Duterte’s terror challenge in the Philippines

It seems that the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines have little to learn from Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) in the Middle East. This week they posted a video of a German tourist having his head hacked off with a machete. Only the murderous weapon of choice was different; Daesh terrorists prefer the serrated hunting knife. The footage of the appalling slaughter of a helpless foreigner was designed to disgust. Jurgen Gustav Kanter had been seized with his wife aboard their yacht off Malaysia’s Sabah. It is understood that the 70-year-old Kanter’s wife was shot dead during the attack. He was taken to a terrorist camp on the small island of Jalo. A ransom of $600,000 had been demanded. When it was not paid the terrorists carried out their murder. There is a strong argument that film of atrocities like this should not be broadcast. And indeed there has been no great dissemination of this terrible footage. The main reason for ignoring such crimes is that any sort of coverage benefits no one except the terrorists. On the basis that any publicity is good publicity, they will always revel in the widespread attention that such footage attracts. But from the point of view of decent society, there is no conceivable benefit in watching such horrors. For the friends and relatives of victims, there is only needless anguish. For the average persons who can actually bring themselves to sit through such clips, there is repugnance and anger. But the world has learnt by now the full awfulness of ruthless Daesh terrorists and their followers who abjure any moral standards and compound their wickedness by blasphemously claiming to be acting in the name of Islam. The only people likely to take any pleasure from these gross images are the prurient and the demented. Daesh always claimed that its bloody propaganda videos had done much to recruit young people to its ranks. In that anyone impressed by such atrocities was demonstrating serious mental health issues, the terrorist chiefs were clearly right. They needed demented idiots as cannon fodder in their obscene war against civilized society. But the flow of new fighters to Daesh is drying up not simply because of the Turkish clampdown on the border crossings. It is also decreasing because it is clear that the terrorists are slowly but surely being crushed. One clear indication is that there are now few abhorrent videos of savage butchery. The terror chiefs are more interested in their own survival and the reversion to classic hidden terror tactics than in trying to trumpet their phony so-called Islamic State. It must be wondered if the no-nonsense Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte will bring the same ruthless focus on the Abu Sayyaf killers that he has used on the country’s drug dealers and addicts. “The Punisher” as he is known has a real challenge in dealing with these terrorist thugs. They have withstood past assaults from the military and they have spurned efforts at negotiation. They have thus declared themselves fit for nothing except extermination. Duterte needs to deploy his same pitiless approach to the country’s narcotics trade to these wicked terrorists. The international community may have recoiled at his war on drugs. Hardly anyone will question his destruction of Abu Sayyaf like the mad, rabid dogs that they are.