The United States is grappling with a hardening reality: Islamic State terrorism is on the rise in southeast Asia, and it could worsen as foreign fighters abandon the battlefields of Iraq and Syria for new regions.
The issue has snapped sharply into focus in the last three weeks, as militants and Philippine security forces have been locked in a bloody fight for Marawi, a lakeside city of about 200,000 people in the southern Philippines.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law May 23, hundreds of people have been killed, and most residents have fled. Philippine aircraft, including the Vietnam War-era OV-10 Bronco, have leveled buildings with airstrikes.
Philippine military officials have said the militants’ main goal is to raise the Islamic State flag over the Marawi city hall, declaring a new “wilayat,” or province. Doing so would firmly plant the Islamic State brand on Mindanao, a Philippine island that has long been home to militant groups that were more locally focused.
The issue was at the forefront of discussions that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had this month while attending the Shangri-La Dialogue, a major regional defense conference in Singapore. Mattis and senior defense officials from other countries all highlighted the situation, and the Pentagon chief urged others to act immediately.
“Together we must act now to prevent this threat from growing,” Mattis told a roomful of delegates. “Otherwise, it will place long-term regional security at risk and stunt regional economic dynamism. We need only to look at the chaos and violence that our friends in the Mideast are contending with to see why we must swiftly and jointly address threats to our region.”
The issue is complicated by Duterte lauding the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers and users in the Philippines over the last year. The State Department noted the killings in a report this year, with U.S. officials saying that while they want to work with the government in Manila on areas of mutual interest, they have concerns about killings by both Philippine police and vigilantes.
Three U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue, said last week that the Pentagon was open to providing assistance, but that the Philippines had not asked for any. That changed in the last few days as U.S. officials acknowledged that they were helping the Philippine military with undisclosed technical assistance. Duterte said in an interview Sunday that he was not aware of the assistance until it arrived.
The Pentagon established a counterterrorism mission known as Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines a few months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Army Maj. Kari McEwen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Special Operations Pacific, said that since the U.S. counterterrorism mission in the Philippines ended, there have been anywhere between 50 and 100 U.S. Special Operations troops in the country at a time.
