Cottage industry

The video showing a German prisoner of the Abu Sayyaf tearfully saying he would be executed by his captors if they did not receive a P30-million payment by Feb. 26 was heart-wrenching. It also served to prod the public to remember that the extremist group continues to hold hostages, both foreign and Filipino, and to commit acts of kidnapping and banditry despite the military troops sent to search for and destroy it.

The German is Jurgen Gustav Kantner. In the video released Tuesday by the SITE Intelligence Group, Kantner is shown in a jungle setting and pleading for his life; he is sitting in front of four masked men, one aiming a sickle at him. It is clearly inspired by the videos released by the Islamic State where masked IS operatives threaten to or actually behead their hostages.

Military sources reported last November that the Abu Sayyaf had kidnapped Kantner and killed a woman found with him on a yacht in the waters near Sabah. The dead woman was later found on a yacht flying a German flag near Laparan Island in Sulu. The extremists have been ambushing tugboats and ships sailing in or near the waters of southern Philippines—easy pickings for them.

Considered by both the Philippines and the United States as a terrorist organization, the Abu Sayyaf is said to be holding 27 or more  other hostages, of Dutch, German, Korean, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Filipino nationalities. One Filipino hostage is reportedly a 9-year-old girl. Dutchman Ewold Horn, a bird watcher, was kidnapped in Tawi-Tawi way back in 2012.

The Philippine government officially maintains a no-ransom policy. In response to Kantner’s desperate plea, Sulu-based Col. Cirilito Sobejana was reported as saying that paying ransom would “build up [the Abu Sayyaf’s] capacity further.” But one wonders why it continues to ply its barbaric trade when there’s nothing to be had from it.

In fact huge sums are being had from it: Only last month Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the employers of two Indonesian captives had paid ransom of P20 million in exchange for the two hostages’ freedom. Last August, President Duterte himself confirmed that P50 million had been paid to the Abu Sayyaf for the freedom of Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad. Last October, the Associated Press cited a confidential government report stating that the Abu Sayyaf had received at least P353 million in ransom just in the first six months of 2016. The group has “shifted to targeting vulnerable foreign-flagged tugboats and their crew due to the focused military operations against [it],” the report said.

It added that “lucrative payoffs from KFR (kidnapping for ransom) enabled the [group] to procure firearms as well as ammunition.” (Once upon a time Mr. Duterte refused to call the Abu Sayyaf criminals. Surely he has changed his mind on the matter.)

The Abu Sayyaf is not bluffing when it comes to the payment of ransom. Last year Mr. Duterte had to apologize to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after, as they had warned, the extremists carried out the beheading of Canadian hostage John Ridsdel when no ransom was paid. Another Canadian national, Robert Hall, was also beheaded for  the same reason.

But other hostages, such as Germans Stefan Viktor Okonek and Henrike Dielen in 2014, were released, indicating that, whether now or in the past, ransom payments are made on the sly through a complicated network of sponsors and intermediaries nourished and subsequently empowered by the very amounts that change hands.

Is mercy or money forthcoming for Kantner? The President’s spokesman Ernesto Abella has reiterated that the government “stands firm on our no-ransom policy.” Of course, said the President’s peace adviser Jesus Dureza, the government would “never stop appealing to the captors to spare the lives of those innocent victims for the sake of their families and loved ones.”

Addressing crippling poverty remains a key  solution to the kidnapping for ransom that has become a veritable cottage industry in certain parts of the South. It is an imperative complement to the military force that the government is bringing to bear on suspect communities that are now also said to be studying the sort of violent extremism espoused by the IS.