U.S. to Help Philippines Battle Terrorist Threat

Somewhere in the dense jungle a few miles from here, American missionaries Gracia and Martin Burnham are spending their seventh month as captives of the rebel group Abu Sayyaf.

Martin Burnham is handcuffed and kept on a leash whenever his captors are forced to move. Elite Philippine troops trained by U.S. Special Forces stalk the group, hoping for a chance to rescue the couple.

The battle on Basilan island started long before Sept. 11, but in recent weeks the hunt for Abu Sayyaf has become a new front in America’s war on terrorism.

The Philippine government used to call the Abu Sayyaf rebels a bunch of bandits. Today, it says the Islamic kidnappers are terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden.

By mid-January, U.S. military advisors will be on the ground on Basilan training Philippine forces in special operations, Lt. Gen. Roy Cimatu, head of the Philippine Southern Command, said during a visit to front-line troops Saturday.

Some of the Americans will stay on Basilan for months and will carry weapons to defend themselves, he said. An advance group of American officers stopped on Basilan two weeks ago.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo visited President Bush last month in Washington and received a commitment of $100 million worth of military equipment to fight the rebels.

“We should neutralize the Abu Sayyaf once and for all,” said Col. Hermogenes Esperon, the Philippine army chief on Basilan. “They should not be in this world.”

Abu Sayyaf, which began as an Islamic fundamentalist group in the early 1990s, has tenuous links to Bin Laden. The group’s founder, Abdujarak Abubakar Janjalani, was a devout Muslim who reportedly trained in Afghanistan and fought there against the Soviets. After he was killed by Philippine police three years ago, Abu Sayyaf turned to kidnapping for ransom.

Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Mohammed Khalifa allegedly was active in establishing terror cells in the Philippines during the mid-1990s. Authorities say he had contacts with Abu Sayyaf, but it is unclear whether he provided money to the group.

Ghalib Andang, a top Abu Sayyaf leader who calls himself Commander Robot, told the Philippine Inquirer newspaper in June 2000 that Bin Laden was the group’s only outside source of funding at that point.

More recently, two Arabs believed to be from Yemen visited the rebels’ camp on Basilan in September and provided training in explosives, according to a former hostage.

Although Abu Sayyaf says it wants to establish an Islamic state in the southern Philippines, taking hostages appears to be its main activity.

Last year, the group raided a diving resort in Malaysia and kidnapped 21 people, 10 of them foreign tourists. Eventually, the rebels released many of those hostages in exchange for $25 million paid by the government of Libya.

The group invested some of the money in high-speed motorboats and powerful weaponry used to raid another tourist resort on the Philippine island of Palawan in May.

Among the 20 hostages seized there were three vacationing Americans: the Burnhams, of Wichita, Kan., and Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif. All were taken 300 miles by boat to Basilan, a mixed Muslim-Christian island in the southern Philippines.

Tests Confirm Victim’s Identity

In mid-June, the rebels announced that they had beheaded Sobero. DNA testing confirmed that a body found months later was his. Although details have not been made public, authorities believe that Sobero was slain because he was too vigorous in protesting the treatment of his Philippine girlfriend, who was kidnapped with him.

As the Philippine army gave chase, the rebels crisscrossed Basilan, taking new hostages, raping some and beheading others, authorities said. Throughout, they held on to the Burnhams.

The Burnhams, both 42, were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary when they were kidnapped. They had met at a Christian college in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to the Philippines, where Martin Burnham’s parents worked as missionaries, in 1986. The Burnhams have two sons, 14 and 10, and a daughter, 12. The children have been staying at their paternal grandparents’ home near Wichita.

In September, Arroyo put Cimatu, one of her top generals, in charge of the operation to rescue the hostages.

At the time, the rebels numbered more than 500 and had 18 hostages, Cimatu said. Now, the rebels are said to number about 80 and to have three hostages--the Burnhams and a Philippine nurse named Deborah Yap.

Dense Jungle Makes for a Difficult Mission

The hunt for the Abu Sayyaf parallels the search underway for Bin Laden in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but Cimatu said trying to find rebels in the jungle is more difficult.

On Basilan, the vegetation is so dense that it is sometimes impossible to see a person 10 yards away. Countless winding creeks and steep ravines make traversing the island extremely difficult.

“It’s easier in Afghanistan because you are only concerned about looking for caves,” Cimatu said. “Here we have to go searching from tree to tree looking for hostages.”

A force of about 6,000 troops has been slowly encircling the rebels on Basilan and has restricted their movements to the western half of the island. Esperon, the army chief, said Saturday that the rebels holding the hostages are in an area of dense jungle about 3 miles square.

The army’s strategy is to try to locate the rebels without being seen and then ambush them without harming the hostages.

“The game here is one of hunting more than fighting,” Cimatu said.

Soldiers Waited Among Coconut Trees

Early this month, the army received a tip about the rebels’ movements. About 50 soldiers waited for five days, hiding behind coconut trees and under bushes. At one point, the rebels passed within four yards of the soldiers. In the ensuing battle, 11 rebels were killed and as many as 10 were wounded, Esperon said.

The soldiers seized numerous weapons, including a recoilless rifle featured just a week earlier in video footage of the rebels taken by a journalist who sneaked into their camp.

As a result of the attack, the rebels are now believed to be divided into two groups--about 45 with the hostages near the center of the island and 35, including the wounded, to the north.

Cimatu had set a deadline of today for securing the release of the hostages, but he conceded that his troops might not meet it.

On Saturday, the general took journalists by helicopter to a former rebel base in the abandoned village of Kapayawan. The village, near the center of the island and once home to 200 people, has been the scene of three clashes between troops and rebels.

Now under the military’s control, it is used as a forward base for 300 heavily armed soldiers pursuing the rebels.

Cimatu said his men found evidence that the hostages had been in the area recently.

“We are walking in the footsteps of the hostages,” he said as he and his entourage headed up a path recently seized from the rebels.

The general said recent gains, including the weapons seizure and the rebels’ breakup into two groups, had made him optimistic that Yap and the Burnhams will soon be freed.

“The Abu Sayyaf is almost finished in Basilan,” he said. “I think the key is patience.”