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Where U.S. is helping to make gains against terrorism - -

By Simon Montlake

(Photograph)
A Little help: US troops Wednesday on Jolo island. American soldiers have been supplying and training Philippine troops for five years.
AL JACINTO/AP

Where US is helping to make gains against terrorism

Recent developments in the southern Philippines offer a degree of hope to Pentagon planners.

It's the kind of item that doesn't show up in defense budget audits: A $200 tin-roofed communal outhouse, or "comfort room," tucked behind the village market. To US Army Capt. Steve Battle, who split the construction cost with his Philippine counterparts, it's money well spent.

Gaining the trust of residents in Panamao, a stricken village on the edge of a combat zone, is why US and Philippine troops are dug in here. In counterterrorism jargon, this Muslim community is a "center of gravity" that can be swayed with targeted projects – a new well, a school classroom, or a toilet. "It's not the amount of people that you affect. It's who you affect," says Captain Battle, a civil-affairs officer.

In the Monitor
Thursday, 02/15/07
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RICH CLABAUGH – STAFF

At a time when success stories in the US-led war on terror have been all but eclipsed by failures in Iraq, recent developments in the southern Philippines offer a degree of hope to Pentagon planners. But they also show the complexity of waging war in a contested, chaotic area, as well as the long slog needed to stand up a national army equal to sure-footed militants.

Five years after Philippine troops, supplied and advised by US soldiers, drove Islamic militants from the island of Basilan, a major offensive is under way on Jolo Island, where the militants regrouped. The goal is to deny sanctuary to the remaining members of Abu Sayyaf, one of several insurgent groups who have been fighting for a separate Islamist state. Since August, elite Philippine units have killed or captured as many as half of an estimated 400 Abu Sayyaf on Jolo Island, including their slain leader Khadaffy Janjalani and several other senior operatives.

Philippine commanders on Jolo say they are confident their 7,000-strong troops can finish the job. "They lack ammunition, they're on the run, and we're continually pressuring them. They are in a position to be neutralized," says Army Gen. Ruperto Pabustan of the local militia.

If so, the Philippine military would end a reign of terror by a group that was founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the early 1990s. Abu Sayyaf later morphed into a kidnapping racket that became almost indistinguishable from the criminal gangs that plague the Philippines' remote regions. While that makes Abu Sayyaf something of a footnote to the global war on terror, it is no le



    
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