Southern Exposure

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The southern Philippines is peppered with hotspots, and one detonated last week on the remote island of Jolo, where the Philippine army and marines fought rebels in three towns, and Air Force planes dropped 500-pound bombs on their strongholds in the island's thick jungles. It was the most intense fighting in the south in at least 30 years and by week's end, 22 soldiers had been killed, along with 60 rebels. Southern Command Chief Lieut. General Alberto Braganza said that several dozen American troops had been sent in from their base in the southern city of Zamboanga, although he insisted the Americans wouldn't be fighting, but merely acting as intelligence trainers. A rebel attack on the capital city of Jolo was feared, but Braganza said his men would continue to fight. "There will be no let-up," he vowed. "What they started, I will finish."

There are two versions of how the hostilities began. The military says 14 of its troops were ambushed and killed on Feb. 7 in the town of Panamao. The rebels say that the ambush was provoked by a military offensive the day before in which a local ustadz, or religious mentor, his wife and two children died. (The military is silent on that story.) The rebels include members of Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaeda linked kidnap-for-ransom group, and renegades of the Moro National Liberation Front (M.N.L.F.), a Muslim group that once fought for a separate state. The military estimates the rebels' numbers at 800. By the end of the week, the armed forces had sent seven battalions—roughly 3,000 soldiers—to the island.

Jolo is one of the Philippines' wildest places. Abu Sayyaf uses it as a refuge from the law; the group's traditional base is the island of Basilan to the north. The M.N.L.F. was actually born on Jolo in the late-1960s, from which it spread its call for an independent Muslim Mindanao. In the 1970s and '80s, at least 100,000 people were killed in that insurgency through much of the south. In 1996, M.N.L.F. leader Nur Misuari signed a peace deal with the government: Misuari became governor of most of the south and the group disarmed. (A splinter group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (M.I.L.F.) continued fighting for a separate state, although it is currently engaged in peace talks with the government that are held in Malaysia.)

Not that things ever stay quiet in the south for long. In 2001 the government announced it would hold elections for the region's governorship—something Misuari denounced as a violation of the peace agreement; he sparked a new conflict in Jolo. Misuari fled to Malaysia, was extradited home, and is now in custody in a police camp outside Manila awaiting a trial. After the flare-up on Jolo last week, the rebels demanded their former leader be brought to the southern island of Sulu for trial. (Misuari could not be reached by TIME: his wife Tarhata said his guards had confiscated his cell phone.) The rebels also called for a withdrawal of the military from Jolo. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo quickly dismissed those demands. "We will not give the terrorists a moment of peace," she said last week.

The fighting now under way does not, however, involve the M.I.L.F., by far the largest rebel group in the south. Its spokesman, Eid Kabalu, said it wouldn't even affect the protracted peace negotiations with Manila. In fact, the M.I.L.F. last week offered to help broker a cease-fire on Jolo. Arroyo's government didn't respond to that weird offer—one group of armed rebels offering to help the government with another—so redolent of the troubled south. For the time being, restoring peace is in military hands.