Working together to eliminate Abu Sayyaf

IT is good that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte agreed last week to work out a system that will allow Malaysian naval vessels to conduct hot pursuit raids against Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines.

Mr Duterte also concluded a similar agreement with Indonesia earlier this year. The three countries have also an agreement for coordinated naval patrols in the Sulu Sea, where Abu Sayyaf militants are most active. Intelligence gathering posts in Bongao in the Philippines, Tawau in Malaysia, and Tarakan in Indonesia have been set up. But are these measures enough?

As militants go, the Abu Sayyaf lot are in a category all their own. They started out as a breakaway faction from the Moro National Liberation Front which was fighting for autonomy in the Muslim-majority regions of the southern Philippines. Over the years, Abu Sayyaf leaders with strong connections to Arab militants have been killed off. These days, the movement has broken up into well-armed gangs bent on every kind of criminal enterprise, including kidnapping tourists for ransom and hijacking fishing boats. Indonesian fishing vessels have been frequent targets as have tourists in Sabah. Of course, the militants cloak their crimes as measures to fund their activities against Manila.