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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (85403)	8/15/2000 12:12:28 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Thanks so much for the Morojihad URL, Steven. A couple of questions: 1) Salamat denies the MILF is receiving any assistance from Bin Laden. Do you believe him? Is it possible that the Filipino government is concocting a Bin Laden Threat to win sympathy from the U.S. for its cause (as the Russians have done with regard to Chechnya)? 2) A quick ramble through the site did not turn up any questions about/references to kidnapping or ransom payments. Has Salamat ever gone on record about that? 3) To what extent does Salamat/his ideology actually determine what goes on? You wrote earlier that the "rebel movement" is actually a loose alliance of sorts between revolutionaries, bandits, etc. 4) What is the general educational level of the Moro? How much does the Muslim population of Mindanao support the idea of jihad? Some differences with the Chechen situation. (We can easily see most of the similarities.) 1) The original independence activists were all secularists, hardly differing from similar activists in other former Soviet areas, including Russia itself. The "Islamic" element appeared towards the end of the first war, aided and abetted by "Islamic" money from abroad. The population as a whole rejects it, largely because the "Islamists" tend towards Wahhabism (regarded as an imported, "alien" ideology), while Chechens are Sufis ("idolators," according to the Wahhabis). 2) Kidnapping (which became an industry ONLY after the first war) was never used as a tool by the Chechen leadership, which did what it could (not very much) to stop it. Some "field commanders" were deeply involved, but again, they tended to be the "Wahhabis." 3) Web sites. This is an area where the Wahhabists (as distinct from Wahhabis, pure and simple) among the Chechens excelled. Their coup was to make the world think that they were official Chechen spokesmen. Only recently did the government start its own website. The key difference: the Wahhabist sites refer to the Chechen fighters as "mujaheddin"; the Chechen government site refers to them as "government forces."