A Four-Part Series on Extremism and Online Recruitment – Part 3: Online Recruitment of Filipino Youths

Introduction

The Islamic State (IS) significantly benefits from the internet: its online contents can be simultaneously accessed anytime, anywhere, across multiple devices. Within Southeast Asia, the Islamic State-East Asia (IS-EA, a regional chapter of IS) maximizes the utilization of the internet, specifically via social media, to disseminate their politicoreligious propaganda and to recruit. Compared to the internet, traditional media was more expensive, had limited outreach, and impeded youth recruitment globally. Due to their prowess, IS-EA is even feared in its use of social media. Unfortunately, Filipino youths are not spared from IS-EA’s influence.

Telegram Still Prevalent for Online Recruitment of Filipino Youths and Terrorism Financing

Currently, Telegram continues to play a role in bolstering support and encouraging more attacks in new areas, including sub-Saharan Africa and the Indo-Pacific region. This is evident from the prevalence of pro-IS chat groups in Telegram and its use to recruit and coordinate attacks globally as observed from the November 2015 Paris attacks and 2016 Brussels bombings. Pro-IS chat groups such as the Furqan network facilitates rapid transmission of key messages including the 2019 interview of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi to their followers. Additionally, the authors had recently shared information on potential terrorist plots communicated via Telegram to authorities in countries such as the US and the Philippines. In the Philippines, suicide bombing tactics by female terrorists and guides on Improvised Explosive Devices assembly are commonly disseminated to IS-EA followers through Telegram.

Similarly, Telegram is also instrumental in IS-EA’s recruitment and terrorism financing efforts in the Philippines. To recruit Filipino youths, IS-EA has called for youths to establish a state based on their warped interpretation of Islam which would not only make the country more insular but adversarial to almost all other countries. Exploiting their financial vulnerabilities, these youths were also promised financial gains for their participation. Additionally, chat groups such as the “Expansion of the Caliphate in East Asia‟, “Sharq Asia‟ and “East Asia Wilayah‟ were created to attract foreign recruits to travel to the Philippines.

During the Marawi Siege, Telegram was also instrumental in channeling funds to support IS-EA efforts while displaying the close rapport between similar-minded terrorists from Indonesia and Malaysia. Via Telegram, a member of terrorist group Jamaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD) based in Indonesia was tasked to collect funds from individuals he did not know in various cities in Indonesia from January to March 2017. Notably, this request came from a former Malaysian lecturer participating in the siege. Such interstate coordination will likely continue due to their challenging nature to uncover. Among others, uncovering them is dependent on close coordination between authorities from various countries.

Skillfully Tying Physical and Online Efforts for Recruitment

Addressing youth recruitment by IS-EA requires simultaneous efforts on both the physical and virtual worlds. This is because of IS-EA skillfully tapping on both avenues to recruit youths. IS-EA online youth recruitment started as early as 2016 on platforms such as Facebook. Such platforms had proven successful as they have been previously used by the group for fundraising efforts. Additionally, to increase its outreach, the local dialects of Maranao, Yakan and Tausug were frequently used on these platforms. To further target Filipino youths, recruiters have also targeted them on online gaming platforms. This entailed building from being part of the same team or alliance in online games to becoming friends offline, before inviting potential recruits to their terrorist cell.

Simultaneously in the physical world, IS-EA notably recruits children using non-coercive means by gradually exposing them to the group’s ideology, worldview and apocalyptic vision. The organization convenes public events aimed at raising awareness of the group, attracting children by offering them toys, candy or ice cream just for showing up. Additionally, IS-EA child soldiers and youth recruits from economically disadvantaged families in the Philippines to provide timely surveillance information, accompanied by photos and videos, in exchange for receiving not only either cash incentives or crystal methamphetamine (locally called “shabu”), but also to get something as basic as regular top-ups or reloads for their prepaid mobile phones. This not only allows these recruits to continue playing addictive online games, but also being “groomed” by recruiters via in-game chat functions.

Such close nexus was demonstrated during the Marawi Siege. The IS-EA fighters used social media to announce the start of the Marawi Siege. For example, the first news that militants had taken to the streets of the Islamic City of Marawi on May 23, 2017, came from Facebook. Pictures of masked men carrying assault rifles and waving the black flag of the Islamic State were swirling across social media well before Philippine and international news channels picked up the story. By the time the military and the media had begun to respond, Marawi’s residents were already streaming out of the city by the tens of thousands to seek refuge from the violence. In the months leading up to the siege, there had already been speculation that extremist groups were trying to use social media to reach and recruit Muslims across Mindanao.

The online recruitment of Muslim youths for the siege accompanied offline efforts. The authors uncovered that a heavy volume of cash was needed to sustain the IS-EA fighters during the Marawi Siege, as families demanded hefty payments in exchange for support. Moreover, like their foreign counterparts, the Maute terrorists were focused on expanding their area of control, taking hold of natural resources and commercial centres, producing and distributing illegal drugs, and the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition. Military sources pointed out that each of the Maute-supporting family received PhP50,000 (~USD1,030.00). Separately, individual youth fighters recruited from these families received PhP30,000 upon joining IS-EA and those who made it to the main battle area received Php70,000. Additionally, there were more than 2,000 child soldiers who were training in secluded areas around Marawi City with at least USD 6million paid in cash to the desperate Maranao and Filipino parents.

Online Radicalization of Filipino Youths

After the Marawi Siege, IS-EA factions relied on the traditional revenue sources they employed prior to pledging allegiance to IS, including remittances and criminal activities such as kidnap for ransom and extortion. According to law enforcement officials, this steady stream of income supports the online radicalization of Filipino youths. Based on a 2018 study, it was found that 1) online networks replicated offline communities and 2) extremist messaging in the Philippines is highly localized, and connects with local grievances that spring from the municipal or provincial level. To replicate offline communities digitally, most recruiters use networks such as Facebook to target individuals they already have a connection with.

Government Intervention to Disrupt Online Recruitment

The Philippine Government intends to disrupt online youth recruitment by terrorist organizations through tapping bilateral partnerships with its closest defense ally, the United States. However, efforts to disrupt online youth recruitment by relying on one defense ally alone may prove insufficient in the long-run. One example of such bilateral efforts is several countering violent extremism–themed programmes in Mindanao conducted by Equal Access International (EAI). EAI trained local civil society members in Mindanao to design and implement locally based countering violent extremism (CVE) campaigns. Additionally, through EAI’s two tech camps, the designated local fellows were given funding to carry out their peace promotion projects. Another example is the Philippine military efforts to disrupt online youth recruitment which is funded by Countering Violent Extremism efforts of the Operation Pacific Eagle–Philippines (OPE-P), an overseas contingency operation. The OPE-P is a counterterrorism campaign conducted by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in coordination with other U.S. Government agencies, to support the Philippine government and its military forces in their efforts to counter IS-EA and other priority violent extremist organizations in the Philippines.

Policy Recommendations

Community partnerships are a crucial component of effective disruption of online youth recruitment. At the core of this critical disruption is to empower mothers who are the first to identify changes in the behavior of their own sons and daughters who are constantly exposed to the internet and may also be active users of various online games which can be exploited by extremist recruiters. Community leaders need to actively work with parents and teachers to help spot and disrupt the online youth recruitment of radical groups as early as possible.

Online gamers also need more tools and better access to in-app mechanisms to instantly report and notify game creators about extremist content or “grooming” towards radicalization done via in-game chat functions. P/CVE experts need to be more pro-active in partnering with online gaming communities to enable gamers to challenge the statements that extremists have shared on various online gaming platforms. Policymakers may also push for the creation of an opensource software that will enable all online games to automatically identify and remove extremist content from their gaming platforms.

Law enforcement agencies should work to empower local communities with appropriate information and instruments they need to build their own capacity to disrupt, challenge and counter youth recruitment of radical and extremist groups, in both the real world and the virtual world. A whole-of-society approach can be applied to enable law enforcement officials to work directly with communities to exchange information and best practices in thwarting online recruitment by extremist groups that prey on the vulnerable and highly malleable minds of children and youths.

Effective criminal justice responses to threats presented by the use of the internet by terrorists require governments to develop clear national policies and laws dealing with, inter alia: (a) the criminalization of unlawful acts carried out by terrorists over the Internet or related services; (b) the provision of investigative powers for law enforcement agencies engaged in terrorism-related investigations; (c) the regulation of Internet-related services (e.g. ISPs) and content control; (d) the facilitation of international cooperation; (e) the development of specialized judicial or evidential procedures; and (f) the maintenance of international human rights standards.

Part 1: Linguistic Appeal of Propaganda

Part 2: Quest for Significance

Part 4: Mothers and the Internet

Women and Children in Terrorism: A Four-Part Analysis (Part 2: Philippines-ISIS in East Asia and the CPP-NPA Communist-terrorist Network)

Introduction

After the retreat of the IS-Maute forces from the Marawi Siege, there is an estimated number of 165 women who are supporters of ISIS East Asia in the surrounding areas of Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte. Based on personal fieldnotes, these women have an average of 6 to 7 children. Most of these women focused on providing safe haven to the ISIS Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) composed mostly of Malaysian and Indonesian nationals. Given the refusal of the Indonesian Government to accept women and children of ISIS FTF, these families are expected to make the Philippines their permanent residence.

Increasing Combat-readiness of Female Extremists

The specific skill sets of the ISIS East Asia female combatants have now incorporated Improvised Explosive Device (IED) assembly and conducting suicide bombing activities. In recent suicide bombings in the town of Jolo, Sulu province, female members had assumed significant lead roles in carrying out suicide roles. These women decided to take on more than the usual combat support roles. In most cases, female terrorists are heavily involved in the procurement of weapons and ammunition.

Female combatants also help in the procurement, recruitment, training and the handling of terrorism financing tasks. They, too, conduct intelligence gathering, transporting supplies and arms, logistics, food, resistance, and offering nursing services for the wounded. Despite their participation in combat, they are not expected to be rewarded with authority or political power over the male combatants.

For female combatants of terror groups operating in the Philippines, their skills entail identifying safe havens for fighters and the provision of food, medicines and clothing. Child soldiers, on the other hand, help provide surveillance activities of the police and military units in the area. The nondescript tandem of female terrorists accompanied either by their own babies or other child soldiers is an effective strategy to avoid detection by local authorities.

More recently, Jevilyn Cullamat, the 22-year-old communist-terrorist daughter of a CPP-NPA-NDF-linked Filipino lawmaker was killed in an encounter between government troops and New People’s Army rebels in Surigao del Sur. According to the 3rd Special Forces “Arrowhead” Battalion of the Philippine Army, Jevilyn Cullamat served as an armed medic of the New People’s Army. By recruiting family members, terrorist groups can avoid detection and capture by limiting contact with outsiders and increasing the costs of defection for individual members. Family members also provide an additional source of labour; women and children contribute to terrorist groups through support roles, such as providing food or medical care and maintaining camps, as well as direct participation in attacks.

Women occupy strong political and social roles within their respective terrorist groups. They actively take part in strategic supporting roles that are necessary for warfare. Due to their dedication to daily and mundane tasks, they are highly regarded by other members. These women recruit their sisters and close cousins, their respective husbands, and their own children. For many of these women, the terrorist groups provided a space where they could share their political ideas, a fundamental right that was previously denied to them by their families and communities. These female leaders organized meetings between terrorist women’s groups and meetings between the leaders of terrorist groups contributing to their collective empowerment. Their decision to join terrorist groups can be seen as a way of seeking protection for their families and improving their chances in life. Since these women are given false hopes by terrorist organizations during the recruitment phase and false dreams of a better life, they were pushed to join these terrorist organizations without really fully understanding what they are getting into.

In countries and communities wherein girls and women seek a place of importance or significance, some fall into the trap of being part of what we call the “Sisterhood of Destruction.” Increasingly, more girls and women become masterminds, and not merely accessories to crimes and acts of terror, in the Philippines.

Continued Recruitment of Child Soldiers into Extremism

Children are more vulnerable than adults when a nation faces on-going warfare because family, society, and law cannot fully provide adequate legal and physical protection for children.  This is despite the presence of a UN convention catered to children. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 seeks “…to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”

As of 2020, a former ASG member disclosed to the authors that there is an estimated 150 child soldiers in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) comprising several battalions prepared to go to war at any time.

The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) had actively recruited individuals from 15 years of age and above and providing these minors improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and high-powered guns. During the Marawi siege, however, the ASG and ISIS were discovered to have recruited and radicalized child soldiers as young as 6 to 8 years old. Even the youngest child combatants, both girls and boys, served in some of the world’s most destructive war zones. They were utilized as frontline soldiers, spies, cooks, messengers, and porters. Children were instrumental, small and easily unnoticed in suicide bombings and in other surprise attacks.

In the last three years alone, between 2016 to 2019, the Communist Party of the Philippines took pride in being able to recruit over 8,000 students for their underground movement, a former communist rebel stated during a Senate hearing on alleged military red-tagging last November 3, 2020. Jeffrey Celiz, alias “Ka Eric,” told senators that a CPP-NPA-NDF document seized from the National Democratic Front (NDF) consultant Vic Ladlad revealed that majority of the over 8,000 youth recruits came from senior high schools, which pertained to 16 or 17-year-old targets for recruitment and radicalization by the CPP-NPA-NDF communist-terrorist network.

The commonplace perception about child soldiers was that those most likely to be recruited were:

(1) economically poor;

(2) separated from their families;

(3) displaced from their homes;

(4) living in a combat zone; and

(5) with limited access to education.

Globally, while it may be true that the predominant recruitment of child soldiers takes place in areas where there is little or no government presence at all, in the Philippines, the insidiously pervasive nature of the CPP-NPA terrorist network has led to the phenomena of mass recruitment among children and youth leaders from good and God-fearing families enrolled in elite schools and not just public academic institutions.

“90 percent of the cadres of the CPP-NPA-NDF come from schools. Lahat kami dun nanggaling halos (most of us were recruited from schools). We all started through a legal organization, but they are not purely legal,” said Jeffrey Celiz, a former cadre of the CPP-NPA who served the communist-terrorist movement for 27 years.

Early Intervention and Reintegration Programmes for Sustainable Peace

A successful approach in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) demands identification of early signs of radicalization and the mitigation of individual and collective grievances, structural factors and drivers that in the worst case may support or fuel violence. Key actors need to be engaged through cross-sectoral efforts to prevent and counter the spread of radicalization and recruitment in their local communities. Particular focus should be put on the role of women, youth, children, local stakeholders and civil society, including religious and community leaders.

Initiatives aimed at reintegrating individuals willing to leave violent extremism behind and return to their communities should also be enhanced and encouraged — while keeping in sight that, according to a new study, education, not employment, is the key to reducing recidivism among ex-combatants. The authors also identified several factors that are associated with a return to crime among ex-combatants: factors such as anti-social personality traits, weak family ties, lack of educational attainment, and the presence of criminal groups are highly correlated with recidivism.

The success rate of the thousands of former terrorists and former rebels’ reintegration will be key for sustainable peace in a country that has been ravaged by internal armed conflict for over five decades. Ideally, if successfully reintegrated into their local communities, former violent extremists can serve as messengers to their communities and regions, questioning the narrative that made them commit to violent extremist ideologies in the first place. It is our clarion call for government authorities to invest sufficient resources for (1) methodical convictions in terrorism financing; (2) a long-term deradicalization program for radicalized children, youth, and women; and (3) a holistic program to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for individuals and families afflicted by war and conflict.

Part 1: A More Effective Counterterrorism Strategy for Indonesian Women by Acknowledging Their Motivations and Tactical Contributions

Part 3: The Invisible Women and Children of Malaysia: The Vulnerability of Stateless Persons to Terrorism and Violent Extremism

Part 4: The Shape of Contemporary Conflict in Southeast Asia: How Violent Extremism has Changed Our Women and Children

Women and Children in Terrorism: A Four-Part Analysis (Part 3: Case Study of Malaysia)

Introduction

The complex reality and volatile nature of terrorism and violent extremism (VE) transcends borders in today’s global village. Globally connected, terrorism continues to become more sophisticated, more indiscriminate and more lethal. Since terrorist and violent extremist groups tend to flourish in marginalized areas, using local grievances to recruit young citizens in vulnerable life situations, suffering, for instance, from varying degrees of unemployment, low education and literacy levels, no sector in today’s world is at greater risk and remains severely understudied as the stateless women and children targeted for recruitment and radicalization by terrorist organizations.

Due to the historically unstable political, social, and economic conditions in Southern Philippines, further aggravated in the last five decades by the pervasive presence of the CPP-NPA communist-terrorist network that relentlessly attacks and exploits the vulnerabilities of the Muslim-majority ethnic groups or indigenous peoples (IPs), hundreds of thousands of Muslim Filipinos have sought a relatively more peaceful life for Muslims in Sabah, Malaysia — albeit not all through legal immigration. Presently, there are at least 10,000 people in West Malaysia alone who are denied nationality, with unknown numbers of stateless persons in East Malaysia, which includes Sabah. Contrary to the stateless populations in West Malaysia, the circumstances in East Malaysia, especially concerning the mixed migratory context in Sabah, is more difficult to establish and efforts to operationalize a programme had been generally considered more complex, compounded by the fact that UNHCR has not had an office in Sabah since the 1980s. Hannah Arendt saw “statelessness” as the most primary deprivation of all: the loss of a place in this world, a loss that renders opinions insignificant and actions ineffective. In becoming stateless, persons are additionally robbed of the only entity that could guarantee a set of minimum rights, rendering them extremely vulnerable to any kind of abuse and deprivation, since they have no legal status either in their own countries or abroad. Psychologically, “impotence breeds violence,” while politically, “loss of power becomes a temptation to substitute violence for power.”

East Malaysia: A Prime Location for Both Terrorists and Stateless Persons from the Philippines

Based on a 2017 Manila Times report on the Marawi Siege, Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) and their child soldier recruits seeking to enter southern Philippines in order to join Islamic State-affiliated groups find Sabah to be the safest route as an entry point to the porous borders of Mindanao, Philippines. According to Yohanes Sulaiman, a security analyst and lecturer at Indonesia’s Jenderal Achmad Yani University, “The porous Indonesia-Malaysia border and more importantly the stronger connection between Sabah and Mindanao since both shared some close roots as they used to be part of the Sultanate of Sulu in southern Philippines, make Sabah the easy choice.”

“There have already been a lot of movements traditionally of people between Sabah and Mindanao, and the terrorists are just utilizing that network. Remember the fact that the Malaysian government was caught completely off guard a few years ago when a bunch of people affiliated with the Sultanate of Sulu infiltrated Sabah,” Yohanes said, referring to the bloody 2013 Lahad Datu siege by Sulu militants, calling themselves the “Royal Security Forces of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo” out to stake their ancestral territorial claim over part of Sabah.

Sabah, Sarawak dan Labuanor Malaysian Borneo is the part of Malaysia on the island of Borneo, the world’s third largest island. It consists of the Malaysian states of Sabah, which is closer to the Philippines than to mainland Malaysia, Sarawak in the west, and the Federal Territory of Labuan. Coming from the islands of Jolo, Sulu or the Zamboanga Peninsula, Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) terrorists from the Philippines openly boast how they can easily reach Sabah in approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes with their high-powered speedboats; with even less time required if they come from Tawi-Tawi, which is only 273 miles from Sabah. Filipino, Malaysian, and Indonesian fishermen are all accustomed to traversing the dangerous waters of the Celebes and Sulu Seas within 24 hours using regular motorboats.

One thing immediately common to members of terrorist organizations and stateless persons is how they both evade documentation in fear of detention or arrests; and how they know the best escape routes and hiding places to avoid monitoring and surveillance. Given the proximity of Sabah to Mindanao, stateless persons, many of whom are of Muslim Filipino descent, born in East Malaysia but generally with no birth certificate or any government I.D., make perfect targets for recruitment and radicalization by ISIS who offer not only a sense of “collective belonging” but also provide a means for stateless persons to earn a substantial income despite their lack of education. While no ISIS-affiliated attacks were carried out in 2019, Malaysia remains as a source of children and youth targets for ISIS recruitment, as well as a transit point and hub for kidnap-for-ransom activities perpetrated by other terrorist networks.

In Malaysia, the law does not guarantee the right to education for irregular migrant children or stateless children, and thus, they would continuously be denied this right so long as they remain in Malaysia illegally. Stateless persons residing in Malaysia, regardless of country of origin, may legally be refused or denied access to education, jobs or healthcare.

The problem of stateless persons in East Malaysia reflects the imperative for Philippines and Malaysia to work collaboratively to resolve this complex human rights issue. It was a humbling experience for Filipino researchers from Mindanao to interview face to face some of these undocumented persons of Filipino descent who preferred to remain stateless for as long as they could continue to live and work in Sabah. This bleak reality speaks volumes in terms of the intergenerational failure of the Philippine government to make a vast number of Muslim Filipinos feel that they “collectively belong” in their own homeland.

“Mabuti pa na undocumented kami dito sa Sabah kaysa umuwi sa Zamboanga sa Mindanao kay mahirap ang buhay sa Pinas pag Muslim ka, mas OK pa ang buhay ng mga tulisang NPA sa Mindanao, pero pag Muslim ka, hindi maganda ang trato ng gobyerno. Dito sa Sabah, kahit papaano, mas maganda pa rin ang buhay namin bilang mga Muslim.” (‘It’s better for me and my children to be stateless here in Sabah, than for us to go back to Zamboanga in Mindanao where Muslims are discriminated against. NPA terrorists have even more rights in the Philippines than us Muslims. Here (in Sabah), even with no legal documentation, Muslims have a better life under the Malaysian government.’) – Fatimih Husin, an illegal immigrant, and a mother of 5 undocumented children of Filipino descent.

Additionally, the total population of foreign workers in Malaysia at the end of 2017 was estimated at 2.96–3.26 million. Of these, an estimated 1.23–1.46 million are irregular foreign workers, a much lower and narrower range than the estimated 1.9–4.6million reported by other sources. The security threat assessment and analysis on how many stateless women and children in Malaysia are susceptible to VE recruitment and radicalization is complex and subject to large margins of error because data on irregular foreign workers and stateless persons based in Malaysia are relatively scarce, and much of the data that are collected are not shared among key stakeholders.

Officially, there are between one and two million undocumented or irregular migrants in Malaysia and among them, it is estimated about 44,000 children who were born from irregular migrant parents were denied schooling. In 2016, the former Home Minister of Malaysia, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi estimated that there were around 290,000 stateless children in the country. According to another intelligence source in Sabah, an advocate for stateless persons, as of 2017 there were more than 400,000 stateless children of Muslim Filipino descent, who have either undocumented or stateless parents working in the low-paying informal sector in Sabah. Being rendered stateless from birth significantly affects the intellectual development of these children which makes it much harder for them to grow up as productive and law-abiding adults. The exact number of stateless individuals remains unclear given the nature of the problem. Contrary to popular belief, many people who are stateless in Malaysia are not foreigners, refugees or “illegal migrants”; many of them were actually born in the country and have been living in Malaysia most of their lives, according to local media reports.

Way Forward: Bilateral Programmes and More Female Representations

Undocumented and stateless persons are ideal terrorist recruits for ISIS since they have no public records: no birth certificates, no passports, and no real identification cards. In this day and age wherein terrorism transcends borders, ‘statelessness’ no longer exclusively disenfranchises the stateless persons, the illegal migrants and refugees who are rendered “superfluous” — unwanted and unseen — by contemporary politics, but ordinary citizens too, whose security, civil liberties, and rights to life and property are equally exposed to the threat of domestic terrorist attacks that may be carried out by stateless actors in the near future.

On the aspect of reducing risks related to terrorism and counterterrorism, Lucia Zedner aptly points out, “Add to this the risk of marginalizing and alienating those we target and we arrive at the paradoxical situation that counterterrorism policies may make further attack more, not less, likely. So we need to consider what risks are really at stake when we seek to counter terrorist risk.”

While stateless persons, especially the undocumented women and children based in East Malaysia, are more at risk to terrorism and VE, it is nonetheless clear that ISIS has also deployed a relatively sophisticated and modestly successful recruitment strategy that targets Malaysian youth, particularly those enrolled in institutions of higher learning in Peninsular Malaysia; as well as the online recruitment of vulnerable Malaysian women seeking to take part in “female Jihad” by supporting their male relatives, educating their children in the radical ideology they have embraced, and facilitating terrorist operations. In light of these developments, the Middle East Institute also suggests that, “It is urgently necessary for the Malaysian government, university officials and others to join forces in continuing to develop and refine an array of counter-recruitment measures.”

The status of the Muslim stateless persons in Malaysia reflect the status of Muslim youth in France. According to one narrative, when the Muslims migrated to France, they battled poverty in the grim housing estates outside big cities. These youth are locked in a closed cycle of poverty, crime, and lack of opportunities. In the mid-2000s, these youth rose up to make their grievances known. They now press for a fair chance at graduating from school, having a good job, and living in peaceful communities. The cycle of poverty and rioting continues until their demands are accepted.

Bilateral programs promoted by Malaysia and the Philippines can help promote the safety of children as laid out in the Sustainable Development Agenda as a strategic precondition of global development. For example, bilateral projects to address stateless youth can specifically address Target 16.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations General Assembly resolution 70/1), which calls for putting an end to all forms of violence against children, including the abuse and exploitation of and trafficking in children. These programs could highlight the crucial role played by children in the creation of peace, justice and robust institutions.

Any successful counterterrorism programme should address both the motivation and the operational capabilities of a terrorist organization. There is an essential need, therefore, for the Malaysian security forces to expand their capabilities to look more carefully at the role of women and children in terrorist organizations. By and large, more female experts in the field of terrorism studies and in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) need to be closely involved as leaders of interagency partners to explore options for this policy area going forward.

Part 1: A More Effective Counterterrorism Strategy for Indonesian Women by Acknowledging Their Motivations and Tactical Contributions

Part 2: Striving for Peace in the Philippines amidst Increased Combat-readiness and Continued Recruitment of Women and Children

Part 4: The Shape of Contemporary Conflict in Southeast Asia: How Violent Extremism has Changed Our Women and Children

Introduction

Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, groups affiliated with ISIS-Philippines continue efforts to recover from battlefield losses, recruiting and training new members, and staging suicide bombings and attacks with IEDs and small arms that targeted security forces and civilians. ISIS-Philippines affiliates active in 2019 included elements of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the Ansar al-Khalifa Philippines (AKP), and the Maute Group. The Philippines remains as a preferred destination for Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) from Indonesia, Malaysia, and countries in the Middle East and Europe.

Southeast Asian extremists and potential terrorists have been influenced by the desire of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) to turn Southeast Asia into a theatre of conflict like Mosul and Raqqa in Iraq. The Islamic State (IS) wanted to declare an East Asia Wilayat, or province of the caliphate, in the Philippines. In the battle of the southern Philippine Islamic city of Marawi, IS wanted to replicate what they had previously established in Iraq and Syria. The siege of Marawi shows that IS can co-opt local groups and undermine the sovereignty of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states and their bilateral and regional security cooperation.

Additionally, these four elements including rogue Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) members continue to impede progress between the Philippine government and MILF toward a political settlement of long-running insurgencies. In January 2019, residents of the region passed a referendum to ratify the Bangsamoro Organic Law to implement the national government’s peace agreement with the MILF. Ratification of the law established a new, more autonomous regional government led by the MILF in February 2019. Despite such challenges to peace from religious extremists, the Philippines faces a deadlier threat.

CPP-NPA Terrorist Network Deeply Entrenched in the Philippines

The Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) terrorist network relentlessly continues to attack security forces and civilians, and the government sustains military and law enforcement operations against the communist-terrorist group (CTG). Official records — i.e., combat reports and death benefits to soldiers’ families of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) — show that

Credit: Steven Pabalinas

No Women and Children Convicted of Terrorism in the Philippines

More recently, on September 18, 2020, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition for release and protection filed against the CPP-NPA-linked youth activist group Anakbayan in connection with the alleged disappearance of a student who was a minor at the time of her recruitment. On October 26, 2020, the Department of Justice also dismissed the case against the respondents for violation of Republic Act 9851 or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, And Other Crimes Against Humanity. More recently, last October 29, 2020, two former female child soldiers of the NPA recently filed a case against NPA Eastern Visayas Regional Party Committee for violations of Republic Act 9851 (Philippine Act on Crime Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity) and Republic Act 11188 (Special Protection of Children in Situations of Armed Conflict Act) before the Leyte Provincial Prosecutor’s Office on November 21, 2020. The siblings also filed rape charges against CPP-NPA leader (Regional Party Committee Head), Paterno Opo alias “Yoyo Dodong”. It remains to be seen if there will be terrorism-related convictions in Philippine courts by 2021.