto the terrorist scene in 1991, forming from the fracturing of the

MNLF and recruiting disillusioned former members looking for a shift to traditional Islamic law

and established by Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, a veteran Mujahideen fighter from the Soviet

Afghan War. The ASG itself is an al Qaeda-inspired group that began as a movement initially

focused on the establishment of an Iranian-style Islamic caliphate in the Southern Philippines

but, due to the fracturing of the group in the late 1990s following the death of its leader,

Janjalani, has developed more of a commercial focus, operating more often as a series of

criminal gangs more than an actual terrorist organization (Chandran, 2015). Through social links

of its original leaders, Abduarajak and Khadaffy Janjalani, ASG was able to establish early links

with additional terrorist organization such as al Qaeda and the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), gaining

training, recruits, funds as well as resources in the form of weapons to resist the Philippine

government.

Abu Sayyaf however, has been a fractured group since the late 1990s following the death

of its creator Abdurajak Janjalani. Although an attempt to reunite the group under its original

Islamist banner was attempted by Janjalani’s brother Khadaffy after his appointment to Emir, the

attempt proved ultimately a failure with the group suffering more major losses in leadership with

the death of Khadaffy Janjalani in 2006 and the death of additional senior leadership in 2007. As

a result, the current argument among analysts and scholars is that Abu Sayyaf, as of 2009,

continues to lack any real semblance of structured central leadership (Gregory, 2009). Currently

it is believed that the ASG has splintered into smaller insurgent groups operating under key

leadership figures that engage in independent operations. Because of this fracturing over the past

couple of decades, ASG has resorted to the use of robbery, piracy and ransom kidnappings to

fund its terrorist operations as well as fund its recruits and senior members (Anti-Defamation

League, 2004). What had previously been tactics used only to fund its larger terrorist operations,

has morphed into primary TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) that have caused many national

security groups to relabel ASG as a criminal gang rather than the terrorist organization it had

previously been labeled although as of 2015, Abu Sayyaf was still labeled as a terrorist

organization under the U.S. State Department List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations

and has yet to be delisted.

Leadership of the ASG

The Abu Sayyaf Group began as the brainchild of Abdurajak Abubarak Janjalani, a

Filipino Moro (Muslim) from Basilan. Abduarajak was one of five children raised in a Muslim-

Christian family of farmers and landowners who grew up in the Tabuk barrio of Isabela City in

Basilan Island (Hutchinson, 2012, 9). Isabela City in Basilan is part of the Sulu archipelago that

has experienced continued Moro rebellion for centuries. The region has a deep set history of

instability and hostility between the Moros, Christians, the U.S. government and military forces

and the Filipino military and police force. To many, the U.S. in the area is historically viewed as

a colonial power, and the Philippine government and its security forces an extension of that

power. Additionally, to the Moro minority, Christians in the province are viewed to have more

power within the political sphere. During his childhood and adolescence, Abdurajak was

fortunate to be connected with and educated by the Al Islamic Tabligh (Hutchinson, 2012, 9).

During this time, Abdurajak was educated in a society that preached a version of

ultraorthodox and traditional Islam. Here he became indoctrinated into the Salafist (Wahhabi)

way of Islamic life. Wahhabism is an austere form of Islam that preaches a literal interpretation

of the Koran and, Muslims who practice as strict Salafis believe that those who do not practice

the conservative form of Islam are “heathens and enemies” (PBS, 2014). It is an exceptionally

rigid form of Islam that is predominantly practiced within Saudi Arabia and has gained notoriety

from terrorist organizations such as Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Through this experience,

Abdurajak traveled as a young man between Saudi Arabia and Libya while he received training

and education in radical Islamic though and it is believed that during this time he himself began

to become radicalized by the ideas presented to him (Hutchinson, 2012, 9). During his education

years, Abdurajak studies not only Islam but also Islamic philosophy and law and it was during

this period in the early 1980s that Janjalani became attracted to the idea of jihad. Following this

period of study, Abdurajak took on a role as an educator, teaching religious philosophy and

Arabic. One of the common misconceptions about modern extremists is that all people who turn

to terrorism are uneducated, unskilled poor disillusioned individuals. In the case of Abdurajak

Janajalani, this was far off the mark; Janjalani was a well-educated individual who had a

knowledge of various areas that affected the Moro populations in the Philippines including the

historical, religious, economic, political and social conditions that impacted Filipino Muslims

(Hutchinson, 2012, 9). In the late 1980s Janjalani traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan in order to

study the Iranian Revolution that was taking place. It is alleged that it was during this time

Janjalani met Osama bin Laden and that Janjalani gained his first-hand experience in jihad

fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen during the Soviet Afghan war. Through

this connection with bin Laden, Janjalani became both a student of as well as a supporter of

radical Islamic teachings and as a result of these developed connections, it is believed that

Janjalani established close links with a diverse group of Islamic radical leaders and a strong tie to

al Qaeda through his friendship with bin Laden (Hutchinson, 2012, 9).

It was this experience in Afghanistan as well as the Wahhabi fundamentalist teachings

that set Janjalani on the path towards terrorism and the creation of Abu Sayyaf. These

fundamentalist and orthodox beliefs led to the creation of the ideology that formed ASG. For the

organization, the initial premise of its creation was for a Muslim Mujahideen that would be

committed to “a struggle in the cause of Allah” or “fighting and dying for the cause of Islam”

(Hutchinson, 2012, 8). The overall goal of the group was to establish an Islamic state in the

Southern Philippines that would be designed after the state that existed following the Iranian

Revolution that Janjalani had traveled to Pakistan to study in 1988. In this group, Janjalani

served as an emir, he was the ideological and enlightenment leader of his followers. Abu Sayyaf

was a group formed by disillusioned members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) as

well as young Filipino men who had experienced the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet

Union (Hutchinson, 2012, 9). For men like Janjalani, they were living through a time period

where they perceived a threat to their way of life and the culture of their religion. Muslims

Afghans were under attack from imperialist Soviets and it was no huge stretch to parallel the

struggle with Filipino Moros living in the Moro Province. The predecessor to Abu Sayyaf began

in 1989 with the creation of the Mujahideen Commando Freedom Fighters (MCFF) by Janjalani

which became the rudimentary membership of the future ASG (Hutchinson, 2012, 9). Although

Janjalani was the emir and figure head of the MCFF and later ASG, he did not maintain strict

control of every aspect of the group.

Under Abdurajak’s command, Abu Sayyaf experienced a collegial leadership style.

Under this style, Abu Sayyaf policymaking and control focused on the leadership working as a

team, sharing responsibility and consensus-building; Janjalani remained involved in the

policymaking of the group and establishing the ideology behind the ASG (Cottam, 2010, 105).

Under Janjalani’s control, Abu Sayyaf was to be a group that would be organized and highly

disciplined. Additionally, the group would be made up of councils and teams that established

systematic control as well as responsibility. Janjalani’s vision for the group included an Islamic

Executive Council that would make up the organization’s “main planning and execution body”

that would be supported by two sub-committees: one concerned with Islamic education and

fund-raising and the other with propaganda and agitation activities (Ugarte, 2008, 126). The

initial vision for Abu Sayyaf would be a bicameral system with Janjalani as the figure head and

ultimate authority. In addition to a governing body for Abu Sayyaf, Janjalani had designed the

group to also have a military wing which would comprise three units: the Campaign Propaganda

Team, the Mobile Force Team, and the Demolition Team which would be devoted to terrorist

activities (Ugarte, 2008, 126). The organizational structure shows a man who is exceptionally

intelligent and had a larger ideology driving him towards his goal rather than simply a man

reacting to a perceived injustice. Under Janjalani’s rule, it is likely that Abu Sayyaf would have

been a formidable opponent in Southeast Asia and it is possible the group would have grown to

become the most prevalent active insurgent group in the Philippines rather than its current status

as the smallest. This system however, was never fully realized. Janjalani was killed in the late

1990s in an incident involving Philippine police and shortly after the group fragmented into what

it is known as today, a loose coalition of smaller subgroups within the Sulu archipelago.

Following Janjalani’s death, his brother, Khadaffy Janjalani was elected emir but was unable to

rectify the fracturing of the group completely. The group suffered further setback in the early

2000s when Khadaffy and additional senior leadership were killed in 2006 and 2007. Since then,

the group has been unable to unite under a single leader and has since dissolved into armed

autonomous groups under the direction of key leadership.

Functionality of the ASG

Abu Sayyaf is motivated by an Islamic ideology. The overall mission of Abu Sayyaf is

the establishment of an Islamic State in the Mindanao region, where the largest concentration of

Moros reside, that will be independent and autonomous from the Philippines (Stanford

University, 2015). Along with the establishment of an Islamic State, ASG also desires to remove

all Christian settlers who reside within Midanao. These motivations are shaped by the

“Bangsamoro” struggle, the historical narrative of Filipino Muslims who have long struggled

against the Spanish, American and Filipino governments that have sought to oppress them

(Stanford University, 2015). While this was the overall motivation for Abu Sayyaf following its

creation by Abdurajak Janjalani, the deaths of senior leadership have left ASG being more

materialistically motivated than motivated by any single ideology. However, this slide towards

material motivation seems more driven by necessity rather than an overall ideological shift.

Circumstances like the loss of senior leadership have resulted in Abu Sayyaf losing connections

to their foreign financiers forcing the group to rely upon criminal tactics such as kidnapping for

ransom and piracy to fund their organization and operations.

Furthermore, Abu Sayyaf is largely motivated by the images they hold of themselves and

those of their perceived aggressors. The members of Abu Sayyaf unite under a common social

identity of a Muslim minority being oppressed by their country and outside forces. Former

members of the MNLF were drawn to Janjalani because he had fought with the Mujahideen

against the Soviets. These members of the new ASG saw the parallels between Afghanistan and

the Soviets and the Moros and the oppressors that were the U.S. and Filipino government. The

persistent political and economic inequality between the Moro minority and other Filipinos

strengthened the ASG’s emergence as an alternative to ineffective groups like MNLF (Stanford

University, 2015). For the members of Abu Sayyaf, the United States is viewed as an imperialist

power; a power that provides a high level of threat to the Moro people of the Philippines as well

as a power that routinely exploits Filipinos, leaving the majority of the country in extreme

poverty. The Filipino government is viewed as little more than an extension of the U.S. arm,

serving only the interests of the imperialist power as well as the Christian majority in the

country. Because of this perceived injustice and the reality of widespread poverty in the region,

Abu Sayyaf is able to tap into a pool of disillusioned and disgruntled youth by using a rhetoric

that has ideological appeal for some, while the allure of money and adventure has the potential to

attract others (Hutchinson, 2012, 16). The promise of Abu Sayyaf is a better standard of living

for these individuals that traditional means of employment would not allow. In addition, because

the Moros are such a small minority, there is an overwhelming sense of alienation for many

Filipino Muslims that the ASG is able to prey upon. More than 55% of families in the Muslim

region of Mindanao are living below the poverty line, double the share nationwide in the

Philippines (Boot, 2009).

This overwhelming poverty for one minority of people further pushes the image that the

Filipino government and the U.S. are imperialist powers attempting to oppress Muslims. Abu

Sayyaf and potential recruits blame their poverty on discrimination by the Christian authority in

the region. As a result of this, the jihadist propaganda spread by Wahhabi Saudi-funded

mosques, literature, and charities have found a receptive audience among people with a

centuries-old grievance (Boot, 2009). Propaganda and indoctrination tactics such as these ensure

that Abu Sayyaf continually has a fresh supply of potential recruits in search of something that

will potentially get them out of their current social and economic conditions. This does not mean

that Abu Sayyaf is exceptionally successful in its recruitment campaigns. The overall majority of

ASG members and supporters are friends, family and neighbors of current members which

shows that while ASG is successful in its sphere of influence, the group is largely unable to

attract the foreign fighters it would need to carry out larger scale attacks and more traditional

terrorist attacks than the predominantly criminal activity it is currently limited to at the present

time. Abu Sayyaf is forced to rely on its members’ families, friends and other ties to the

community for local support and recruitment, and it also channels funds to local communities to

augment support (Stanford University, 2015). This inability to channel support and recruits from

different areas ensures that Abu Sayyaf will largely remain a small terrorist group that must rely

on the support of additional organizations like MILF and JI to carry out more effective attacks

and attacks that will potentially gain it media attention.

Abu Sayyaf’s forms of social control also contribute to the decline of effectiveness in the

group. Largely, ASG gets its support from the local population of Basilan and the Mindanao

region, areas that have been ASG strongholds since the late 1980s. Due to ASG’s ideology and

tactics however, the group has been losing its control over Muslims society. The members of

ASG are predominantly Salafi and believe that Muslims who do not practice the same form of

orthodox Islam are as much enemies to Islam as infidels like Christians are. With that being said,

the religious ideology of the group allows ASG to kill indiscriminately. In July 2014, ASG killed

at least 21 Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan on the island of Jolo (Stanford University,

2015). This indiscriminant killing of Muslims as well as Christians have cost ASG control over

the region it claims as a strong hold. The killing of fellow Muslims has also cost ASG potential

recruits and more importantly, funding. As a result of these killings, public support for ASG

across the Philippines is now limited, with the large majority of Filipinos condemning the

group’s actions (Stanford University, 2015). Equally of note is that terrorist organizations within

Southeast Asia such as JI, MILF and the MNLF have also begun to condemn the actions of ASG

which could potentially hinder the facilitation of weapons, supplies, funds and recruits between

the groups. If the group is to survive within the modern Moro culture of the Philippines, it will

need to redefine its political ideology that does not alienate the people it is trying to garner

support from and recruit potential fresh terrorists. If the group is to continue to experience early

warning support from the local populace it will have to come to an understanding with the Moro

people it claims to be fighting for.

Since the deaths of the Janjalani brothers over a decade ago, Abu Sayyaf has been in

continuous turmoil as it struggles to re-establish its single identity. Following Abdurajak’s death

in 1998, ASG fell into conflict fragmenting into two factions with groups working independently

of one another (Hutchinson, 2012, 17). Since this fragmentation, the group has moved further

away from its original ideology and closer towards criminal activity. As of 2014, Abu Sayyaf has

an alleged link to the Islamic State (IS) in the Levant but, whether this link will provide support

to Abu Sayyaf on the part of ISIS is yet to be seen. Additionally, the pledging of the group to

ISIS on behalf of one of the smaller sub groups could have detrimental effects for the overall

survivability of the group. Fragmentation coupled with potential loss of support from al Qaeda

following the pledge to ISIS would have long-lasting effects on Abu Sayyaf. The necessary

assistance from al Qaeda allowed ASG to conduct its terrorist activities and the loss of it has

forced Abu Sayyaf to rely on kidnapping and ransom for financial survival. There is a possibility

that ASG pledging itself to ISIS is a shift showing a return to their original Salafi ideology but it

is largely improbable. More likely, the shift in ASG from al Qaeda to ISIS is more to promote

personal interest for the group, such as the necessity for funding, training, supplies and most

importantly, foreign fighters, rather than a change in group ideology.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Abu Sayyaf in and of itself is not necessarily a large scale threat to the security of the

United States and its military forces or to the Philippine government as the likelihood of

achieving an Islamic state within the country is exceedingly minimal. However, what makes

ASG a threat, is its ability to cooperate with and integrate itself with fellow jihadist organizations

operating within the Sulu archipelago. The potential links between ASG, MILF and JI could

potentially result in the increased facilitation of fighters, potential recruits as well as weapons

and resources to make bombs between the Philippines and Indonesia (Hutchinson, 2012, 16).

Although the U.S. engages in military operations with the Philippine government, at this time, it

is likely that ASG poses more a threat to the Philippine government than U.S. national security.

Because of the fracturing of ASG following the deaths of Abduarajak and Khadaffy Janjalani,

the group is unable to undertake the larger scale terrorist operations such as bombings that

initially gained it media attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As a result, Abu Sayyaf is

able to conduct little more than criminal activity rather than full scale terrorist acts, relying on

the use of piracy and kidnapping for ransom to fund its endeavors. Should the fractured smaller

groups of Abu Sayyaf join themselves with groups such as MILF and IJ, the conjoined groups as

a whole could pose a threat to the Philippine government and U.S. forces operating in the region.

Should these groups coalesce, their efforts and diverse capabilities could significantly impact the

development of Southeast Asia, resulting in the suspension or possible destruction of multi-

million dollar aid projects which would significantly impact the economic condition of the

country that relies so heavily upon U.S. aid (Hutchinson, 2012, 16). ASG must tread carefully in

this potential endeavor as it will most likely further destroy public support for the group which

has dwindled as a result of Abu Sayyaf’s indiscriminant killing of Filipino civilians.

As of 2014, a YouTube video released by one of the key command leaders of Abu

Sayyaf pledged the group to ISIS, ending the support that the group had previously received

under al Qaeda. With the proclamation of this Islamic State branch within the Southern

Philippines, the IS influence is likely to grow as it establishes safe havens in Basilan and utilizes

the Sulu archipelago to mount operations (Murdoch, 2016). Regardless of this sentiment, the

relative danger to the region is small; as of 2015 none of the small scale terrorist organizations

like ASG have the means to establish a functioning Caliphate in the Philippines. The operational

strongholds of Abu Sayyaf and MILF are restricted primarily to the southern provinces where

the Filipino Muslim minority is dominant (Chandran, 2015). While there is a threat of a potential

increased ISIS presence in the southern region, there is little to no reporting that suggests Abu

Sayyaf is regaining the means to conduct terrorist acts on a scale of those of old such as the 1994

bombings in Zamboanga that resulted in the death of 71 civilians.

While Abu Sayyaf may be unable to conduct attacks on the same scale as they were once

able to, this does not mean that the group is completely harmless to U.S. forces and the

Philippine government. According to Australian national security, Abu Sayyaf continues to be

directly or at least indirectly engaged in preparing, planning and assisting in terrorist attacks and

continue to retain the capability to conduct attacks, even if they are on a smaller scale (Australian

National Security, 2016). Even though the group currently is unable to conduct bombing attacks

they are still actively involved in coercion and intimidation tactics against the Philippine

government as well as Filipino people and over the past few years has stepped up its kidnapping

for ransom tactics to secure funding. It is likely that Abu Sayyaf will continue to rely on the use

of kidnapping as well as extortion to gain funding and supplies until a central leader can bring

the group back together under a unified banner. Since U.S. forces are viewed as the enemy to

ASG along with the Filipino military, service members as well as civilian tourists need to remain

cautious as ASG has succeeded in kidnapping foreign tourists, security forces and Americans in

the region. Curbing the threat that ASG and additional terrorist groups operating in Southeast

Asia pose will continue to require close cooperation between the regional states as well as

cooperation between U.S. and Filipino forces (Hutchinson, 2012, 18). The best way to hinder

Abu Sayyaf operations is to deny them their lines of communication that they use to facilitate

the transport of weapons and recruits as well as continued operations to deny them funding. Abu

Sayyaf has been unable to recover since the mid-2000s when Filipino military operations took

out key senior leadership in the group. Since then the group has continued to fracture and those

senior leaders still alive in the group have been unable to reunify the organization. The

continuation of counter-terrorism operations on the part of the Filipino military with the support

and training of U.S. forces is the best option as far as curbing the ASG threat. Operations of this

type have already proved to be exceptionally successful in breaking down ASG capabilities and a

continued push for counter-insurgency operations will ensure the group is unable to solidify.

While these tactics will decrease the strength of terrorist groups in Southeast Asia,

intelligence agencies and government organizations are still plagued with the greater question of

how and why these terrorist factions are able to sprout up in the first place and gain a foothold in

a region. The overall goal is of course to eventually eliminate the causes that lead to the creation

of terrorist organizations but at this time it is largely still unclear as to how. Likely, it will require

cooperation and information sharing between states faced with these threats. Regardless, until

this cooperation and sharing occurs, groups like Abu Sayyaf will continue to remain a threat to

both their stronghold region as well as their country and have the potential to spread to an

international scale and, in the case of Abu Sayyaf, continue to threaten the national security of

Southeast Asia.

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