Posted on 01/12/2002 10:29:09 PM PST by Walkin Man
ABIAWAN, the Philippines — "Emergency!" the men shouted as they jumped from a jeep outside the little clinic. A young nurse named Reina Malonzo hurried out to help, but they pushed by her in the rain and darkness and began smashing windows with their rifle butts.
They fired into the air. Their hostages, filthy and wet, stumbled into the little building and began taking showers and looking for fresh clothes.
The hospital workers huddled on the floor in fear and bewilderment. "We covered our faces," said Miss Malonzo, who is 23. "We didn't want to look."
It was a moment, she said later, that ruined the life she had known. Sitting in a military camp here on the island of Basilan, smiling in embarrassment, she said, "I really don't know where to start again."
When the gunmen left the hospital 18 hours later, they took Miss Malonzo with them, along with three other hospital workers and the eight hostages they had seized at a beach resort four days earlier.
It would be five months before Miss Malonzo saw her family again, and by that time, she was a convert to Islam, in love with one of her captors and unsure whether she really wanted to be free.
"At first you are frightened," she said, describing her transformation. "Then you are getting sympathy from them. Then you are giving sympathy to them."
The kidnappers who seized her are not a very sympathetic bunch. They are members of the most brutal and aggressive armed movement in the Philippines — a Muslim separatist group called Abu Sayyaf, which is terrorizing this small jungled island in the far south of the Philippines.
As the United States scours the world for terrorists who might be linked to Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network — or might provide its members with refuge and support — Abu Sayyaf has come under increasing suspicion.
"There's no question that we believe that if they could clear the Abu Sayyaf out of Basilan Island, that would be a small blow against the extended Al Qaeda network," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said recently, emphasizing that any military action would be carried out by Philippine troops.
Armed American military advisers are now helping the Philippine Army in its efforts to find and crush the group and free its last three hostages — Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., an American missionary couple, and Deborah Yap, a Philippine nurse.
Some Philippine officials say Abu Sayyaf is already linked with Al Qaeda, though the evidence for that is sketchy.
In its early years, the group was visited by a brother-in-law of Mr. bin Laden. In the early 1990's it seemed to have some contact with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a terrorist who is now imprisoned in the United States for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
But at its core, Abu Sayyaf seems to be a bandit group in the pirate tradition of the southern Philippines and part of the region's long history of Muslim separatism in this largely Roman Catholic country.
Since its formation in the early 1990's, the Abu Sayyaf movement, now numbering about 500 armed men, has carried out massacres, bombings and beheadings on the islands of Basilan and Jolo. Its members are known for rape and for forced "marriages" with women they take hostage.
Their specialty, however, is kidnapping. In the past 18 months they have earned millions of dollars in ransom after seizing scores of hostages, including a dozen foreigners.
They treat the Burnhams harshly, but with respect for their religious beliefs, said three former hostages interviewed at a military base here. The hostages were released or fled their captors and are back in their homes near the base.
Mr. Burnham, 43, is led through the jungle by a leash as the rebels prod their hostages down muddy trails, shouting, "Drop!" "Crawl!" and "Run!" when military patrols come close.
"At night," said Joel Guillo, 26, who was seized at the hospital along with Miss Malonzo, "he is chained to a tree, like a dog. And sometimes his wife, too."
Mrs. Burnham, 44, "is always crying because she misses her children and family," said Mr. Guillo, and her husband hugs and comforts her.
"Burnham is strong," he said. "Just guts."
The Filipino hostages were forced, through threats and persuasion, to convert to Islam.
"They said my family would be safe if I became a Muslim," Mr. Guillo said. "They took me to the river. They put me under the water and said some things I didn't understand. And then they said we were brothers and they would not cut off my head."
It was not an idle threat. On June 11 the kidnappers beheaded a third American hostage, Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif.
"They said, `Come with us,' " Miss Malonzo recalled. "And he said, `Where are you taking me?' Then we heard him yell."
Miss Malonzo insisted that the group's leader, Khadaffy Janjalani, 26, had played no part in this killing. But her judgment about Mr. Janjalani had become far from objective; she had become his lover.
Indeed, none of the three former hostages had a bad word to say about Mr. Janjalani, whose nickname is Daf — softspoken and kind to his men, as they described him.
"A nice guy, just a nice guy," Mr. Guillo said. "Many girls admire him because he is very handsome, more handsome than me, very white, a very nice guy."
It was Mr. Janjalani's older brother, Abdurajak, who founded Abu Sayyaf — which means Bearer of the Sword — after studying in Saudi Arabia and Libya and fighting in Afghanistan.
A powerful speaker, the older brother brought to his group a religious fervor and fundamentalist principles that went beyond those of other, long-established Muslim separatist movements.
When he was killed in a firefight in 1998, the younger of his two brothers, Khadaffy, took command, although a faction on the island of Jolo broke away.
Along with its religious fervor, Abu Sayyaf made its mark from the start as a particularly violent gang, introducing itself with a series of bombings, massacres and kidnappings for ransom.
Its most ambitous exploit came in April 2000, when Abu Sayyaf gunmen raided a nearby Malaysian diving resort, Sipadan, and seized 10 Western tourists and 11 Asian resort workers. Libya is reported to have paid $25 million in what it called development aid in return for their release.
According to the hostages, the five top leaders of the group took their pick of the female hostages as what they called "the spoils of war."
"At first they were forced," Mr. Guillo said. "After a while for some of them the feelings developed."
Miss Malonzo said she asked Mr. Janjalani, "Why me?"
"He just smiled," she said. "He told me he loved me. He said, `I want to marry you.' "
Mr. Guillo, describing the two, said: "Together they were very loving. They put food in their spoons and fed each other. They took baths together in the river."
Miss Malonzo made no secret of her feelings. "It's Patty Hearst," she said. "They've been telling me that in the mountains."
Since her release on Nov. 1, Philippine officers say, Miss Malonzo has reunited with the boyfriend she left behind. But the romance of the jungle still tugs at her.
Asked if she thought Mr. Janjalani might find a way to come for her again, Miss Malonzo blushed. "I don't know," she said, torn, it seemed, between fear and hope.
The peaceful followers of Islam are very busy spreading their religion the old-fashioned way, just like Mohammed.
I think you are right, Valerie. Israel and India are perfect example of your theory. Israel surrounded by Muslim countries and India sharing a border with Pakistan. Both have been under terror-attack for years from fanatical Islamic killers.
At a traditional arab islamic wedding, the groom sees his wife for the very first time after the wedding, and rapes her.
Black Tuesday appears to have unstoppered whatever jug these stories were being kept in. Much that was regarded as too "insensitive" or "divisive" to print is now finding its way into the light.
One little atrocity can ruin your whole propaganda campaign.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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