Kuala Lumpur – Thomas Friedman once suggested that the Arab world should have changed after the Taliban fell when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Instead, the Arabs hated the US more. America has remained the symbol of global domination. With its intent of doing in Afghanistan what it wanted to do in Iraq, the US experimented on a Western-inspired type of government that it tried to support with hundreds of billions of dollars and military weapons, only to fall in less than 10 days to the Taliban after US President Joseph Biden finally pulled out US troops in Afghanistan. Now, the Taliban are back, and with it, its harsh brand of leadership, curtailing women’s rights and putting to risk millions of lives in a country that is in a state of disrepair.
In a not-so-distant past, a terrorist organization called Dawlah Islamiyah, locally known as the Maute Group, raised the ISIS Flag in Marawi City on May 23, 2017. A narrative published by Mindanao State University – Marawi researchers suggested that international terrorists joined that siege, including young women who entered Marawi City as students. The Maute Group had one aim – to establish the first Islamic caliphate in this part of Southeast Asia. Led by two brothers, Omar and Abdullah Maute, the group made an alliance with another terror organization – the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
The Abu Sayyaf, famous for the Sipadan hostage crisis and numerous beheadings, has been prominent in international headlines. The notorious terrorist organization, with links to Al-Qaeda, was organized by Abdurajak Janjalani. Janjalani fought alongside Osama Bin Laden against the Russians during the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which the Soviets lost. It has been reported that Janjalani received six million dollars from Bin Laden to establish the Abu Sayyaf. The militant organization follows the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. The ASG attracts young Muslim Filipinos, mostly from the provinces of Basilan and Sulu.
Before the US 9/11 attacks, according to Peter Bergen, Bin Laden “was consolidating power as the absolute leader of Al-Qaeda.” Many Muslims did not believe that Bin Laden planned 9/11, writes Friedman, thinking that it was a conspiracy concocted by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Confiscated tapes and other documents, of course, after Bin Laden was found and subsequently killed by US Navy Seals in 2011, at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with then US President Barack Obama watching the whole operation via live feed at the White House.
But who was Bin Laden? The son of a wealthy Saudi industrialist, Bin Laden inspired his disciples, who often described the experience with the terrorist as a spiritual awakening. Bergen writes that the “first encounters with the Al Qaeda leader by his followers were found to be awe-inspiring.” The same were felt with God-like reverence. Bin Laden gave up a life of privilege in his pursuit of his terrorist agenda. Bergen says that the terrorist was viewed as an extraordinarily charismatic man. Bin Laden, in fact, was the symbol for Jihad or Holy War.
Extremist groups conduct their war as the struggle against what they claim is US hegemony in the world. Terrorist leaders persuade their young recruits to wear suicide vests by presenting to them a type of an unjust socio-political order in which US imperial interests undermine the rights of Muslims. But terrorists have no ideology to speak of. They sow fear and only intend to disrupt peaceful civilian life. Nick Fotion thinks that “there are, of course, degrees of innocence and guilt; but terrorists who choose all their victims in a random or near-random fashion cannot help but victimize people who are innocent of any political wrongdoing.”
In modern times, violence is seen as an effective way to coerce and intimidate not only people, but governments and societies as well, in order to advance political interests and religious goals. Terrorism, however, is not a modern-day phenomenon. Alison Jaggar explains: “The word terrorism was introduced in late eighteenth-century France when Robespierre initiated his Reign of Terror that was meant to deter all of his counter-revolutionary critics.” Jaggar adds between 1793 and 1794, “thousands of French citizens were executed, mainly by the newly invented guillotine.”
