The five-hectare Malaysian island of Sipidan is a paradise for divers. The beach drops almost vertically to around 600 metres and the sea wall teems with marine life, including tuna, whalesharks, manta rays and turtles.
The island is so small than only a few visitors stay at any one time. On Easter Sunday three Germans, two French nationals, two South Africans, two Finns, two Americans, one Lebanese and a Filipina were enjoying a seafood dinner at the resort restaurant after a day scuba diving when two speed boats approached. Their occupants were armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers.
They seized the foreigners, apart from the two Americans, who managed to hide, and 11 Malaysians, and took them to the Philippine island of Jolo, 350 km to the north. Before leaving one of the abductors sprayed the words "Abu Sayyaf" on a wall.
Abu Sayyaf is an extreme Islamic group, which has been terrorising the southern Philippines for several years. In 1998 two Hong Kong nationals were kidnapped by an Abu Sayyaf guerrilla known as Commander Robot on a remote Philippine island and held for 15 weeks until a ransom equivalent to $50,000 was paid. An elderly Italian priest, Luciano Benedetti, was held the same year for 68 days until the government "reimbursed" Abu Sayyaf for his "boardand-lodging expenses".
Other kidnappings have gone unreported and ransoms quietly paid over, leading to allegations of collusion between Abu Sayyaf and corrupt army officers.
The band, whose name means "Bearer of the Sword", was founded in the early 1990s by Islamic scholar Abdurajak Janjalani, who studied in Saudi Arabia, trained in Libya and fought in Afghanistan, before returning to the Philippines to wage a secessionist war. As an advocate of pure Islam who disapproved of films, dancing, popular music and smiling with bared teeth, he attracted young Muslim scholars disillusioned with moderate Muslim leaders who had signed a peace treaty with the Philippine government.
Abu Sayyaf first staged bombings and attacks on Catholic churches. It massacred 54 residents of the Christian town of Ipil in 1995. Janjalani was killed in a gun battle with police in 1998 and succeeded by his younger brother Khaddafi, an expert on explosives, whose rag-tag army today has an estimated 200 armed members, including religious zealots and pirates.
On March 20th, it escalated its campaign, snatching 58 hostages from two schools on the island of Basilan. Through intermediaries it issued confused ransom demands. These varied from $2.4 million to the release of three imprisoned Muslim militants, including Ramzi Yousef, convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
The situation verged on farce when Abu Sayyaf warned that hostages would be beheaded if the government did not send "bad boy" actor Robin Padilla, a convert to Islam, as a go-between. Padilla trekked to the jungle hideout, where the guerrillas insisted on posing for souvenir photographs. He managed to free two children but the Philippine government refused to ask the US to release the imprisoned Islamic militants and the stunt fizzled out. Abu Sayyaf upped the ante on April 23rd by seizing the international tourists. The divers have thus become unwitting players in the latest violent episode of four centuries of religio-economic strife in the southern Philippines.
Mindanao and the adjoining islands were converted to Islam in the 14th century by Arab spice traders and ruled as Islamic sultanates. When the Spaniards conquered the Philippines in the 16th century, the country largely converted to Catholicism, but the conquistadores were never able to establish control over the Muslims living on Mindanao and the adjoining Sulu archipelago. In 1898 Spain ceded the Philippines to the US, which brutally crushed the Muslim insurgents.
The Islamic leaders saw a chance of independence when the Americans gave up control of the Philippines in 1946, but the new republic ignored their demands, leaving the Muslims in a minority of 5 per cent in Asia's only Catholic country. Muslim resentment was fuelled further by a government-sponsored migration to Mindanao of thousands of poor Christian Filipinos from the north to fulfil their dreams of land ownership. By 1975, only one third of Mindanao's population was indigenous.
As settlers and mining companies encroached on traditionally owned land, a war of secession was launched by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
The stakes were high. Mindanao produces nearly half of the country's food, though separatists say the area has been plundered for centuries by the Philippine government, leaving the people mired in poverty.
At least 60,000 people were killed and almost 250,000 displaced before a peace treaty was negotiated in 1976 by then president Ferdinand Marcos. His wife, Imelda, flew to Tripoli to clinch the deal with Col Muammar Gadafy, who had organised an embargo of Arab oil to the Philippines.
Sporadic violence continued, however, between government forces and Muslim rebels until 1996, when then president Fidel Ramos negotiated another peace treaty under which veteran MNLF leader Nur Misuari became governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. This was rejected by Abu Sayyaf and another splinter rebel group called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), both of which vowed to fight on for an independent Muslim state in Mindanao, though the majority of Muslims appear to support the deal.
Dissident members of the MNLF continued to resist; one of their acts was to seize Dublin priest Mgr Desmond Hardford in October 1997, and hold him for 12 days. Adding to the dangers in the jungle areas and islands were communist rebels, bands of pirates and pro-government vigilantes. On Basilan a pro-Manila group of Muslim vigilantes known as Abdul Mijal has armed itself against Abu Sayyaf, and seized the family of Janjalani's younger brother, threatening to kill them on television if the child hostages were harmed.
Meanwhile, clashes between government troops and the MILF, believed to have 9,000-12,000 combatants, have flared on Mindanao. The MILF is opposed to the kidnappings by Abu Sayyaf as "evil and against the teachings of the Koran", according to a spokesman. Peace talks between the government and the MILF, which wants an East Timor-style referendum, were scheduled for May 2nd, with a final government deadline set for June 30th, but have yet to get under way. Yesterday, the MILF called a unilateral ceasefire to last this weekend, but it was not clear what impact this would have on the talks.
Many diplomats in Manila fear the situation is in danger of spinning out of control. With a Christian Liberation Army in Mindanao mobilising support, a religious war could break out similar to that on the Indonesian island of Ambon. In the fighting between the military and the MILF in recent months, dozens of soldiers and militants have already been killed and more than 100,000 people displaced. On Wednesday, MILF bombs killed four people and injured 30 others in General Santos and closed the airport at Cotabato City.
Another casualty of the crisis could be President Joseph Estrada, who is accused by critics of having no clear policy to deal with the rebels. The escalating violence, including the execution by Abu Sayyaf fighters of four of the Basilan hostages, among them a priest, on Wednesday, is frightening away investors and tourists. Mr Estrada seems bent on confrontation.
"Some say that we should stop military operations against terrorists for fear of driving away investors," he said this week. "I say that if we do nothing to stop terrorists, no investor will ever think of coming or staying in the first place."
