https://www.channelnewsasia.com/new...-fighters-to-philippines---separatist-9974286 Asia Pacific Defeats in Middle East driving Islamic State fighters to Philippines - separatist Foreign Islamic State fighters forced out of Syria and Iraq have been arriving in the Philippines with the intent of recruiting, and they have plans to attack two Philippine towns, the head of the country's largest Muslim rebel group said on Tuesday. View attachment upload_2018-2-20_7-8-54.gif Al Haj Ebrahim Murad, chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrilla group, speaks next to the MILF flag during an interview with Reuters at Camp Darapanan rebel base in Maguindanao province, in the southern Philippines March 12, 2015. REUTERS/Erik De Castro/Files 20 Feb 2018 04:45PM Share this content Bookmark MANILA: Foreign Islamic State fighters forced out of Syria and Iraq have been arriving in the Philippines with the intent of recruiting, and they have plans to attack two Philippine towns, the head of the country's largest Muslim rebel group said on Tuesday. More than 1,100 people were killed last year when pro-Islamic State militants attacked and held the Philippine city of Marawi for five months, leading to massive destruction across the scenic lakeside town. That could happen in other cities if Congress fails to pass a law to allow Muslims in the southern Philippines to run their own affairs, according to Ebrahim Murad, leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group which signed a peace deal with the government in return for greater autonomy. "Based on our own intelligence information, foreign fighters who were displaced from the Middle East continued to enter into our porous borders and may be planning to take two southern cities - Iligan and Cotabato," Murad said. The two cities are 38 km (24 miles) and 265 km (165 miles) respectively from Marawi. Murad said fighters from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Middle East were known to have entered the Philippines, including a Middle Eastern man holding a Canadian passport. Advertisement That man went to a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, notorious for kidnapping and piracy, Murad said. Murad said militants had been recruiting fighters in remote Muslim communities, exploiting delays in the passage of legislation aimed at addressing long-standing Muslim grievances, the Bangsamoro Basic law (BBL). "These extremists are going into madrasas, teaching young Muslims their own version of the Koran, and some enter local universities to influence students, planting the seeds of hatred and violence," he said. Such a scenario would be a major headache for the military, which is fighting on multiple fronts on the southern island of Mindanao to defeat home-grown Islamic State loyalists, bandits and communist insurgents. Mindanao is under martial law. The military has said remnants of the militant alliance that occupied Marawi were trying to regroup and were using cash and gold looted from Marawi to recruit. Murad's statement echoed those of President Rodrigo Duterte, who last month urged lawmakers to pass the BBL, or face re-igniting war with separatists after two decades of peace. "We cannot decisively win the war against extremism if we cannot win the peace in the halls of Congress," Murad said. (Editing by Martin Petty, Robert Birsel) Source: Reuters should the US care? what action will the US take?
Giving them their own muslim-ruled area would be a great idea...if you wanted them to then try to take over the entire country. I'm pretty sure Duterte knows how to deal with this problem.
They might attempt to do this in Mindanao but on Luzon (the most populated island where Manila is) they will be dealt with brutally. The fact that their plans are already known leads me to believe preparations have been done.
"The decline in revenue in the recent quarter across the illicit pharmaceutical sector can be directly attributed to the reduction in the the number of direct sales representatives."
Mind you the drug war might sound great but many people arrested and killed are innocent, they often have been users in the past but that doesn't warrant arresting or killing anyone. The police has a quota, in many towns the drug lords are long dead and so are most of the users. Yet the police needs to make the numbers, so they arrest people just to make quota. That's a pretty terrible system. I won't even start with how the police often robs arrested people and how their properties are robbed as they are awaiting trial. It's quite a desperate situation. Don't ask me how I know this stuff but I can say it's based on reliable sources and not media nor hearsay. Duterte's ideas have been good but the execution is often quite bad. Besides, many of the good things he did have been reversed by the utterly corrupt senators. Democracy does not work with an easily corruptible and short-term oriented financially poor public.