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3. The First Foray: Ramzi Yousef, Wali Khan Amin Shah and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa’s Philippine Cell

Al Qaeda’s first foray into the region occurred in 1991 at two separate levels: A Philippine jihadi Ustadz Abdurajak Janjalani, a leader of the 400 Filipino mujiheddin, befriended bin Laden in Pakistan in the late-1980s. Janjalani who was committed to waging jihad back in the southern Philippines, established the Al Harakatul Islamiya, commonly known as the Abu Sayyaf , with some $6 million in Bin Laden’s and Libyan support in 1991. Both Janajalani and bin Laden were angered at the largest Islamic group, the MNLF’s ongoing peace talks with the government, which they considered a betrayal of the Muslim community Bin Laden looked to the Abu Sayyaf as Al Qaeda’s regional constituent group.

Bin Laden then developed an independent Al Qaeda presence. In 1988 he dispatched his brother-in-law Mohammad Jammal Kalifa to the Philippines to recruit fighters for the war in Afghanistan. In 1991 he returned to establish a permanent Al Qaeda network. he was officially the regional director for the Saudi-based charity, the Islamic International Relief Organization (IIRO), responsible not just for projects in the Philippines but also in Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan. Khalifa set out to establish a thorough network. He married a local woman, Jameela (Alice) Yabo, who was the sister of a young Islamic student at Mindanao State University, Abu Omar. Omar and Khalifa met at an IIRO-sponsored conference in 1988. This marriage helped get Khalifa established and able to penetrate the Muslim community. Khalifa also established a rattan furniture import-export company as a front. He purchased products from Muslim regions. Though this company was not profitable, it was sustaining. More importantly, though, it was a good cover for Khalifa to transfer funds into the country and broaden his network in Mindanao.

Khalifa’s charities did do some good work. He established the Daw’l Immam Al Shafee Center, a Muslim charity organization. He established Al-Maktum University in Zamboanga using funds from the IIRO. He also established a branch office of the IIRO in Zamboanga. According to the IIRO’s office in Saudi Arabia, its activities include an orphanage and dispensary in Cotabato City, dispensaries and pharmacies in Zamboanga. It provided food and clothing to internally displaced people who fled war zones. In addition IIRO funding went to schools and scholarships. And it asserts that it always does this if not in cooperation with the government, with at least official approval.

Yet the IIRO quickly caught the interest of the Philippine police and military intelligence who saw it as a front organization for insurgent activities. “The IIRO which claims to be a relief institution is being utilized by foreign extremists as a pipeline through which funding for the local extremists are being coursed through,” a Philippine intelligence report noted. An Abu Sayyaf defector acknowledged that “The IIRO was behind the construction of mosques, school buildings and other livelihood projects” but only “in areas penetrated, highly influenced and controlled by the Abu Sayyaf.” Scholarships, likewise, were given to students to become Islamic scholars. The defector said the IIRO was used by Bin Laden and Khalifa to distribute funds for the purchase of arms and other logistical requirements of the Abu Sayyaf and MILF: “Only 10 to 30 percent of the foreign funding goes to the legitimate relief and livelihood projects and the rest go to terrorist operations.”

Anzar, an Abu Sayyaf defector, said Bin Laden and Khalifa financed the urban warfare and terrorism training in both Libya and in the Philippines of their recruits to the Abu Sayyaf, including Edwin Angeles, the founding Abu Sayyaf vice commander and intelligence chief. During this time, Khalifa served as an adviser to the Abu Sayyaf, but was primarily a conduit for money. “In the case of Bin Laden and Khalifa, they are not combatants, so they give material support. Money. Lots of money.” The more they engaged in terrorism, the more financial support poured in from Bin Laden and Khalifa.

Khalifa established several other charities and Islamic organizations in the Philippines ostensibly for charity and religious work, which channeled money to extremist groups. Perhaps the most important one was the International Relations and Information Center. Abu Omar, his brother-in-law, started working at the IRIC in 1993, first as a “volunteer,” and becoming its director in 1994. The Chair of the IRIC was Dr. Zubair. The IRIC engaged in numerous activities, for the most part philanthropic: job training, orphanages, Islamic schools and other social work.

According to the Philippine National Security Advisor, Roilo Golez, Khalifa “built up the good will of the community through charity and then turned segments of the population into agents.” He also used the Philippines as a base for Al Qaeda’s other international operations. The South China Morning Post reported that “In 1994 a Jordanian religious teacher, Adballah Hashakie, told Jordanian police. . . . he received U.S. $50,000 from Khalifa to finance bombings and assassinations in Jordan.”

Khalifa began to provide covert assistance to the Muslim rebel group the MILF in two ways: financially and through training. In addition, he provided overt assistance to them by funding development projects in zones under their control or to areas that constituted core constituencies of supporters, such as the dispensary in Campo Muslim. In an 1998 interview, Al Haj Murad, the MILF Vice-Chairman for Military Affairs, admitted that Bin Laden and Khalifa provided “help and assistance” to MILF cadres who volunteered in the 1980s to help the Taliban struggle against the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government. Following Pakistan’s crackdown on foreign jihadi’s, Al Qaeda began to dispatch trainers from the Middle East to MILF and ASG camps.

But the primary Al Qaeda operation in Southeast Asia was OPLAN Bojinka. In 1994, Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist mastermind of the December 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, came to the Philippines. He spent a short period of time in the southern island of Basilan where he trained approximately 20 Abu Sayyaf militants in the art of bomb-making, then moved to Manila in September, to begin planning a second round of attacks on American targets. In December 1994, a very suspicious fire razed a house in Paranaque belonging to Tareq Kaved Rana, a Pakistani, whom the PNP believed to be closely associated with international terrorists. The place was cleaned out, but forensic tests indicated that the fire was caused by combustible chemicals; the chemicals that were the hallmark of Ramzi Yousef’s bombs.

In Manila Yousef established a fairly compartmentalized cell of approximately 20 people. Only a few of them had knowledge of the entire operation. Many others in this cell had very specific functions, and in many cases, once that function was completed, they left. In addition to Khalifa and Ramzi Yousef, key cell members included: Wali Khan Amin Shah, Abdul Hakim Ali Hasmid Murad, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Omar and Munir Ibrahim, Amein Mohammed, Salem Ali and over a dozen of other individuals who played limited support roles- for the most part unwittingly.

On 10 December 1994, a Philippines Airlines 747-200 flight 434, carrying 273 passengers and 20 crew, en route from Cebu to Tokyo was forced to make an emergency landing after a bomb went off in the cabin, killing a Japanese businessman. Later Ramzi Yousef called and claimed responsibility for the bombing in the name of the Abu Sayyaf Group, a dry run for “48 hours of terror.”

Five individuals, including Yousef, Wali Khan Amin Shah, Abdul Hakim Murad and Adel Anon, and Khalid Al-Shaikh (thought to be Ramzi Yousef’s uncle) were to all depart different Asian cities, placing a timed bomb on a flight, during its first leg of a trans-pacific flight. They would then transfer to another flight and arming a second bomb. The bombs were to detonate simultaneously over the Pacific. If successful, some 4,000 people would have been killed.

On the evening of 6 January 1995, a fire broke out in Ramzi Yousef’s apartment as he and Murad were mixing chemicals to make bombs. As the air filled with poisonous gas they had to flee the apartment. The police were suspicious and surreptitiously entered the apartment. They were aghast at what they found: an apartment filled with highly volatile chemicals, 4 large timing devices, a pipe bomb, books and manuals on the manufacture of bombs. They also found a lap-top computer that had the plans for the terrorist attacks, 12 fake passports and a business card belonging to bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Khalifa. In the aftermath of the fire, Yousef immediately fled the scene. Murad, was arrested and extradited to the US. Under interrogation Murad, who was a trained pilot, admitted to a plan of crashing a hijacked jetliner into CIA headquarters. Wali Khan Amin Shah was later arrested in Malaysia and rendered to the United States. Sheik Mohammed fled and immediately was placed on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list; he was later named as a top suspect in the September 11 hijackings.

After 9 years in the Philippines, bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa was arrested on 26 December 1994 in California when he was discovered to be on a Jordanian terrorist watch list. He was held without bail and charged with visa fraud and providing false information. But America was never able to convict him on a more serious charge. He was deported to Lebanon where he was already tried, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia “for conspiracy to carryout terrorist acts.” He was retried and acquitted of terrorism charges, and allowed to move to Saudi Arabia. Though Khalifa has denied involvement in Bin Laden’s recent activities, he had admitted “very close ties in the past.” Yet, during a post-11 September crackdown by the Saudi Arabian government on known bin Laden associates, Khalifa was arrested but later released. He is believed to still manage bin Laden’s investments in Southeast Asia. The Philippine government asserts that all of the charities run by Khalifa in the Philippines, that were used to funnel money to the Abu Sayyaf group and the MILF, have been shut down. The linkages between Khalifa and Yousef, and the fact that Wali Khan Amin Shah was supposedly an employee of the IIRO was too much for the Philippine authorities to countenance. Yet, complained one senior intelligence official to me, “we could not touch the IIRO.” It took the Philippine government almost 6 years to shut their office in the Philippines, from 2000 until September 2001, the IIRO still funded projects in the country through its representative offices in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The extent of the Ramzi Yousef cell terrified Philippine security officials who began to understand the degree to which their country was penetrated by terrorist groups. They increased their monitoring and intelligence capabilities, which led to a few results.

Following further investigations into the plot to assassinate the Pope, police broke up another Al Qaeda cell in Caloocon in late-March 1995. Those arrested had served in Afghanistan with the Mujiheddin, and were all thought to be followers of the radical Egyptian cleric the blind Sheik Abdulrahman. Unfortunately, all 14 of the suspects were later released because of a lack of evidence. Some fled the Philippines while others stayed- but all jumped bail. Several of this cell were put under heightened surveillance. In December 1995 police arrested Adel Annon, a member of the Ramzi Yousef cell still at large. During the raid, police discovered grenades, dynamite, rockets, bomb-making components and travel documents in his position.

General Jose Almonte, at the time the National Security Advisor to President Ramos told me that they were in complete and utter shock over the scope of “Oplan Bojinka.” They could not believe it, because it was “too fantastical. So out of you know, so anti-God. You do not think that even a man with a diabolical mind could do that.” If there was one positive outcome, it was a growing consciousness of the fact that the Philippines was thoroughly penetrated by terrorist cells. Increased surveillance of radical groups also led the PNP to breakup a 9-man cell of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) in May 1995. Yet General Almonte also said that the Philippines raised the alarm to the international community, and in 1996 even hosted a major international conference on counter-terrorism, but was unhappy to find that states were not taking the issue seriously. The US in particular, thought the matter with Youssef and the others’ arrests was resolved. No one, as a senior military intelligence official said to me, thought that Oplan Bojinka was simply part of a greater plot. Almonte believes that the US did not take the international scope of the Al Qaeda network as seriously as it should have.

The Ramzi Yousef Al Qaeda cell was broken up by accident and then by good police work, but not through penetration by an intelligence agency. When it was discovered, it was in the final stages of a number of spectacular attacks: the bombing of eleven commercial jetliners, the assassination of the Pope and the aerial attack on the CIA headquarters. The planning and scope of the Yousef cell was staggering. Bin Laden proved that he could establish an autonomous cell impervious to detection that could plan and execute deadly attacks.

The second point is that despite some links between the Abu Sayyaf Group and Al Qaeda, Yousef really did not trust them or think them capable enough to carry out serious terrorist acts. He used his own men, all flown in from the Middle East. Yousef and Wali Khan were willing to train members of the ASG, but they did not rely on them to the degree that observers have indicated. At most, members of the ASG provided logistical services and assisted Yousef and Wali Khan in ex-filtrating the country.

The breakup of the Ramzi Yousef cell in Manila, had far reaching consequences for the Abu Sayyaf group. Abu Sayyaf members played important supporting roles, if not leadership roles in the cell. Most importantly, the Yousef-bin Laden connection was the major source of their funding. The Abu Sayyaf fell into decline, riddled with factionalism and in recent years it has become more of a criminal nuisance with no apparent linkages to international terrorist organizations.

Philippine police killed Janjalani in a shootout on 18 December 1998. His lieutenant, Edwin Angeles was arrested in January 1999, and became a government informer.

Since then, the Abu Sayyaf has split into two or three factions and their commitment to establishing an Islamic state now seems secondary at best. As one US diplomat said to me, “They’re wannabes.”

Janjalani’s younger brother Khadaffy, who seems more engrossed with kidnapping and hostage taking, heads one faction. He is based on the island of Basilan. Another Janjalani brother, Hector was captured by the Philippine government and arrested for masterminding a string of bombings in Manila in December 2000. He was arraigned on 6 December 2001. Another, but small faction on Jolo island is headed by Galib Andang, known as “Commander Robot,” who broke away from the Moro National Liberation Front. Robot was a former Nur Misuari bodyguard who has been running a kidnapping racket for years. Abu Sabaya, the nom de guerre of Ahmad Salayudi, heads the largest faction that continues to fight the Philippine army with considerable success. He was reportedly killed in June 2002.

One only has to look at a chronology of ASG operations to chart the loss of international funding. From 1996 to 2000, the ASG engaged in some 266 terrorist activities. One Abu Sayyaf defector said that he quit the movement “because the group lost its original reason for being. The activities were not for Islam but for personal gratification. We abducted people not any more for the cause of Islam but for money.” In addition to kidnapping, the ASG engages in extortion, taxes from peasants, fishermen, coconut growers, and businessmen. The ASG also engages in marijuana cultivation, and on 24 July 1999 PNP forces destroyed some 70,000 marijuana plants worth P20 million ($10 million). According to a Basilan politician, “It was easier to deal with them when they had a single leader—and an ideology. Now, these guys are in it for the money, and there’s no stopping them.” The demands for $1 million ransoms per hostage have led many to consider the Abu Sayyaf as nothing more than a criminal menace rather than a secessionist insurgency with legitimate grievances. As the Philippine National Security Advisor Roilo Golez said, “We have no evidence that Abu Sayyaf has gotten financing from bin Laden recently. Otherwise they would not have to resort to kidnapping.” According to the Philippine Presidential spokesman, Rigoberto Tiglao,

Since the death of Janjalani, believed to the [Abu Sayyaf] ideologue, the band has degenerated into a criminal kidnap for ransom group using Islamic militancy as a ruse to gain the support of a few Muslim villages in Basilan island where they take refuge. The Abu Sayyaf Group has split into two groups because of their squabbles over ransom money.

Finally, it seems that at this point, bin Laden had put the Philippines behind him and was determined to take his jihad to the Holy Land, from where he would both drive out the Americans and their secular puppet regimes. Bin Laden’s operation had moved to Khartoum, Sudan, where he became truly intent on creating an international network and a business empire to fund it. It was at this time that hhis attacks of the House of Saud led to his being stripped of his Saudi citizenship. Cells lingered on in the Philippines, which will be discussed below. But for the most part, Al Qaeda no longer saw the Philippines as an important logistical hub or base of operations. By that point they had Sudan and after the Taliban came to power in 1996, Afghanistan.

part 4 to follow