What will it take to defeat the Abu Sayyaf?

It is a common adage that in guerrilla warfare, the guerrillas are winning as long as they exist. The Abu Sayyafs are not guerilleros. They are plain bandits. They are using guerilla warfare to attain their goals of raising money by demanding ransom for hostages. By now, they should know that the authorities do not approve of paying ransom money to recover hostages. And so now they use the hostages just to prevent the Armed Forces from attacking them. But even that is not working for the army has been engaging them in battle for the precise purpose of recovering the hostages in their hands. Unfortunately, this did not work with two of the three hostages. Two were killed and one was wounded, but rescued.

The American policy of not paying any ransom money for the release of hostages is very sound. Paying ransom money is the best way of ensuring that there will be more and more hostages in the future. We feel bad about the death of the two hostages and our only hope and desire is to see each and every Abu Sayyaf member be brought to justice.

We have had some first-hand experience with guerrilla warfare during the war and we know what a difficult task the Armed Forces have in just tracking down the dissidents. If only they had detained them all when they had them surrounded in the Dr. Jose Maria Torres Memorial Hospital in Lamitan, things would have been entirely different.

Now with the help of American forces, not to mention the huge dollar rewards offered for any information that will lead to the capture of the few remaining Abu Sayyaf members, the bandits have still managed to avoid their moment of truth. The latest information is that they have broken down into smaller groups. So the problem of tracking them down will even be more difficult. In the words of Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, it will take "a house-to-house search" to track them down. In short, it will be a search for individuals and not a group. A terrorist is always a dangerous foe whether he is an individual or in a band. But the fact that they are disintegrating is a very significant sign. It is a very clear indication that they are very much in the defensive. Their task now is just to preserve themselves and individually at that. They can only serve one purpose to society – to be used as an example of what we do to bandits who take hostages for ransom.

Law-abiding Muslims should take the initiative to take the proper steps to correct the conditions that have created groups like the Abu Sayyaf. They must have a program to wage a war against poverty. We must improve the living conditions in the Muslim sectors of Mindanao. The first step is the establishment of peace and order.