founded In:1991Home Base:Southern islands of the PhilippinesObjectives:The group's stated goal is an Islamic state in western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, with the broader objective of a pan Islamic State spanning southeast Asia.Notable Attacks:Abu Sayyaf is notorious for its repeated use of kidnapping and demanding ransom to fund their activities. Despite the Islamist orientation of the group, their use of terrorist tactics purely for profit blurs the line between ideologically motivated terrorism and simply violent, organized crime. April 2007: Seven workers were abducted and beheaded; their heads were then delivered to the Philippine army. December 2006: The Abu Sayyaf group was suspected when three injuries resulted from a bombing inside a department store in the Philippines. February 2004: Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility when 116 people were killed when the Superferry 14, a ferry sailing in Manila's waters, was exploded. May 2001: Twenty were taken hostage from the Philippine island, Palawan. The group killed Guillermo Sobero, one of three American hostages. April 2000: Abu Sayyaf militants kidnapped 21 on Sipadan, a Malaysian resort island Libya paid over $20 million to free them. April 1995: In the first major attack by Abu Sayyaf group in Ipil, a southern Filipino town. Thirty were taken hostage, and 53 civilians and soldiers were killed.Leadership & Membership:The Abu Sayyaf Group was founded by Abduragak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed in a shootout with police in 1998. Subsequent leader Khaddafi Janjalani was briefly on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list before his death leader until his death in September 2006. Its membership numbers have waxed and waned since its founding, but were reportedly around 4000 active members at the group's height.Abu Sayyaf Group and Al Qaeda:There is minimal evidence of strong ties between the Abu Sayyaf Group and Al Qaeda, especially at present. There is suspicion that Al Qaeda funded the group in its early years. Muhammad Jamal Khalifa,, Osama bin Laden'sbrother-in-law, may have met with the group around that time. Ramzi Yousef, who organized the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, probably had some connection with the group.

IntroductionAbu Sayyaf, whose name means "bearer of the sword" in Arabic, is a militant organization based in the southern Philippines. It seeks a separate Islamic state for the country's Muslim minority. The U.S. State Department designates Abu Sayyaf as aterrorist organizationthat boasts of ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, as well as the Indonesian network ofJemaah Islamiyah.How did Abu Sayyaf form?In the early 1990s, Abu Sayyaf split from the Moro National Liberation Front, one of the two major Muslim separatist movements in the southern Philippines, which were then trying to come to terms with the central government in Manila. The group's first major attack came in 1991, when an Abu Sayyaf grenade killed two American evangelists.Who organized Abu Sayyaf?Its first leader was Abdurajak Janjalani, a Philippine Muslim who fought in the international Islamist brigade in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a Saudi businessman living in the Philippines, provided crucial financing and organizational support for Abu Sayyaf in its early years. From 1998 to 2006 the group was led by Khadaffy Janjalani, who took over the leadership position when his older brother Abdurajak was killed.What is the status of the Abu Sayyaf leadership?Abu Sayyaf suffered major losses of leadership in 2006 and 2007. In September 2006 Khadaffy Janjalani was killed in a clash with troops on Jolo Island. In January 2007, U.S.-backed Philippine troops killed Abu Sulaiman, a senior Abu Sayyaf commander and Janjalanis likely successor. Romeo Ricardo, chief of the Philippine National Police Intelligence Group, said that the two leaders were themain contacts (AP)to Middle Eastern donors who provided funding to the group and to Islamic militants in Indonesia. Radullan Sahiron, a one-armed septuagenarian and senior leader in the group, was promoted to the top leadership position in January 2007. However, it was unclear how active a role he would play in Abu Sayyafs operations. In a June 2008 article,Zachary Abuza, a leading scholar on terrorism in Southeast Asia, writes that Abu Sayyaf now lacks"any semblance of central leadership" (PDF).What kinds of terrorist acts does Abu Sayyaf commit?Historically, Abu Sayyaf has engaged in bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and extortion. The Philippine government currently in the middle of a military offensive against Abu Sayyaf rebels in the south in efforts to quell the group's attacks against civilians.Previous Abu Sayyaf attacks include: A May 2001 incident when Abu Sayyaf kidnapped twenty people, including three Americans, at a Philippine resort and demanded ransom payments. Abu Sayyaf beheaded one of the American captives and held the other two Americans-a Christian missionary couple-hostage on Basilan Island in the southern Philippines. In June 2002, U.S.-trained Philippine commandos tried to rescue the couple and a Filipino nurse being held with them. Two of the hostages were killed in the shoot-out, and one, the American missionary Gracia Burnham, was freed; In August 2002, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped six Filipino Jehovah's Witnesses and beheaded two of them. In October 2002, Abu Sayyaf was blamed for a bomb explosion near a Philippine military base, killing one U.S. serviceman. In February 2005, Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for bombings in Manila and two other cities, killing eight and wounding 150. In November 2007, the group is suspected to have detonated a bomb that killed a Philippine congressman and three of his staffers. A plot to assassinate President Gloria Arroyo was discovered and foiled by Philippine security officials in February 2008. In January 2009, three Red Cross officials were kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf. Two of the three have since been released.According to a 2007 Congressional Research Servicereport (PDF), Abu Sayyaf reoriented its strategy during the leadership of Khadaffy Janjalani. Janjalani deemphasized kidnapping for ransom and instead emphasized developing capabilities for urban bombings. Since March 2004, the Philippine government reportedly has uncovered several Abu Sayyaf plots to carry out bombings in Manila, and the report adds that Jemaah Islamiyah had trained about sixty Abu Sayyaf members in bomb assembling and detonation by mid-2005. But according to Abuza, Abu Sayyaf is low on funds, and has recently reverted back to kidnapping for ransom.Does Abu Sayyaf target Americans?Yes, although most of its victims are Filipinos. In addition to the kidnapping in 2001 in which an American was beheaded, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped an American Bible translator on a southern Philippine island in 1993. In 2000, Abu Sayyaf captured an American Muslim visiting Jolo Island and demanded that the United States release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, who were jailed for their involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. We have been trying hard to get an American because they may think we are afraid of them, a spokesman for Abu Sayyaf said. We want to fight the American people. Abu Sayyaf has also captured local businesspeople and Philippine schoolchildren, but Western hostages make for larger ransom payments.Where does Abu Sayyaf operate?Abu Sayyaf mostly operates in the southern Philippines, specifically in the Sulu Archipelago and the easternmost island of Mindanao. But the group has acted in other parts of the Philippines, and in 2000, its members crossed the Sulu Sea to Malaysia for a kidnapping. Since 2001, Philippine military operations, supported by the United States, have weakened Abu Sayyaf on Basilan Island and in the Sulu islands southwest of Baslian.How big is Abu Sayyaf?Estimates vary. Counterterrorism efforts by the Philippine government seem to have pressured the group in recent years: In 2007, the government killed 127 members of Abu Sayyaf and captured an additional thirty-eight. But Abu Sayyaf has been improving ties with regional organizations, like Jemaah Islamiyah and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an Islamic separatist group dating from the 1970s located in the southern Philippines. Thus, even though Abu Sayyaf's armed strength fell from an estimated one thousand in 2002 to between two hundred and four hundred in 2006, the capabilities of the organization may be growing. The 2008 U.S. State Department estimates the group to consist of between two hundered and five hundred members.

A Brief History of Abu SayyafRYAN ANSON / ZUMA PRESSA wanted poster of Abu Sayyaf terrorist suspect Isnilon Hapilion hangs on a coconut tree outside a marine camp in the southern PhilippinesA small band of U.S. and Philippine soldiers were on their way to pick up supplies for a local school on the southern Philippine island of Jolo on Sept. 29 when their vehicle rolled over a land mine. The blast killed two U.S. soldiers and one Filipino marine, and though authorities are still investigating the incident, analysts immediately pointed the finger at the militant Islamic separatist group Abu Sayyaf known to be active in the area.Much to the frustration of military advisers who want them in bigger conflict zones, the U.S. military keeps a small number of highly skilled soldiers in the southern Philippines to help train local troops in their ongoing fight against Abu Sayyaf, which the U.S. State Department believes has only between 200 and 500 active members today. The Philippine military told a reporter that the U.S. troops in the Sept. 29 incident were not involved in any combat operations but "were just there to help in building a school." The deaths were the first U.S. military casualties to occur in the Philippines since 2002, when a bomb, most likely planted by Abu Sayyaf, exploded in a bar on the island of Mindanao, killing one American soldier.Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, a former Filipino Islamic scholar who battled the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, founded the fundamentalist Abu Sayyaf in 1991, splitting from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) a more mainstream Islamic political organization fighting for increased autonomy for Muslims in the southern Philippines after the MNLF engaged in peace talks with the government.Abu Sayyaf has always said it is fighting for an independent Islamic nation in the southern Philippines, but during the late 1990s, the movement began to show cracks, and members started behaving more like a gang of well-armed bandits driven by greed, not creed. Since about 2002, however, the extremist group has been reverting to its original separatist goals, and its bombings and assassination attempts have increased accordingly.In the early 1990s, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law funneled money into Abu Sayyaf through a fake Islamic charity in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf, which means "barrier of the sword," carried out its first attack in 1991, killing two American evangelists with grenades on the southern island of Mindanao. As the 1990s unfolded, the group's body count in Mindanao steadily rose. In 1994 the Philippine army blamed Abu Sayyaf for a series of bombings in the Philippine city of Zamboanga that killed 71. The following year, Abu Sayyaf raided the town of Ipil, leaving 53 dead, and in 1998 a grenade attack on a department store injured 60.But after its leader, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was killed in a gun battle with police in 1998, the militant group changed course, stopping its bomb attacks and kidnapping potentially rich foreigners for ransom money to fund operations and gain support from local communities. In 2000 the group kidnapped 21 people 19 of whom were foreigners in Malaysia, 50 students and teachers from two schools on the island of Basilan, and at least 15 foreign journalists, including one reporter who was kidnapped and released twice.When Abdurajak's younger brother Khadaffy Janjalani took complete control of the group sometime around 2002, Abu Sayyaf renewed its ideological fervor for independence and refocused its efforts on bombmaking. In 2004 the group took responsibility for the most deadly terrorist attack in the history of the Philippines: the 2004 bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay that killed 116 people. By mid-2005, the Philippine government says Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist group responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, had trained some 60 members of Abu Sayyaf to make bigger, better explosives. Two Jemaah Islamiyah bombmakers connected with the Bali bombings are still believed to be working with Abu Sayyaf.Abu Sayyaf appeared, however, to lose ground after the army launched a major offensive against the organization in August 2006. Shortly thereafter, Khadaffy Janjalani and two other high-ranking Abu Sayyaf leaders with important connections to funding in the Middle East were killed. According to one analyst, Abu Sayyaf is running low on funds, and no new leader has come forward to unite the disgruntled factions within the group. And once again, Abu Sayyaf is back to kidnapping for ransom money as a means of funding its operations. In January, the group held three Red Cross workers hostage, and analysts suspect they were released only after large ransoms were paid.Since 2001, when an American citizen was beheaded, about 600 U.S. special forces have rotated in and out of the southern Philippines to train the Philippine armed forces. But after eight years of U.S. training and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and military assistance, the Philippine government still has not defeated the relatively small separatist group, and since 2007 progress seems to have stalled. The U.S. military presence in the Philippines has long been a contentious issue. Recently, Philippine senators have urged President Gloria Arroyo to renegotiate the agreement that allows U.S. troops on Philippine soil, and the deaths of two U.S. soldiers will surely incite more debate. The Sept. 29 deaths, though, demonstrate that one thing is certain: Abu Sayyaf is still a dangerous, desperate terrorist group.

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Terrorist Organization Profile:Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG)

MothertongueName:

Aliases:al-Harakat al-Islamiyah, Bearer of the Sword

BasesofOperation:Philippines

Date Formed:1991

Strength:Greater than 200 members

Classifications:Nationalist/Separatist, Religious

Financial Sources:Largely self-financed through ransom and extortion; Suspected to receive support from Islamic extremists in the Middle East and South Asia

FoundingPhilosophy:The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), or Abu Sayyaf, is a radical Islamic terrorist group active in the Southern Philippines and Malaysia. Its stated goal is the creation of an independent Islamic state encompassing parts of Southern Thailand, the island of Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago, and Mindanao, areas where Moro Muslims, a minority ethnic group in the Philippines, make up the majority of the local population. The ASG is known to target Filipino and Western Christians in the Southern Philippines, though the group's influence is thought to have expanded to the regional level recently.

The ASG was founded in 1991 by radical Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) members who objected to the MNLF's negotiations with the Philippine government. Due to the ASG's predisposition toward violent tactics, which include high-profile bombings, armed attacks, assassinations, and beheadings, it is seen to be more radical than its mother group. Abu Sayyaf, which literally means "father of the sword" in Arabic, sees itself as the rightful inheritor of the legacy of armed Moro resistance in the region and the torchbearer in the struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state in Southeast Asia. Ironically, the group rocketed into prominence in the mid-1990s after two large scale plots (one to destroy 12 U.S. commercial aircraft simultaneously in mid-flight and one to assassinate Pope John Paul II) were foiled. It is thought to have two to five hundred core members mostly recruited from educational institutions and up to 2000 supporters.

Abu Sayyaf is largely self-financed through extortion rackets and kidnapping-for-ransom schemes. Allegedly, the ASG also receives a small level of logistical and material support from other extremist groups active in the region. The ASG provides safe haven for terrorist leaders from other groups and has local infrastructure in place to funnel money to plan and support attacks. It is also known to have substantial links to Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and factions of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that have yet to surrender to Philippine authorities.

The extent of the ASG's cooperation with al-Qaeda is thought to have diminished following the post-9/11 crackdown on the latter. Still, ASG members have trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and some continue to receive operational guidance from al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists hiding in or passing through the Philippines. The most famous of these contacts is 1993 World Trade Center mastermind Ramzi Yousef, who met Abu Sayyaf founder and leader Abdurajak Janjalani in Afghanistan and trained ASG terrorists in bomb-making techniques. Osama bin-Laden's brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, is thought to have provided the ASG with the bulk of its startup funding by laundering money through his charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization.

Abu Sayyaf committed itself to Osama bin Laden's war against the "Jews and Crusaders" in February 1998. Later that year, Janjalani was killed by Philippine security forces and replaced by his younger brother Khadaffy Janjalani. After the death of the elder Janjalani, the group underwent a period of transition as Khadaffy Janjalani consolidated his power within the organization, battling other contenders such as Galib Andang (aka Commander Robot) and Abu Sabaya for influence. Some experts suggested that the ASG moved away from its ideological and religious roots, engaging itself more in criminal activities (murder, robbery, kidnapping) with no apparent political or religious motive. It is also possible that this increase in criminal activity is due to the need to bolster the group's depleted coffers following the post-9/11 recommitment by governments the world over to disrupt and destroy terrorist financial networks. The group has certainly become more decentralized since Janjalani's death, a testament to the younger Janjalani's lack of leadership skills and religious legitimacy. The appointment of religious scholar Yasser Igasan to the ASG's top post in June 2007 may reflect the group's attempt to address this problem, though Igasan reportedly lacks military training.

CurrentGoals:The initiation of peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF (and subsequently the MILF) has served to divide the greater Moro resistance movement into those who seek a political resolution and those who use violence to achieve their objectives. The ASG has been strengthened by the addition of rogue MNLF and MILF elements dissatisfied with their respective groups' political approaches.

Despite the concurrent efforts of the Philippine government and US counterterrorism advisers, the Abu Sayyaf Group remains a very active threat in the region and one of the main obstacles to peace in the Southern Philippines.