By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines
The mayor of a small town in the Philippines’ Muslim south has vowed to intensify efforts to stop a recruitment drive by Abu Sayyaf militants after two pro-government militiamen were beheaded in the surrounding island province.
"I really suggest to educate the people here [in my town and other nearby places], especially the youth, because they're being brainwashed and courted by the militants," said Joel Maturan, the mayor of the small town of Ungkaya Pukan in Basilan - an Abu Sayyaf stronghold.
"And we also have to put up additional detachments to set up more military and police presence as deterrence."
Maturan said that the decapitations occurred after government security forces encountered an undetermined number of heavily armed Abu Sayyaf last week in a far-flung area of his town.
"[They] were... beheaded by the Abu Sayyaf militants and they took with them the victims' cut off heads," the mayor said but did not elaborate further.
On Wednesday, Maturan warned that recruitment by the Abu Sayyaf and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) -- who have both sworn allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL -- of young Muslims is "rampant" in his and neighboring towns in Basilan.
He urged that community education in basic Islamic teachings and values be intensified by Muslim religious leaders and that military action be launched in Abu Sayyaf-infiltrated towns and other areas vulnerable to "terrorist" recruitment in Basilan.
Maturan said young Muslims are told that if they join the Abu Sayyaf and BIFF they will be given a "dory" -- a financial gift from the groom to the parents of the woman he will marry -- along with high-powered firearms, and their families will each receive P50,000 ($1,1247).
On Wednesday, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group also threatened to behead one of two German hostages unless Manila pays a P250 million ransom and Germany withdraws its support for the U.S. fight against ISIL in Syria and northern Iraq.
ISIL has captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, later declaring the territories under its control an Islamic "caliphate." The U.S. and its Arab allies began bombing ISIL targets inside Syria on Tuesday, after conducting airstrikes in Iraq since August.
The Abu Sayyaf, which beheaded a U.S. man it had taken hostage in 2001, has suffered from dwindling support and military setbacks over the past decade, and is now believed to have only about 300 followers based on remote islands off the southern Philippines.
Its senior leader, Isnilon Hapilon, and several other members, however, made an oath of loyalty to ISIL in a video uploaded on YouTube in July.
The group claims to be fighting for an independent Islamic state, but has mainly been a kidnap-for-ransom gang operating in the lawless interiors of southern Philippine islands.
The group burst into prominence in 2000 after kidnapping 21 tourists and workers from a dive resort in nearby Malaysia.
It has been blamed for the worst militant attack in the Philippines, the sinking of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 in which 100 people were killed.
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