This year, a local group of rogue Muslim rebels emerged as an intricate band of kidnappers now known as the "Pentagon" kidnap-for-ransom gang.
The group, led by the slippery Tahir Alonto, a former member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), has claimed responsibility for more than 20 kidnappings in the region in the past seven months.
Since 1990, Central Mindanao folk have never experienced a lull in kidnappings in the region, pioneered by Abogado Bago, also known as Commander Mubarak, a member of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
Mubarak was gunned down by Marines in a raid on his hideout in a secluded district in Pantukan, Davao del Norte on Dec. 7, 1992, after having masterminded the abductions of 70 wealthy residents, mostly Filipino-Chinese traders, in Central Mindanao.
The Pentagon surfaced in July when its members abducted, in separate attacks in North Cotabato and Maguindanao, five Chinese nationals and their Filipino interpreter.
Two of the captives, Zhang Zhung Quiang and Xue Xing, were killed by their captors during a chance encounter with soldiers in Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat on Aug. 11. A third captive, Wang Shengli, escaped while both sides were trading shots.
The two remaining captives, Zhang Zhung Yi and Edwin Lim, a Davao City businessman, were freed one after the other in October, through the intercession of Libyan Ambassador Salem Adam and Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema.
Alonto’s relatives said the first batch of Pentagon recruits, who graduated from the training camp last September, were 29 adolescents, who underwent extensive training in fabrication of homemade bombs and handling of firearms. The recruits were also reportedly taught the Arabic language.
Peace advocates in Central Mindanao have called for a deeper evaluation of the Pentagon, convinced that just like the Abu Sayyaf, it is one of the terrorist cells of Osama bin Laden in Southeast Asia.
While the MILF has disowned the Pentagon, all of its victims were held captive in known strongholds of the front.
"We do not condone the activities of kidnappers. It’s so sad that the MILF has always been the ‘whipping boy’ whenever the police and the military are under fire for its failure to stop kidnappings in Mindanao," said Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF’s vice chairman for political affairs.
Call it coincidence but Alonto, who now carries a P2-million prize on his head, and the MILF’s reclusive leader, Ustadz Hashim Salamat, an Egyptian-trained Islamic theologian, have some things in common.
Both of them were born in Barangay Cudal, Pagalungan, an impoverished town in the second district of Maguindanao.
Only North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, known for his hardline stand in dealing with criminals, was courageous enough to link the Pentagon to the MILF.
Piñol, chairman of North Cotabato’s Peace and Order Council, even accused Salamat’s brother, a certain Ustadz Shamir, of allegedly coddling the kidnappers operating in his province.
"These kidnappings were perpetrated to raise funds to enable the MILF to put up a big stronghold in the Liguasan Marsh," Piñol said.
All of the MILF’s guerrilla enclaves, including its main bastion, Camp Abubakar, at the border of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, all fell to military control following an extensive pacification campaign by the former Estrada government in 2000.
Alonto’s rescue was carried out in a very daring manner. His armed followers surrounded the Sarangani provincial jail, fired B-40 rockets at the gates, entered the jail, overpowered the guards and spirited Alonto away.
Soon after, Alonto started consolidating his men, mostly MILF rebels who have been dropped from the front’s roster of members for having been charged with various criminal offenses in the front’s Sharia court.
In January this year, Alonto and his key followers were said to have met in Polomolok, South Cotabato, where they agreed to form a bigger group that would control all kidnap-for-ransom groups in Central Mindanao.
Among those present in the meeting, according to a source in Sultan sa Barongis, Maguindanao, were three former hatchet men of Commander Mubarak and two men with Middle Eastern features, identified only as Karim and Abdulazis.
Last month, Alonto’s group was said to have procured seven M-60 machineguns, four dozen M-16 rifles and two Ultimax 5.56 mm. submachineguns from a smuggler who reportedly transported the firearms to Central Mindanao from abroad aboard a fishing boat which docked in a port somewhere in the South Cotabato —Sarangani-General Santos City (Socsargen) area.
Like his predecessor, the slain kidnap gang leader Commander Mubarak, Alonto would always emphasize in meetings with his men that they need to carry out kidnappings to dramatize their quest for Muslim rule in the South.
"He would often tell his men and his relatives that his kidnapping activities were perpetrated in pursuit of a political objective, that of catching the attention of the Philippine government to focus on the struggle of Muslims for independence," said an Alonto relative who asked to be identified only as Sahidali.
Since September alone, combatants of Army units under the 6th ID have bagged five key members of the Pentagon and killed more than 30 of its members in separate encounters in Maguindanao and North Cotabato.
Last month, soldiers of the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion rescued a businessman, just an hour after he was abducted in Kidapawan City, while he was being taken by his Pentagon captors to Mlang, North Cotabato. Two kidnappers were killed in the ensuing firefight, which also left the victim slightly wounded.
The business community in Central Mindanao has been prodding the police and the military to get Alonto "dead or alive," worried that kidnappings will continue if he remains scot-free.
In his own right, Alonto is now becoming a legend. In rural areas, where peace has remained as elusive as ever, legends do not easily fade away.