Filipino Muslim Rebels Tied to Afghan War
Aug. 31, 2000 -- Like many international terrorists, the Abu Sayyaf group has its origins in the 1979-89 jihad or “holy war” to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.
And like alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, it has been financed by Saudi Arabia’s wealthy elite and influenced by Wahabism, an ultra-conservative form of Islam that dates from mid-18th century and is espoused by the Saudi royal family.
Abu Sayyaf was the last of the seven main Afghan guerrilla groups to be formed, and organized late in the war — only about three years before the Russians withdrew.
Abu Sayyaf, which means “father of the sword” in Arabic, was founded in 1986 by an Afghan professor named Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf.
Some of the original veterans of the Afghan jihad, and their sons and grandsons and those trained by them, have been operating with destructive effect since the 1980s from Egypt and the Philippines to Algeria and New York.
Deadly University
As the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA’s powerful Pakistani partner, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) found itself losing control of the Afghan fighting groups.
Although the ISI continued to train and equip some for warfare against India in Kashmir and Punjab provinces, Abu Sayyaf had also established a “university,” north of Peshawar, Pakistan, to train terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA and ISI.
Senior Pakistani police officials said it trained terrorists for the Philippines, the Middle East, North Africa — and New York — and a senior Pakistani officer acknowledges that 20,000 volunteers were trained in the Peshawar “university” and that after the 1979-89 war ended, the alumni “looked for other wars to fight.”
Abu Sayyaf moved operations to the Philippines, ostensibly to support the generations-long battle for an independent Muslim state in the southern islands.
Among their leaders were two brothers, named Qaddafi Aburazak and Qadaffi Janjalani, ostensibly out of their father’s esteem for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who has been mixing in Philippine affairs since the 1970s.
Other Afghan veterans ended up stimulating unrest, rebellion and civil wars in Pakistan itself, India, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Their proclaimed goal was to establish Islamic states, according to the commands of God, around the world.
Ramzi Ahmed Youssef, jailed for life for the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, is believed to have frequented Abu Sayyaf school.
Dangerous Alumni
Youssef’s work with Abu Sayyaf became known in 1994. On Dec.11, a bomb aboard a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight from Manila to Tokyo killed a passenger and injured six others.
The Abu Sayyaf group claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call.
FBI, CIA and Filipino investigators discovered that Youssef was the master planner of this and other unsuccessful attempts to bomb 11 other airliners, all American, over the Pacific on the same day.
Shortly after the bombing, Filipino security forces raided a Manila flat used by Youssef and found strong evidence of a plot to kill visiting Pope John Paul II when he visited in January 1995.
After a long international manhunt, Youssef was arrested in a safe house belonging to bin Laden in Islamabad, Pakistan. He was extradited to the United States and later given a life sentence in a New York federal court.
Bloody History Abu Sayyaf began its Philippine campaign in 1990, operating at first on the fringe of the much larger and more politically oriented Moros Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), later separately, by kidnapping, bombing, burning, looting and killing its way across the Pacific nation’s southern regions.
Victims have included Christian land owners, Roman Catholic and Protestant priests, senior businessmen and security officers.
Abu Sayyaf’s current kidnapping efforts began last April with the seizure of 21 tourists on a Malaysian resort island.
President Joseph Estrada’s government in Manila acknowledged that “outsiders” (including the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel whose correspondent was kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf) have paid at least $5.5 million in ransom to the group.
Abu Sayyaf began using its new riches to stock up on guns, armaments and supplies of all types and to recruit many new members.
During the current Libyan mediation and reported payment of at least $25 million in “development aid” by Gadhafi’s son’s “charitable” foundation in Tripoli, Libya, the ransom demanded for the captives reported by investigators was $1 million a head.
Abu Sayyaf guerrillas now holding American Jeffrey Craig Schilling, whom they charge — and the United States denies — is a CIA agent, are demanding freedom for Youssef and two other Muslims imprisoned in the United States, in exchange for Schilling’s life.
The full ransom demands for Jeffrey Schilling, which the U.S. government has rejected in advance, were not public at this writing.