Winning A War of Stealth

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The U.S. contingent, which includes medics and engineers, works closely with the Philippine military on civic projects, operating hundreds of medical clinics and building roads, wells and schools across the country's mostly Muslim south, where for decades poverty and neglect undermined allegiance to Manila. Separatist movements have simmered in the south since the Philippines was a Spanish colony. Indeed, U.S. troops were first sent to the southern provinces over a century ago to subdue rebellious Moro tribespeople. "You can see civilians working well with the military and supporting [its civic] projects," says Yusop Jikiri, a congressman for Sulu, the province of which Jolo is the capital. "But what happened in the past is still in their hearts. Deep inside, they look at the military as their enemy." Civilian casualties during army ops, not an uncommon occurrence, also undermine public confidence in the authorities. The most recent example was a botched military raid in February during which seven civilians and an off-duty soldier were killed.

Coultrup, however, is upbeat. He says the security situation has improved dramatically, thanks in large part to the aid program, and local government is getting stronger. Sulu province "used to be the Wild West," he says. "Now the governor has banned all weapons and private militias and is instituting an islandwide ID-card system." Coultrup says four-fifths of Basilan Island, another hub of Islamist agitation, is also much safer. "The secret to counterinsurgency is if the people can answer yes to two questions,'' says U.S. Special Forces Major Eric Walker: "One, do people believe the government is going to win? Two, if they turn over information to us, are they and their family going to survive?" The goal, Walker says, is "for them to answer yes to those two."

Causes for Concern
Neither U.S. nor Philippine officials are claiming the fight is over. Abu Sayyaf members have vowed never to end their struggle and claim the group is rebuilding. Earlier this year terrorists attempted to bomb soft targets in Zamboanga city. The city's police director, Colonel Lurimer Detran, believes an attack in April, when bombs were planted at the Catholic cathedral and at a bank in the city, was definitely the work of Abu Sayyaf operatives. "We identified the suspects from composite sketches," he says. While no one was hurt in those attacks, on May 30 a bomb blast ripped through a crowd of Philippine army families waiting outside the Edwin Andrews Military Air Base in the city. The explosion killed two people and injured 21. Police are yet to finalize their investigation into the source of the blast but Abu Sayyaf operatives are the prime suspects despite the bomb containing TNT — not the normal mortar rounds used in previous Abu Sayyaf bombings. Colonel Coultrup suspects such operations were "confidence runs" designed to train raw recruits for larger missions.

While Abu Sayyaf's leadership seems to be lying low in the face of the rewards program, replacements have been found. Abu Sayyaf's latest leader is believed to be Yasir Igasan, an Islamic preacher in his 40s who was one of the group's founding members. According to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, Igasan has ties to wealthy donors abroad who could "recharge the flow of foreign funds" to the group. Authorities also believe J.I. members being sheltered by Abu Sayyaf are trying to recruit Filipino suicide bombers.

Congressman Jikiri agrees that any talk of Abu Sayyaf's demise is premature. "How can anyone say they are destroyed when they are still there and are still very active?" he says. "In fact, they have been conducting fresh recruitment." Jikiri is a senior official of the Moro National Liberation Front, a former separatist group that gave up armed struggle in the late 1990s. Its peace deal with the government secured autonomy for some Muslim areas, which the group now governs. Jikiri is skeptical about the Manila-led effort to win local people's trust. "Life in Sulu is still 40 years behind the times," he says. But the military is doing some good, he adds, by "curbing the commission of crimes in some areas where the police presence is very minimal." According to a national intelligence report sighted by TIME, however, troops are being reshuffled from the region to quell a communist insurgency by the 10,000-strong New People's Army, which authorities now see as a greater threat than the Islamists.

Shady Connections
A former Abu Sayyaf member says that, faced with the government's successes, the group is now waging a hearts-and-minds campaign of its own. "They are going back to basics, meaning recruitment and propaganda," the man says. "The goal is to avoid military confrontation for two years so their recruitment efforts will not be compromised. [Igasan] is busy recording audio and video propaganda messages."

Another concern for the government has been Abu Sayyaf's shifting alliances with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (M.I.L.F.), another Muslim independence movement of which Abu Sayyaf was an offshoot. The M.I.L.F. has been involved in on-off peace deals with Manila for almost a decade, though a special group set up in 2002 to facilitate intelligence-sharing between the M.I.L.F. and the government "atrophied in mid-2007," according to the International Crisis Group. In the past two years, M.I.L.F. members have rescued several Filipinos and foreigners kidnapped by bandits, and the organization remains in uneasy peace mode. But some officials worry that Abu Sayyaf operatives could find sanctuary in parts of the southern islands that are under M.I.L.F. control. Janjalani, as well as some of his supporters, had been allowed to stay in a camp at the junction of four M.I.L.F. command zones. A high-ranking police officer who asked not to be named says he believes the M.I.L.F. is helping Abu Sayyaf in hopes that the unrest it stirs will help their cause. M.I.L.F. spokesman Eid Kabulu denies any formal links between his group and Abu Sayyaf, but says terrorists could still call on ties of friendship and family: "There might be some individuals who these people are close to or have a relationship with, and who they're in some way able to exploit."

The race is on: if the defiance of men like Chief is to be encouraged, General Sabban and the country's armed forces must uproot the remnants of Abu Sayyaf, and do so before they lose their grip on the hearts and minds they've so lately won.