Marawi under siege 2017

The Islamic City of Marawi is located on the island of Mindanao, in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, consisting of five predominantly Muslim provinces. Marawi has about 249,000 inhabitants and is the largest Islamic city in what elsewhere is a Catholic country.
Here, on May 23, 2017, the Filipino army carries out an operation to capture Isnilon Hapilon, leader of the Islamic State in the Philippines. About 700 militants of terrorist groups Maute and Abu Sayyaf occupy several areas of the city, including the Amai Pakpak Hospital, the City Hall and the University, and attack the military base of Camp Ranao. In the streets, machine gun strikes: terrorists kill policemen and civilians, attack a Protestant cultural center and burn down the cathedral.
During the clashes between militiamen and the Filipino army, several areas of the city are occupied and about two thousand civilians remain trapped in their homes. Many of these are kidnapped by jihadists and then used as human shields. Tens of thousands of people are evacuated from the city, shelters arise and immediately saturate.
The Amai Pakpak Hospital is close to the front. Several roaming bullets hit every day the walls of the building. Since it was cleared from terrorists, only a few doctors and nurses work there, and only for emergencies. A nearby facility has been set up, and civilians, recovered by the rescue team, are being brought to be identified and examined. A military truck parks near the building. Held up by two soldiers, a visibly exhausted man descends from the truck, and behind him some women-soldier hold a baby. From the pick-up of the rescue team also comes a tearful woman, Camalia Baunto: “I am following the recovery operations of civilians. Every day I come here to have news about my husband”, says the woman. Unfortunately, the rescue team can not bring her to the areas where the recoveries take place. “Me and my six sons were saved in the early days of the battle”. Her husband, Nixon, was not with them and Camalia could only stay in touch with him for a few days. Then Nixon’s cellphone turned off and she no longer had any news.
The Filipino army uses helicopters and fighter aircrafts to bomb the enemy stations by inflicting heavy damage to the city, without however pushing away the militants. “The military protocol requires that mosques and Quranic schools be spared by air strikes and artillery, and this restriction is exploited by militants”, states Lt. Col. Jo-Ar Herrera, spokesman for Joint Task Force Marawi. “Even the mosques here have tunnels”, continues Herrera. “Almost in every home there are weapons, because of the Rido”. Herrera refers to a kind of clan conflict, historically spread in these regions of the Philippines, which often involves violent actions. For this reason, over the years, Marawi residents have built tunnels and bunkers throughout the city, as well as having collected weapons and ammunition that were then exploited by terrorists during the siege of the city. “All this is part of the dynamics that make the battlefield complicated for us”, concludes Herrera.
The Battle of Marawi finds its roots in the history of Mindanao, an island with forty years of armed conflict. In the Philippines, over a population of 100 million, only 5% is Moro, a term of Spanish origin used to identify the various indigenous Muslim groups: most of them reside in the island of Mindanao. The Moro have a history of wars and injustices dating back to Spanish and American colonialism and which have continued with the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Since 1972, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have fought for full independence from the central government of Manila. Over the years, during the peace treaties between the parties, some extremist fringes broke away from the main fronts, giving rise to armed movements initially linked to Al Quaeda and subsequently loyal to ISIS, as the Maute Group and the Abu Sayyaf group.
Almost unknown a few years ago, today the Maute have become one of the most dangerous groups in the Philippines. Originally a rich family active in politics and construction, following a dispute over subcontracts, was involved in a conflict with the institutions. The Maute financed a private militia that included the sons of the matriarch, Farhana. Because of their extreme views, two of them criticized the MILF leadership for taking part in peace negotiations with the Philippine government, and founded the group now known as the “Maute Group”.
The other major group, Abu Sayyaf, dates back to the early 1990s. It has long consolidated its position by self-financing with the numerous seizures between Philippines and Malaysia. More concerned with money than jihad, the group is also responsible for homicides, bomb attacks and punitive expeditions. Currently, the group is under the command of Isnilon Hapilon, declared last year by the Islamic State as “Emir of the South-East Asia”.
Various authorities in the Muslim world dissociated themselves from these extremist views and actions. The Imam of Marawi, Tagunarao Manardas Haji Saman, declares: “I consider myself a mujaheddin. All Muslim Filipinos consider themselves as fighters, but we have nothing in common with extremists. A true mujaheddin protects the people, fighting for respect for human rights and supporting peace”. The MILF President, Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim, states: “The Muslim community does not agree on how extremists proceed in their fight. It is pure destruction: their strategy is nowhere to go”.
This strategy of violence is the one that pushed Maute and Abu Sayyaf to carry out the siege of the city of Marawi. The battle proceeds slowly: “It is hard to take the positions of the enemies”, says a soldier returning from the front. The presence of snipers is very high and militiamen are well trained. A few hundred meters from the front, from megaphones placed on the roofs of the buildings, a voice orders the terrorists to surrender. From beneath those buildings, Captain Mike Malacad points to a bridge: “That river divides us from our enemies and in all those buildings there are snipers”. The interruption of the voice in the megaphones precedes the arrival of fighter aircrafts: “The bombing begins”, concludes Malacad.
Lt. Col. Herrera, speaking of the difficulties of the fight, states: “The Philippine Armed Forces are trained to conduct military operations in the jungle, mountains, or marshy areas. They are capable of dealing with any kind of mission. But here we face fights in densely populated urban areas: it is quite different”. At this point, the presence of foreign fighters in Marawi is a fact. On several occasions, the Philippine authorities have declared the participation of jihadists from Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. “We're dealing with foreigners, war veterans, trained for this kind of fighting. They have probably also trained locals in a kind of partnership, with a supply of antitank weapons, rifles and explosive devices”, adds Herrera.
Eduardo Año, AFP chief General, argues that with the ongoing crisis in Marawi City, the Philippines could become a “magnet” for militants of the Islamic State. Año is also the administrator of martial law, declared by President Rodrigo Duterte for one hundred and twenty days in Mindanao, in response to the Marawi crisis.
Marawi is a ghost town: entire buildings destroyed by air bombardments, houses torn by rockets and heavy machine guns. Data on displaced people estimate from 360,000 to 430,000, distributed among the about one hundred evacuation centers made available by the community and the government. In the center of Saguiaran, several cases of malnutrition have been recorded among children and many are the health problems for people: the deaths amount to forty. Only some centers have clinics; in others, people must be moved to different locations to receive care.
At the Capin funeral service in Iligan, a handwritten list hanging in a room, titled “Marawi casualities”, chronologically describes the number of bodies, sex and condition in which they have been found. Seventeen black bags, containing human remains, stay awaiting mass burial for more than a month.
After more than a hundred days of conflict, returning to a normal life is still far off. In some municipalities, tents have been provided by the Department of Social Welfare and Development to house families in anticipation of the reconstruction of the city.
So far, what remains of the Islamic City of Marawi are only its ruins.

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