5 facts about Marawi’s liberation and its aftermath

After more than 150 days of heavy fighting, our valiant soldiers and members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) managed to liberate Marawi from Islamic State (IS)-affiliated militants. We owe nothing but our utmost gratitude to their sacrifice as well as the unremitting determination of the Duterte administration to nip the dystopia of IS Wilayat (governorate) in the bud.

There are, however, five factors to keep in mind vis-à- vis the liberation of Marawi and challenges ahead.

1. Thanks to President Duterte’s “independent” foreign policy doctrine, we managed to secure assistance from all major powers, both in the West and in the East.

We should thank our traditional allies, particularly the United States and Australia, for providing much-needed equipment, training and real-time intelligence, which allowed our troops to surround and pound enemy positions with minimized civilian casualties.

We should also be thankful for the assistance from Russia, which provided intelligence as well as training, as well as China, which has provided more than $1 million for treatment of injured soldiers and about $14 million in defense equipment aid.

Same also goes for our Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. As Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana put it, “We’d like to thank the nations that helped us — China, United States, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, also Brunei and Singapore;”

2.) The prospect of an IS wilayat has been contained, at least for now. The death of Isnilon Hapilon, the designated emir of IS fighters in Southeast Asia, and the Maute brothers, Abdullah and Omar, who oversaw military operations in Marawi, deprives the extremists of a capable and nimble leadership.

Other fighters such as Furuji Indama are expected to take over Hapilon’s position, but it’s doubtful if they can mobilize the same diverse and potent coalition of extremists across ethnic-geographic faultiness of Muslim Mindanao as Hapilon deftly managed to;

3.) The IS-affiliated movement in the Philippines will likely shift its strategy by focusing on so-called “spectacular terror attacks”, with focus on soft targets and major urban centers. The aim is to prove the movement is still alive and kicking.

A similar thing happened with the IS in the Middle East, when they decided, around late-2014, to shift to major terror attacks in the West as they lost conventional battles in the heartland of the Caliphate in the Middle East. This is why the focus of the Duterte administration should be on cracking down on sleeper-cells and preventative intelligence and counter-terror operations;

4.) The bigger challenge, however, is the reconstruction of Marawi city. As many as 600,000 individuals have been displaced by war, and the city has been reduced to rubbles after intense fighting over five months. It is crucial for the Duterte administration to get the reconstruction process right devoid of corruption and excessive delays, lest a new group of disenchanted, radicalized residents emerge in the near future;

5.) Battling extremism will require both development and peace, thus it is crucial for the Duterte administration to rekindle whimpering talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other major rebel groups, which have offered to help the government against extremist groups and are concerned about radicalization among their ranks if peace talks continue to linger in uncertainty. — GMA News

Richard Javad Heydarian is resident political analyst at GMA Network and author of “The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy” (Palgrave Macmillan).