Next Stop Mindanao

Hun

ting terrorists on Basilan Island is a punishing game of hide-and-seek, as any Philippine soldier can tell you. The 5,000 Philippine troops on Basilan are looking for the last 80 or so heavily armed members of the Muslim rebel gang known as Abu Sayyaf (meaning "Bearer of the Sword"), who are on the run with three hostages in tow somewhere inside a 30-sq.-mi. patch. Stalking the rebels in jungle so dense that no light shines through the canopy of foliage, along jagged ridges often shrouded in fog, is like fighting in a dark closet with sunglasses on. The enemy are masters of the hit-and-run ambush, and might be lurking behind every curtain of vines, every thicket or frond.

Welcome to the next front in the global war against terror. Starting last week U.S. soldiers began arriving in the troubled southern province of Mindanao to hunt shoulder to shoulder with the frustrated Philippine soldiers who have been scouring the area for the past eight months. In theory, the 650 U.S. G.I.s, including 160 special forces, are being sent to teach the local troops better ways to search out and destroy Abu Sayyaf, a group that officials say has had ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. In practice, armed with sophisticated munitions and authorized to fire only in self-defense, the Americans seem likely to do everything short of direct combat attacks to help rid the Philippines of this scourge.

With al-Qaeda cells lurking in at least 50 countries around the world, why bring the battle to the Philippines? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last week that Abu Sayyaf is linked to al-Qaeda, "no question," but most officials in Manila consider it more a band of local thugs than a worldwide terrorism threat. Still, the group's brutal record of kidnapping--and beheading--foreigners as well as Filipinos (close to 100 murdered since 1991) makes it a legitimate target. The fact that Abu Sayyaf still holds hostage U.S. missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham, said Rumsfeld, only "adds a dimension to our interest."

Yet the underlying purposes of this operation may go beyond the fate of Abu Sayyaf. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has shrewdly used the terrorism threat to dip into Washington's honey jar, coming away with $100 million in military aid and substantial additions to her depleted arsenal. Her country has largely been cut off from military assistance since Manila kicked the U.S. out of its two major South Asian bases in 1991. The Bush Administration was eager to regain a military foothold there. Last November, when Arroyo visited Washington, the President offered to send U.S. combat troops to join the Abu Sayyaf chase--despite a clause in the Philippine constitution prohibiting foreigners from fighting on the nation's soil. But a visiting-forces agreement signed in 1999 allows U.S. troops to join in military exercises.

The gravest terrorism threat may come less from Mindanao than from Manila, thought to be a prime hideaway for undetected al-Qaeda cells scattered throughout Southeast Asia. For several months Manila provided houseroom for Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Only last week Philippine police arrested three men suspected of plotting with an al-Qaeda ring recently broken up in Singapore. Sleepers like these, with a taste for anti-American action, trained and financed by al-Qaeda, could be part of a regional terrorism fraternity operating under the banner of Jemaah Islamia, which seeks to knit renegade segments of the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia into a radical Islamic state in the South China Sea.

Sending in G.I.s to help disband Abu Sayyaf would deprive these cells of a useful bit of real estate. But it wouldn't eradicate the international danger they pose. Rooting them out is a job for the undercover boys. The FBI has beefed up its Manila office because, says an official, "the threat level is going up." It is worried that Asians might step in as suicide bombers now that airport security is targeting Arabs. And the 650 incoming G.I.s could provide nice cover for other covert operatives, such as CIA paramilitaries. "As we've said all along, what you don't see us doing in the war on terrorism," says a Pentagon official, "is as important as what you will see."

For now, the visible action will concentrate on Abu Sayyaf as American soldiers join the patrols on Basilan Island. They are on a slippery slope between training and fighting. Their very presence makes them a target for terrorists and for the local Muslim populace, which has been bitterly anti-American since colonial times. Though they are called advisers, the Americans will be going on risky missions deep into the jungle. "You're coming as close as you can to direct combat when you go out on patrol," says Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret who is an analyst at Washington's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Sometimes even if you're trying to stay out of combat, the fighting is brought to you." That is exactly how the U.S. found itself mired in Vietnam.