

Image from the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative
A decade ago when the United States funded the construction of coastal radar stations in the southern Philippines, the administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo trumpeted Washington’s help in preventing the transfer of weapons, illegal goods, and people across the country’s porous borders with Indonesia and Malaysia.
Defense and military officials said the coast watch stations would help monitor, detect and intercept smaller and faster boats carrying foreign Islamist militants seeking experience and sanctuary in the jungle lairs of Abu Sayyaf Group on Jolo and Basilan islands, and much farther in vast marshlands in Maguindanao or wooded hills in the Lanao provinces on the main Mindanao island.
Now come the revelations of Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, that there were seven Indonesian jihadists hiding with the pro-Islamic State militants Abu Sayyaf in the region, reinforcing the radicalization of local Muslims to become suicide bombers.
The attack in Indanan was the first case involving a local suicide bomber and the third bombing since Lamitan in Basilan last year.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana also told reporters in a news conference at the Philippine Coast Guard that they have received information about the presence of 100 foreign extremists, including Malaysians, Indonesians and Egyptians in the south, but were validating the intelligence information that came from allies in fighting terrorism.
The information could be an indication that the Philippines has become an attractive destination for foreign jihadists seeking to set up an Islamic caliphate after the defeat of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria last year. Most of these jihadists are Southeast Asians displaced in the Middle East.
For example, an Indonesian couple who were deported from Turkey and rehabilitated by Jakarta ended up blowing themselves in a Roman Catholic cathedral on Jolo early this year. An Indonesian family killed themselves in a suicide attack in Indonesia last year, underlining the growing threats in the region not seen in years after the deadly Bali bombings almost two decades ago.
The presence of foreign jihadists puts into question the effectiveness of the littoral coast watch system, which Washington helped set up in 2006 and was institutionalized by former president Benigno Aquino III in 2015 through the National Coast Watch Center based at the Coast Guard headquarters in the Manila South Harbor.
Under Aquino, the government planned to build 17 coastal radar stations not only in the southern Philippines but also in the Sulu Sea to monitor ship movements from southern Palawan to Mindoro, Panay, Masbate and the narrow straits between Samar and the Bicol peninsula.
From 2006, the United States has poured more than $100 million assistance to the Philippines under the Maritime Security Initiative (MSI) of the administration of Barack Obama, including initial funds from Section 1206 counter-terrorism assistance of the Department of Defense to install coast watch stations and provide rigid-hulled fast boats, radars and communications equipment to the Philippine Navy.
Much smaller funding went to Indonesia and Malaysia to form a web of coastal monitoring stations in the sub-region’s porous borders, which saw increased piracy and militant activities four years ago when dozens of sailors and fishermen were kidnapped and held for ransom by the Abu Sayyaf after slow-moving vessels were intercepted and taken in the Celebes and Sulu seas.
It appeared the coast watch stations were constructed for a different purpose. It was not designed to stop cross-border kidnapping, hijacking of commercial vessels and movements of jihadists aboard fast-moving smaller boats.
It was probably set up to monitor and watch movements of warships passing through the narrow Sibutu Straits and between the islands of Basilan and Jolo, a known maritime highway from the strategic South China Sea eastward to the Pacific Ocean.
The waters between the southern Palawan and parts of Tawi-Tawi and Sabah is one of the busiest trade routes, where warships were also allowed innocent passage as long as the vessels were not holding exercises or monitoring communications traffic in the area.
On July 22, China’s ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua denied reports Beijing’s first aircraft carrier, Liaoning (CV16), was in the waters of southern Philippines when Lorenzana frankly asked him about it during a chance meeting at the opening of the joint session of Congress.
The Chinese aircraft carrier and its escort ships had reportedly passed through Sibutu Straits before entering Celebes Sea through Basilan and Jolo islands and exiting toward the Pacific Ocean early in July, testing the patience of the United States, which has conducted more than a dozen freedom of navigation patrols near China’s artificial islands in the Spratlys.
It was also strange for Lorenzana to confront the Chinese ambassador considering the aircraft carrier passed through areas where the United States had built and installed coastal radar stations and it was not difficult to observe a large warship, like Liaoning. The passage was innocent and China did not violate any maritime laws.
The Chinese ambassador promised to Lorenzana they will notify the Philippines in the future of prior movements of its warships, which the United States does not normally make every time its warships pass through international waters in the Philippine Sea. When making port calls, there were times the United States forgot to inform the foreign affairs and national defense departments until hours before the warship arrived in Subic or in Manila.
The two scenarios – militants’ movements in smaller boats and large warships passing through internal archipelagic waters – demonstrate the challenges of the Philippines’ defense capabilities in both internal and external security.
For nearly half a century, the Philippines relied heavily on the United States’ security umbrella for its external defense that when Washington pulled out its two large overseas military bases in Clark and Subic in 1992, the country exposed its weakness, emboldening Beijing to seize Mischief Reef in the mid-1990s and expanding its occupied features in the Spratly to virtual man-made garrisons to erect a great wall of sands in the South China Sea.
Thus, the Philippines needs to speed up the development of its modest credible defense capabilities to play catch up and gain the respect of its neighbors in this part of the world.
A veteran defense reporter who won the Pulitzer in 2018 for Reuters’ reporting on the Philippines’ war on drugs, the author is a former Reuters journalist.