A new jihad in the Philippines

Very few outsiders ever venture into the Liguasan marshes, the remote inland sea which stretches across hundreds of square miles of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. These marshes, for the most part approachable only by jungle tracks and navigable by shallow-bottomed boats, form the perfect hiding place for criminal gangs which make a good living by kidnapping businessmen from nearby towns and cities.

The Liguasan marshes also provide a base for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an insurgency which claims to speak for the native Bangsamoro people who were living in the Philippines long before the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Despite repeated assaults, which have intensified in recent years, the Bangsamoro have never been conquered. These Islamic rebels assert that they are affiliated to the rest of the Philippines neither by history, race, language, geography nor religion. Their implacable demand is for autonomy over what they call their ancestral domain.