‘RP has most number of terror groups in SEA’

A United States-based non-government organization has reported that the Philippines has the most number of terrorist groups in Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) posted this report on its terrorism knowledge base website. According to the MIPT, there are 11 known terrorist groups in the Philippines.

With 38 such groups listed in the Asia and Oceania region, the Philippines is just ahead of Indonesia’s 10 terrorist groups and Malaysia’s nine.

In its database, the MIPT named the terrorist groups operating in the Philippines as follows: Abdurajak Janjalani Brigade (AJB), Abu Sayyaf, Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB), Free Vietnam Revolutionary Group, Indigenous People’s Federal Army (IPFA), Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), New People’s Army (NPA) and the al-Qaeda.

In terms of terrorist incidents, the Philippines also ranked first in the region with 370 terrorist attacks from 1968 to the present.

This was followed by Indonesia (215 terrorist attacks) and Cambodia (58 attacks) during the same period.

Although funded by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Office for State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, the MIPT’s data should not be considered as official US government-sponsored data, the Philippine Embassy in Manila said.

Embassy press attaché Matt Lussenhopp said in an interview that MIPT may have incorporated official US government data but also uses other sources.

He said the official statistics on terrorism from the US government are taken from the State Department’s annual Patterns of Global Terrorism Report, the latest of which is the 2003 edition.

The MIPT was established after the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It is dedicated to preventing terrorism on US soil or mitigating its effects.

The US Congress directed MIPT to conduct "research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism" through its automated information systems and to "serve as a national point of contact for anti-terrorism information sharing among Federal, State and local preparedness agencies, as well as private and public organizations dealing with these issues." — Marvin Sy