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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (17000)	9/1/2000 6:11:06 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

How about my incisive take on the Philippines hostage crisis? Here's an old news scrap from the Yahoo! files: Monday, August 28 4:19 PM SGT Six freed western hostages in Philippines prepare for long flight home CEBU, Philippines, Aug 28 (AFP) -Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines freed their last South African hostage Monday in time for him to join his wife and four Europeans released a day earlier for a flight home via Libya. The Abu Sayyaf gunmen still hold six other westerners and 17 Filipinos hostage in the island of Jolo in what gunmen described as "insurance" against any military attack in the four-month-old drama. The most recent hostage to be released, 36-year-old Johannesburg accountant Callie Strydom, flew to the central island of Cebu Monday after a brief stopover in the southern city of Zamboanga city where he gave a brief news conference. Strydom's wife, Monique, a German and three French hostages were released on Sunday and flown to Cebu where a Libyan plane is on standby to fly them to Tripoli. But the flight was put off by a day to await the release of Callie Strydom. His wife "does not want to leave without him," chief negotiator Roberto Aventajado said. The jet was dispatched by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, after Libya played a key role in negotiating the release of the hostages. It is expected to take off around 4 pm (0800 GMT) Monday. "It's been hell," Callie Strydom said of the four months of captivity. "It's hot, sickening there." The couple's adventure began on April 23 when a spring diving holiday on the idyllic island of Sipadan in nearby Malaysia turned into a hostage drama, when they and 19 others were taken captive by the Abu Sayyaf and brought to Jolo. Most of the Sipadan hostages have been freed with reportedly millions of dollars being paid in ransom payments, but over the last few months the guerillas took several others captive, including journalists and local Christian preachers, as the crisis dragged on. Monique Strydom, French citizens Sonia Wendling, Maryse Burgot and Marie Moarbes and German Werner Wallert slept Sunday at the tactical operations command of the General Benito Ebuen air base in Cebu. They awoke Monday on their first day of freedom to a wide spread of breakfast, a rare treat after mostly eating rice and bananas during the months in the Jolo jungles, diplomats and military officials said. [snip] sg.dailynews.yahoo.com ________________ Actually, the whole affair is a French/Libyan frame-up.... Those so-called Islamic secessionists are a bunch of thugs who previously (early 1990s) had no ideological motivation whatsoever. They've probably been hired by some Libyan agents to turn their kidnapping "business" (pretty common in the region --dates back to Vietnam's boatpeople?) into a political venture of sorts.... Despite the UN terminating the embargo against Libya, Ghaddafi was still considered as a pariah, especially in Northern Europe (read Germany). So, when EU anchorman Romano Prodi officially invited him to attend a conference, several European leaders publicly disavowed such a rapprochement. However, France's pro-Arab leadership (outside France only for domestically speaking they're rather wog-baiters...) needs Libya as a valuable anti-US ally in the Arab world. The challenge for France, Italy, and other crypto-Yankee-bashers inside the EU was to devise the right scheme that would turn the Libyan outcast into a Mr Nice-guy for Europe's pro-yankee flock.... Furthermore, France has killed two birds with one stone as it sends yet another warning message to the US: if you're gonna screw up our African turf, damn, we're gonna hit you back in your Pacific underbelly.... The day before yesterday, one of the French hostages, France2 reporter Maryse Burgot was interviewed LIVE on her network's evening newscast --that is, there was no censorship. So, she told anchorman Claude Sérillon about her detention by the Abu Sayyaf militiamen and so on. And then suddenly she elaborated about the day when their leader, Janjalani(?) himself, went to see her and asked her to write his demands: "he wanted $1 million per hostage and then he paused and then he said he wanted the mayor of Jolo to be dismissed... then he paused again and said Oh! yeah, I need two diving watches as well!".... At that point, Burgot told Cl. Sérillon, I felt desperate... I said to myself "Jeez, we'll never make it outta here"... TWO DIVING WATCHES!!! Does that make sense to you Charles?!?!? I mean, there you have an allegedly hardcore terrorist who didn't hesitate to kill previous (Philippinos) hostages, who boldly demands 1$ million per Western hostage --ie a total $15 million!-- and who suddenly insists to receive 2 diving watches any hobo can buy for 100 bucks in the street?! Again, why such an anticlimax? Now, if you ask me, I believe that those 2 diving watches are likely the ONLY things those Abu Sayyaf frontmen will ever get in the end! The $25 million have never left Muamar Ghaddafi's wallet --or if they have, they landed up in some French bank account as an agreed-upon reward for the comeback of Libya on the European scene.... Gus.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (17000)	9/2/2000 4:53:26 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Footnote to my previous post #17002: In light of recent events in the Philippines, AsiaSource spoke with *Professor Thomas McKenna, author of Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines*. Professor McKenna discusses the historical roots of Muslim separatism in the Philippines, the impact of both Spanish and American colonialism on Muslim identity, the implications of the peace agreement in 1996 which resulted in the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and the distinction between the three principal groups representing Muslim grievances in the Philippines today. asiasource.org Excerpt: Could you briefly explain the distinctions between the three principal groups representing Muslim grievances in the present-day Philippines: the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and Abu Sayyaf? The MNLF, founded and led by Nur Misuari, is the original underground political front of the Muslim separatist rebellion. Misuari is a signatory to the Tripoli Agreement of 1976, the first peace agreement signed between Muslim separatists and the Philippine government. Until fairly recently, the MNLF was the only separatist armed organization with which the government was willing to negotiate in any substantive way. The MILF dates from 1984 as a separate organization but can trace its roots back to the beginnings of modern Muslim separatism. Its leader, Hashim Salamat, was second in command of the MNLF until 1979. The MILF is headquartered in central Mindanao, is well organized and has thousands of fighters and broad popular support in rural villages. Although the MILF has stressed the Islamic aspect of the separatist movement, and has somewhat more Islamic clerics in leadership positions (Salamat himself is a cleric), the stated goals and policies of the two groups do not differ significantly. The Abu Sayyaf faction is of relatively recent origin, appearing only in 1995, and is centered on the island of Basilan. They are a small, radical and somewhat mysterious group with limited popular support. While the Abu Sayyaf faction has garnered more headlines in the past five years with its killings and kidnappings of Christians, it is by far the smallest of the three groups. Both the MNLF and the MILF have condemned the activities of the Abu Sayyaf. [...]