Source – geopolitics.co
– “…An array of plausible military, eyewitness and documentary sources indicate that the ruthlessness and greed of some high-ranking Philippine Army officers may pose nearly as great a security concern for the US troops as the Islamic extremist Abu Sayyaf cadres they are seeking to eradicate”:
(Why CIA Created the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines)
The rise of Rodrigo Duterte is probably the biggest blow to the CIA’s grand plan in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia, because, not only is the incumbent president is in an all-out war with US imperialism for patriotism’s sake, i.e. for those Muslim patriots waging the longest Muslim war in history against the Western invaders,
he’s taking this as a personal battle against those who killed hundreds of innocent civilians in multiple bombings in his hometown city of Davao by a CIA operative disguising as a treasure hunter, i.e. Michael Terrence Meiring, who was spirited out from a hospital arrest by FBI operatives without the then Mayor Duterte’s prior consent.
So, while Duterte’s government is talking peace with the two large Muslim separatist groups, i.e. MILF and MNLF, the Philippine military is relentlessly pursuing the total destruction of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and Sulu, right now.
Here’s why…
Abu Sayyaf and the CIA in the Philippines by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Here’s my birthday treat to my FB friends.
Let me share with you below a long excerpt from pages 77 to 85 of bestselling author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s book The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism, which I supremely recommend as required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and the far more gruesome U.S.-led Global War of Terrorism the entire secret team of 9/11 perpetrators unleashed since–a fascist, deceitful war that continues to hostage the peoples of the world under the extended Bushist regime of pseudo-democrat Barack Obama (a war which, by the way, will likely turn worse in the weeks and months to come).
The peoples of the Philippines and the world at large continue to cry out that the Bush-Arroyo clique be held accountable for their war crimes and other heinous crimes against humanity. Obama has outstandingly failed in this regard, as he has nightmarishly betrayed his mandate bigtime, and conducted his term as an extension of U.S. neofascist rule that was the hallmark of George W. Bush’s run in the White House. Americans and the world’s multitudes clearly do not deserve a second term of Obama.
And as Noynoy apes his #1 patron, Filipinos will see his admin’s current pursuit of Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts stop short of holding her and her clique accountable as blood-soaked puppets of U.S. empire, revealing his current anti-Arroyo campaign as a faux crusade that will then be seen eventually as treasonous tokenism.
(I’ve retained the footnote numbers but did not include the references to entice you to get your copy [whether pulp or e-book] of Ahmed’s obra maestra. For those who wish to read the passage in Filipino, check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150535277097259 ):
Abu Sayyaf and the CIA in the Philippines by NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED
The conflict in the Philippines is a legacy of Spanish and American colonialism. In the 1960s, the Muslim/Moro separatist movement in the Philippines emerged among a small number of students and intellectuals articulating widespread grievances concerned with “discrimination, poverty, and inequality, linked primarily to the displacement of Moro communities from their lands by Christian settlers.”
After the eruption of violence in Cotabato in 1969-1971 and in response to the declaration of martial law by President Ferdinand Marcos in 1972, the movement rapidly gained popular support, coalescing into an armed group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). With 30,000 fighters, the MNLF fought the Philippine military to a stalemate in the mid-1970s. 69
In December 1976, the Philippine government and MNLF reached a settlement, the Tripoli Agreement, which included a ceasefire and the granting of autonomy to thirteen provinces where the majority of Muslims lived. But the Marcos regime never fulfilled its side of the agreement, leading to the outbreak of further fighting before the end of 1977.
At the same time, factional infighting led to the founding of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which was later officially established in 1984. By the early 1980s, the Moro movement for self determination was largely non-violent. In 1986, the MNLF reached a ceasefire with President Corazon Aquino and in January 1987 signed an agreement relinquishing its goal of independence and accepting the government offer of autonomy.
However, in 1987 negotiations reached a deadlock, and in February 1988 the MNLF officially resumed its armed insurrection while the government pressed ahead with its plans for Muslim autonomy. In 1991, the Abu Sayyaf group split from the MNLF under the leadership of Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani, but is now nominally headed by Khadafi Janjalani.70
In 1996, the MNLF signed a peace agreement with the administration of Fidel Ramos and entered civilian politics, although the agreement was opposed by the MILF and Abu Sayyaf. Moreover, the government failed to properly implement the autonomy arrangement. Negotiations between the government and the MILF continued until early 2000 when the MILF came under attack from the Estrada administration.
However, the main force of violence in the conflict, apart from the government, has been the Abu Sayyaf whose declared aim is the establishment of an Islamic state based on Islamic law (shariah) in the south. However, the group has no significant political support and has failed to espouse any meaningful policy statement. Its program of terrorism, including bombings and kidnappings, is condemned by both the MNLF and the MILF. 71
The roots of the Abu Sayyaf lead us straight back to al-Qaeda. In the mid-1980s, Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf nominally headed an alliance of extremist armed groups financed by Osama bin Laden, among others, and influenced by Saudi Wahabism. He established a notorious but secretive “university”—Dawal al-Jihad—in the north of Peshawar, which functioned as a major terrorist training camp.
Roughly 20,000 mujahideen from 40 countries–including the Philippines–were trained there by Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) with extensive CIA support in the form of expertise, weapons, and funds. Many of these fighters were in search of “other wars to fight,” including in the Philippines, the Middle East, North Africa, and New York. It was not long before “a nucleus of Abu Sayyaf fighters had moved to the Philippines and were operating there under that name.”
The Philippines division of the Abu Sayyaf group conducted “kidnappings and bomb attacks on Christian and government targets” in the south. Among those coordinating operations in the Philippines with Afghan veterans of Abu Sayyaf was al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and an author of Project Bojinka.
The first half of Bojinka was implemented by Abu Sayyaf on December 11, 1994, in the bombing of a Philippines Airlines flight between Manila and Tokyo, and the targeting of 11 other American airliners over the Pacific on the same day. The latter plot failed due to the FAA’s tighter security measures, but the plot was traced back by Philippine police and the FBI to Abu Sayyaf/al-Qaeda operative Yousef.
The other half of Bojinka was eventually implemented on 9/11, involving a scheme to fly civilian planes into key US buildings.72 Another member of the Abu Sayyaf terror cell in Manila was 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key al-Qaeda leader who participated in Yousef’s Bojinka operation. He lived only a few floors from Yousef. 73
According to Washington, DC’s Center for Defense Information “Abu Sayyaf-al Qaeda links are strong. Many of its fighters claim to have trained in Afghanistan, including as many as 20 who were in the graduating class of a Mazar-e Sharif camp in 2001… Zamboanga City, a Mindanao Islamic hotbed, was frequented by members of al Qaeda.”
Janjalani forged a close relationship with Saudi businessman Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who set up a network of Islamic charities used to fund Abu Sayyaf fighters. Khalifa’s “main organization, the International Islamic Relief Organization, has an office in Zamboanga, as does a bin Laden foundation. Abu Sayyaf received training and money funneled through Khalifa’s network.”74
According to the National Review, US investigators are convinced that Khalifa is “an important figure in al Qaeda. Khalifa has been linked to Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as to the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Khalifa is also thought to have provided crucial start-up money to Abu Sayyaf, the Philippine terrorist group.”75
Khalifa had lived in the Philippines for several years before he visited the United States and was arrested in San Francisco in December 1994 for an immigration violation. He was of primary interest to the FBI, “which suspected him of assisting al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad in a plot to bomb a dozen US airliners from their base in the Philippines.” Indeed, he had already been formally named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 New York City Landmarks bombing plot.
Furthermore, Philippine investigators charged that Khalifa had funded the Bojinka plot through a charity front in Manila. When detained by the INS in December, Khalifa was in possession of a phone number connected to the Manila terror cell responsible for the Bojinka plot, according to a 2002 indictment of Benevolence International Foundation and Bojinka trial records. The Abu Sayyaf/al-Qaeda cell was reportedly in frequent contact with Khalifa during November 1994.
FBI affidavits and other trial testimony reveal that the FBI knew at the time that the al-Qaeda cell in Manila consisted of “Yousef, Murad, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed… and Wali Khan Amin Shah, a Malaysian al Qaeda operative who called Khalifa’s cell phone several times during November.’” A known alias used by Khalifa was “found on one of several bomb-making manuals brought into the US” as early as 1992 “by an accomplice of Ramzi Yousef.”
The manuals contained “detailed instructions” on how to construct precisely the same explosives used in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and in the Oklahoma City bombing. Court records show that Philippine investigators found information connected to Khalifa when they raided Ramzi Yousef’s apartment in January 1995.
US authorities had also seized a number of highly incriminating items from his luggage in December, including “literature related to training terrorists in the Philippines, an address book and an electronic organizer listing Wali Khan Amin Shah’s phone number in Manila, and immigration papers relating to his return to the Philippines.” 76
In other words, the FBI had sufficient evidence to suspect Khalifa of high-level terrorist activities on behalf of al-Qaeda. Indeed, as early as December 1994 “The Justice Department had wanted to hold Khalifa and investigate his alleged ties to terrorism.” But the FBI investigation was ignored, and “Khalifa’s deportation was ordered after direct intervention in the case by then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher in January 1995… [who] wrote a three-page letter to Attorney General Janet Reno in January urging that the deportation proceed.”
Moreover, the US attorney’s office wrote that it had “no objection” to the return of the items seized from Khalifa’s luggage, although they were relevant as evidence not only of Khalifa’s terrorist activities, but also of that of his known colleagues Shah and Yousef–the former “was the subject of an ongoing international manhunt at the time” and the latter “was already under indictment in America.” Additionally, the US government “not only agreed to Khalifa’s request for deportation to Jordan, but in exchange for his cooperation it expunged terror-related charges from his INS record.”
In other words, despite incriminating evidence in Khalifa’s own possession as well as extensive evidence from numerous credible sources demonstrating his longstanding terrorist connections and activities, the State Department blocked the FBI’s attempt to detain and investigate him further, returned the incriminating evidence to him, erased all terrorist charges from his INS records, and allowed him to escape to Jordan.77
[CG: The US State Department is where the CIA Nazis directly influence the decisions of the US President. The State Secretary usually is chosen from the roster of the Bush-Rockefeller controlled Council of Foreign Relations.]
Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. vs. CIA
Clandestine official connivance in the activities of al-Qaeda’s Abu Sayyaf group has also been documented by a leading member of the Philippine government, Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. Pimentel, a former law professor, has been involved in Philippine politics for over 30 years, has been Senator of the Republic since 1987, and is a respected legislator. In a July 2000 speech before the Philippine Senate, he disclosed some startling evidence of joint US-Philippine government involvement in the emergence and activities of Abu Sayyaf:
Because the Abu Sayyaf was operating on the fringe of the Muslim insurgency in the country, its partisans were enticed by certain officers of the armed forces to serve as informers on the activities of the Muslim insurgents in Southern Mindanao… at least, three military and police officers [were] coddlers or handlers of the Abu Sayyaf.
These officers hold very high posts.
“One was the commanding general of the Marines at that time, Brig. Gen. Guillermo Ruiz; the other two were police officers, Chief Supt. Leandro Mendoza and Chief Supt. Rodolfo Mendoza,” continued Senator Pimentel:
My information is that the Abu Sayyaf partisans were given military intelligence services IDs, safe-houses, safe-conduct passes, firearms, cell phones and various sorts of financial support.
Edwin Angeles, a leader of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan, told me after the elections of 1995, that it was the Abu Sayyaf that was responsible for the raid and the razing down of the town of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur in early 1995. In that raid, Angeles told me that the Abu Sayyaf raiders were reportedly provided with military vehicles, mortars and assorted firearms. All this time, Angeles was “handled”–by police officer, now chief superintendent, Rodolfo Mendoza.
Senator Pimentel also quoted one of Angeles’ bodyguards:
…he told me the names of some other officers of the armed forces who ‘handled’ Abu Sayyaf matters. He is, however, deathly afraid of coming out into the open…
The CIA has sired a monster. What looks inexcusable to me is the involvement of a few officers of the armed forces–handlers of the Abu Sayyaf, my informants call them–in the training of the Abu Sayyaf partisans, the very same group of hooligans who are responsible for the kidnapping of foreigners and locals alike and the atrocities they had committed for several years now.
According to Senator Pimentel, these Philippine military and police “handlers” funneled CIA assistance in the form of both weapons and finances to Abu Sayyaf:
“… these officers did not only ‘handle’ the Abu Sayyaf, they coddled them, trained them, protected them, passed on military equipment and funds from the CIA and its support network, and probably even from the intelligence funds of the armed forces to them.”
He also reported that
“Gen. Alexander Aguirre was present at a meeting–perhaps organizational–of the Abu Sayyaf. Whatever the nature of Gen. Aguirre’s involvement with the Abu Sayyaf has to be explained.”
He demanded that the chief of staff of the Philippine army in the 1990s, Gen. Renato de Villa, and the commander-in-chief of the army from 1992 to 1998, former President Fidel V. Ramos should likewise tell the people what he knows of the involvement of the CIA and our own military officers in the creation, handling and supervision of the Abu Sayyaf. ..
The evidence is now overwhelming–unassailable in my mind–that the CIA was the procreator of the Abu Sayyaf and that some of our own military officers acted as midwives at its delivery and who have nursed the hooligans under illegal, if not, at least, questionable circumstances that enabled the latter to pursue their criminal activities to this very day….
We have to find out what we can do as legislators to prevent a recurrence of the situation where certain military officers of our armed forces became willing tools of the CIA in the creation, funding, training and equipping of this bandit group….The officers who have been identified as coddlers or handlers of the Abu Sayyaf in various studies and documents must be called to account.78
Despite Senator Pimentel’s address, the Philippine authorities have failed to even investigate–let alone prosecute–these officials. However, his damning allegations are corroborated by testimonials from other leading observers.
According to one MNLF commander,
“the Abu Sayyaf had the protection of the Marines. They are provided high-powered guns, plenty of ammunition and 15,000 pesos to be recruited. Who else has this money except the military?”
Another MNLF leader, Damming Hadjirul, is similarly convinced of a high-level military-Abu Sayyaf connection:
“When there’s no war, there’s no business for the military, right?”
Lt. Col. Ricardo Morales, a leading Philippine military analyst, noted in an army journal in 1995:
“How can a band of criminals with no military training to speak of, withstand the full might of the armed forces, slip through troop cordons and conduct kidnapping right under the very noses of government troops?”
Former Army Captain Rene Jarque, a Philippine intelligence officer, similarly observed that “This small group has managed to evade the military operations for too long in a tiny island lends credence to reports that some military units have been ordered not to touch the Abu Sayyaf.”
Thus, as journalist Michael Bengwayan concludes:
It is no surprise then that the Abu Sayyaf who earlier kidnapped 24 children, one priest, and five teachers were able to slip through a cordon sprang by 3,000 military men in Mount Puno Mahadji.
[CG: Abu Sayyaf militants have been seen equipped with satellite phones indicating they received intelligence and instructions from a distant command center.]
Today, the Philippine government is faced with a terrorist problem it cannot handle because it has looked the other way when its military was coddling a growing extremist, fanatic and suicidal group.79
The manipulation of Abu Sayyaf by the Philippine military was thoroughly exposed in a joint investigative report by the Boston Globe and the Finnish daily Hebingin Sanomat, based on dozens of accounts from eyewitnesses, sworn testimony presented before Congress and the Senate, the Commission on Human Rights, as well as new admissions from military and local officials. In the Globe, US journalist Indira Lakshmanan wrote:
“High-ranking members of the Philippine military, as well as members of local government, have colluded with the Islamic extremists that US troops are being sent here to combat, a Globe investigation has found.” Finnish journalist Pekka Mykkanen wrote in the Sanomat:
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