That's right... Obama is reaching out to THIS GUY
After a week of bowing to world leaders in Asia, President Obama is now reaching out to radical Islamic terrorists:
US President Barack Obama has sent a letter to the leader of the main Muslim rebel group in the Philippines, a guerrilla official said Saturday.
The letter to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Murad Ibrahim was delivered to rebel peace negotiators by Deputy Assistant State Secretary Scot Marciel, according to Muhammad Ameen, chairman of the MILF secretariat.
Source: Deutsche Press-Agenteur via Monsters and Critics and JihadWatch
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front... Hmm... What are these guys all about? Let's see...
The southern Philippines has become the training center for Al Qaeda's Southeast Asia affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, drawing recruits from a number of countries, according to Western and Philippine officials.The training camps are in an area under the control of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been waging a guerrilla war for an independent state for 25 years, officials said.
Hundreds of Qaeda recruits trained at Moro camps in the late 1990's, including some of the men being tried in the Bali bombing, Western officials said. But those camps were destroyed by the Philippine Army in 2000, and Moro rebels have steadfastly denied any links to Al Qaeda.
Source: New York Times (May 31, 2003)
2003? Come on! That's so YESTERDAY! What has the MILF been up to lately?
Apparently, they've been strengthening ties with Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah. In case you aren't familiar with these terrorist groups, check out the Council on Foreign Relations' report on Abu Sayyaf:
Counterterrorism efforts by the Philippine government seem to have pressured the group in recent years: In 2007, the government killed 127 members of Abu Sayyaf and captured an additional thirty-eight. But Abu Sayyaf has been improving ties with regional organizations, like Jemaah Islamiyah and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an Islamic separatist group dating from the 1970s located in the southern Philippines. Thus, even though Abu Sayyaf's armed strength fell from an estimated one thousand in 2002 to between two hundred and four hundred in 2006, the capabilities of the organization may be growing. The 2008 U.S. State Department estimates the group to consist of between two hundered and five hundred members.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
Wowzer. Let's take a look at Abu Sayyaf:
AbuSayyaf
Description
The ASG is a violent Muslim terrorist group operating in the southern Philippines. Some ASG leaders allegedly fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and are students and proponents of radical Islamic teachings. The group split from the much larger Moro National Liberation Front in the early 1990s under the leadership of Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed in a clash with Philippine police in December 1998. His younger brother, Khadaffy Janjalani, replaced him as the nominal leader of the group.
Activities
The ASG engages in kidnappings for ransom, bombings, beheadings, assassinations, and extortion. The group's stated goal is to promote an independent Islamic state in western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, areas in the southern Philippines heavily populated by Muslims, but the ASG primarily has used terror for financial profit.
Recent bombings may herald a return to a more radical, politicized agenda, at least among certain factions. The group's first large-scale action was a raid on the town of Ipil in Mindanao in April 1995. In April 2000, an ASG faction kidnapped 21 persons, including ten Western tourists, from a resort in Malaysia.
In May 2001, the ASG kidnapped three U.S. citizens and 17 Filipinos from a tourist resort in Palawan, Philippines. Several of the hostages, including U.S. citizen Guillermo Sobero, were murdered. A Philippine military hostage rescue operation in June 2002 freed U.S. hostage Gracia Burnham, but her husband Martin Burnham and Filipina Deborah Yap were killed. U.S. and Philippine authorities blame the ASG for exploding a bomb near a Philippine military base in Zamboanga in October 2002 that killed a U.S. serviceman. In February 2004, Khadaffy Janjalani's faction bombed SuperFerry 14 in Manila Bay, killing 132.
In March 2004, Philippine authorities arrested an ASG cell whose bombing targets included the U.S. Embassy in Manila. The ASG also claimed responsibility for the 2005 Valentine's Day bombings in Manila, Davao City, and General Santos City, which killed 8 and injured more than 150.
Source: FAS Intelligence Resource Program
How about Jemaah Islamiyah?
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
- The October 2005 suicide bombings in Bali that killed twenty people and injured 129.
- The September 2004 suicide car bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed three people and left more than 100 wounded.
- The August 2003 car bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed twelve people.
- The October 2002 bombing of a nightclub on the predominantly Hindu island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists from Australia and elsewhere. Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, a forty-one-year-old mechanic from East Java, was convicted on August 8, 2003, for buying the vehicle used in the main explosion and buying and transporting most of the chemicals used for the explosives. He was the first of thirty-three suspects arrested for the bombings to be convicted.
- A December 2000 wave of church bombings in Indonesia that killed eighteen.
- A December 2000 series of bombings in Manila that killed twenty-two people.
- A 1995 plot to bomb eleven U.S. commercial airliners in Asia.
That 1995 airline bomb plot is also known as the Bojinka plot... Which was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef. Just sayin.
