Page 85 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

74 Benjamin Cole
There is hardly any reporting linking ASG violence to its root causes in the
lawless environment on Basilan island. These causes include grinding poverty, a
gun culture, and local government that lacks legitimacy. Christians who migrated
to the province control the economy whilst Muslims remain poor. This has
enabled the ASG to convince recruits that the Christians are depriving Muslims
of life’s barest essentials. The group made similar progress in Sulu province on
Jolo island, which is among the Philippines’ ten poorest provinces (Gloria 2000).
The ASG itself has also failed to use the media to articulate its ideology and
objectives, which is another reason why reporting of the ASG has not developed
much beyond the cock fighting analogy. Successive governments have been
uncertain about how to view the group. Under the Ramos administration, the
Intelligence Service of the AFP described the ASG as no more than a kidnap
gang, whilst the PNP claimed that the group was part of the global spread of
Islamic fundamentalism. Whilst under the Estrada administration the government
viewed the ASG as part of a single Muslim movement engaged in armed struggle
against the state, with the goal of establishing a separate Islamic state through
terror (Gloria 2000). In recent years, however, the media labels the ASG as
either ‘terrorists’, or ‘bandits’, and sometimes as ‘militants’ or a ‘Muslim extremist
group’.
The group has periodically demanded the release of Ramseh Youssef and other
al Qaeda figures who have been jailed in the US (Gunaratna 2003: 180), but the
media primarily focuses on the ASG’s actions, rather than its objectives. Its only
goal that is given any real attention is the ransoms that it has demanded for
hostages. When hostages have been murdered, it seems to have been because a
ransom was not paid or purely to instil terror, rather than for ideological reasons.
This fits with the labelling of the ASG as a bandit group, which has neither polit-
ical nor social objectives. Part of the reason for its failure to communicate any
political goals is because it has lost its ideological compass. Its founder,
Abdurajak Janjalani, was well schooled in a fundamentalist interpretation of
Islam, and he instilled the belief in his recruits that Jihad was their personal
responsibility, and that non-believers had to be killed or driven out of Mindanao.
His successor, Khaddafy Janjalani lacked any strong ideological or religious con-
victions. Whereas Abdurajak could spend a whole day discussing Islam, a police
official who interrogated Khaddafy in jail described him as someone ‘...who
knows nothing when it comes to ideology’ (Gloria 2000).
By the time of the Basilan kidnappings in 2000 the indications were that the
ASG did not know what it wanted or how to articulate the problems of the Moro
community. The kidnappers at first demanded only rice and food. When they
allowed the media to interview the hostages, their leader, Commander Robot,
took the opportunity to declare that the kidnappers were mujahideen who
respected the Geneva Convention and would not harm civilians, journalists and
medical personnel. Yet these statements are no substitute for a clearly articulated
political and social agenda in winning popular support. Although on Jolo, where
another faction were holding a group of largely foreign captives, they first asked
for money and then followed this with a demand for implementation of fishing