Abu Sayyaf Group,Who's behind?

Abu Sayyaf Group,Who's behind?

by Erick San Juan

Why can't a band of Abu Sayyafs be captured? Who's funding them? Where are their sophisticated weapons coming from? Why are our law enforcers and local government officials seem helpless against these ragtags? These questions have been asked many times before. Has our government ever learned from our experiences in the past on how to handle and deal with these kinds of criminals? These outlaws have no political nor religious ideology and is known in their neighborhood as petty crime operators, toughies and drug users who metamorphosed into big time banditry protected by their "script writers", scalawags in uniform and few corrupt government functionaries in Sulu. Kidnapping is a very lucrative underworld business down south. It's sad that few of our local and national government officials became their "negotiators" and some are even sharing their bounties out of the ransom paid. If not for the infighting and double crossing on how to share the loot,the mayor of Indanan and his son will not be caught as conspirators in the abduction of ABS-CBN veteran TV host,Ces Drilon and her crew. Even media personalities reportedly partake and acted as middlemen in the negotiations. Some were a witting tool in the so called "economics" of KFR (kidnap for ransom). This was a lesson learned by one of them who has used her intimacy with one of the gang leaders, getting her share of the "action" but was kidnapped by the scalawags in uniform. She became the hostage for several months and rescued through the intercession of a religious order. "Kaya wala't wala rin ang kinita nya." The government and the intelligence community knew the problem and how to go about it. But,what went wrong? It is just proper for the PGMA administration to show its political will. If not, we might have a repeat of the Abu Sabaya incident where the U.S. military intervened to rescue the Burnhams. This was shown several times in the History channel. Are we going to let the Americans intrude again in our domestic affairs? Overheard, they will and it's justified because it's terrorism and it involved foreign members of the International Red Cross. The government should take new security measures, upgrade it's policy and act decisively so that those mistakes will not be repeated in the future. Those travel advisories released by foreign governments destroy not only our tourism industry but us as well. Do we have to wait for these foreign governments to give out names on who are really the brains behind the scene? Just asking.......