Legitimizing bandits

Would it have improved the prospects for peace negotiations between the bandit group and the government if ABS-CBN’s Ces Drilon had obtained and aired that exclusive interview with the new leaders of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) she said she was after? Should peace negotiations between a police problem like the ASG and the government be on the national agenda at all?

Both questions are crucial to the main ethical issue, unremarked by many commentators, that was at the heart of the Ces Drilon episode. Mostly dismissed as a spent force and no more a terrorist organization than a common kidnap for ransom gang operating in Manila would be, any interview with ASG leaders aired over a major network would have re-conferred on it the status it once had as a supposedly separatist rebel group, thus putting it on the same level as formations with clear political aims like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The capacity to confer legitimacy and status is inherent in the mass media.

The ASG gained notoriety in the late 1990s as a supposedly terrorist organization with its bombing, assassination and kidnap for ransom operations. Eventually, however, its lack of any clear political aim made it clear that it doesn’t even qualify as a terrorist group, the definition of which includes having a political program. It does qualify, however, as a group that uses terrorist methods for non-political aims.

As for its origins, Octavio Dinampo, the Mindanao State University professor who was kidnapped along with Drilon, told the Manila Mainichi Shimbun that the ASG is not linked with Al Qaeda as has been repeatedly claimed, but is a “locally-grown organization” supposed to be known as the Al Harakatul Al Islamiya. “( Al Qaeda) never created this so-called ASG. This ASG is the creation of the Philippine military,” Octavio said.

The group has not had much of a media presence after its leader Khadaffy Janjalani and senior ASG commander Abu Sulaiman were killed in September 2006 and January 2007, respectively. It has receded in the national consciousness primarily because it is correctly perceived as no more than a bandit group that deserves police action rather than peace negotiations.

Was the story on the new leadership of the ASG then worth risking life and limb? Drilon said it herself after they were released by the terrorists that she had gravely endangered the lives of her colleagues. The experience was sobering, she said, and no story is worth any life.

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