Most people will dismiss the threat as nothing but hot air. The international community has long been forewarned about the Abu Sayyaf, whose favorite targets are Americans and other foreigners. In the past months the Abu Sayyaf’s ranks have been decimated and the group’s capability to launch fresh attacks greatly reduced. The warning was aired by someone who identified himself as Abu Sulaiman. That he now speaks for the terrorist group is a reminder that the previous spokesman, the flamboyant Abu Sabaya, has been neutralized.
Rumors persist that Sabaya, whose real name is Aldam Tilao, survived an encounter at sea with government troops. For the meantime, however, there has been no word from Sabaya and he is presumed dead. And for the meantime, warnings hurled by any member of the terrorist group can be dismissed as empty threats. The Islamic extremists, linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, have been on the run and have not staged any major attacks on either Philippine or American targets for several months.
It would be naïve, however, to write off the threat of Islamic extremism, especially in the poorest provinces of Mindanao. Sabaya may be dead, but Khadaffy Janjalani, brother of the Abu Sayyaf’s founder Abubakar Abdurajak, is still alive, his whereabouts unknown. The group’s Sulu-based faction led by Ghalib "Commander Robot" Andang is very much intact, and has apparently teamed up with renegade members of the Moro National Liberation Front.
This problem is far from resolved, and the surest guarantee is that the conditions that bred the Abu Sayyaf are still there. Basilan, Sulu and the Islamic enclaves of Mindanao remain underdeveloped. The threat aired by Abu Sulaiman is all hot air at this time. But if the conditions that fueled the rise of the group remain, such threats won’t be empty for long. Poverty breeds insurgency. Whether it will be the Abu Sayyaf or an entirely new group, the people of Mindanao will once again face terrorism.