{"id":17074,"date":"2014-06-26T15:54:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T07:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=17074"},"modified":"2025-01-07T03:56:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T08:56:33","slug":"after-12-years-us-to-disband-anti-terror-force-in-southern-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/06\/26\/after-12-years-us-to-disband-anti-terror-force-in-southern-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"After 12 years, US to disband anti terror force in southern Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abu<\/a>
Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, photographed in 2000. (Photo : History Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u2014After more than a decade of helping fight al-Qaida-linked militants, the United States is disbanding an anti-terror contingent of hundreds of elite American troops in the southern\u00a0Philippines where armed groups such as Abu Sayyaf have largely been crippled, officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n

But special forces from the U.S. Pacific Command, possibly in smaller numbers, will remain after the deactivation of the anti-terror contingent called Joint Special Operations Task Force\u00a0Philippines, or JSOTF-P, to ensure al-Qaida offshoots such as Abu Sayyaf and the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah militant network do not regain lost ground, according to U.S. and\u00a0Philippine\u00a0officials.<\/p>\n

The move marks a new chapter in the long-running battle against an al-Qaida-inspired movement in the southern\u00a0Philippines, viewed by the U.S. as a key front in the global effort to keep terrorists at bay. It reflects shifting security strategies and focus in economically vibrant Asia, where new concerns such as multiple territorial conflicts involving China have alarmed Washington\u2019s allies entangled in the disputes.<\/p>\n

A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.<\/p>\n

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S. military established the task force in the southern\u00a0Philippines\u00a0to help ill-equipped\u00a0Filipino\u00a0forces contain a bloody rampage by Abu Sayyaf gunmen, who carried out bombings, terrorized entire towns and kidnapped more than 100 people, including three Americans.<\/p>\n

Although U.S. forces are barred by the\u00a0Philippine\u00a0Constitution from local combat, the advice, training, military equipment and intelligence, including drone surveillance, that they provided helped the underfunded Philippine\u00a0military beat back the Abu Sayyaf. U.S.-backed\u00a0Philippine\u00a0offensives whittled the militants\u2019 ranks from a few thousand fighters\u2014mostly drawn from desperately poor hinterland villages\u2014to about 300 gunmen, who survive on extortion and kidnappings for ransom while dodging military assaults.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cOur partnership with the\u00a0Philippine\u00a0security forces has been successful in drastically reducing the capabilities of domestic and transnational terrorist groups in the\u00a0Philippines,\u201d U.S. Embassy Press Attache Kurt Hoyer said in a written response to questions sent by email by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The remaining terrorists, he said, \u201chave largely devolved into disorganized groups resorting to criminal undertakings to sustain their activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

That success has led U.S. military planners in co-ordination with their\u00a0Philippine\u00a0counterparts \u201cto begin working on a transition plan where the JSOTF-P as a task force will no longer exist,\u201d Hoyer said, adding there were currently about 320 American military personnel left in the south.<\/p>\n

There were about 500 to 600 American military personnel in the south before the drawdown.<\/p>\n

Hoyer said a still-unspecified number of U.S. military personnel from the Pacific Command would remain under a new unit called the PACOM Augmentation Team to provide\u00a0Filipino\u00a0forces with counter-terrorism and combat training and advice, and \u201censure that violent extremist organizations don\u2019t regain a foothold in the southern\u00a0Philippines.\u201d<\/p>\n

He suggested the remaining American personnel would move away from training exercises with\u00a0Filipino\u00a0combat units in the field, and shift to working with\u00a0Philippine\u00a0security forces at unified commands and headquarters units.<\/p>\n

The timing of such withdrawals from counterterrorism campaigns from the southern\u00a0Philippines\u00a0to Afghanistan has been a dilemma for the U.S., which must ensure that remaining extremist forces are not able to bounce back.<\/p>\n

Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said\u00a0Philippine\u00a0officials have been notified of the U.S. move and expressed confidence that\u00a0Filipino\u00a0forces could deal with any lingering threat from Muslim extremists in the south, scene of a decades-long Muslim separatist rebellion in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.<\/p>\n

Gazmin said with the scaling down of the U.S. presence in the south, the Americans would renew a presence elsewhere in the country to help address another security worry\u2014China\u2019s increasingly assertive behaviour in the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing, Manila and four other governments have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and the\u00a0Philippines, which are defence treaty allies, signed a 10-year pact in April that will allow possibly thousands of American forces temporary access to selected\u00a0Filipino\u00a0military camps and enable them to preposition fighter jets and ships.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Philippines\u2019 efforts to protect its territory have dovetailed with Washington\u2019s intention to pivot away from years of heavy military engagement in the Middle East to Asia, partly as a counterweight to China\u2019s rising clout.<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Lolita Baldor and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u2014After more than a decade of helping fight al-Qaida-linked militants, the United States is disbanding an anti-terror contingent of hundreds …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headline","category-news-ph","mauthors-jim-gomez","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280058,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17074\/revisions\/280058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}