Top regional ISIL leader killed in Philippines’ ruined Marawi

By William On Jun 15, 2023

Marawi, Philippines – In Marawi, on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines, two rental apartments a few blocks from each other have been perforated with fresh bullet holes.

The tenants, who arrived in the first apartment two months ago and in the second last week, were women with young children, and the interior is littered with the rubble of domestic life: baby clothes, kitchen utensils, a pram.

But in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the loudspeaker in a nearby mosque warned residents to stay indoors as more than 100 officers from five Philippine army and police battalions stormed both sites, sparking a shootout that ended the lives of two senior combatants. of the ISIS [ISIS]affiliated group Dawlah Islamiya Maute (DI-Maute) who hid in the flats.

“That woman told us that her husband worked in Saudi Arabia. We didn’t even know he was here,” neighbor Faridah Cotaan Saripada told Al Jazeera. “We didn’t know the house was rented [ISIL].”

The raids targeted two of the most prominent ISIL-affiliated fighters in the region: Abu Zechariah, the head of DI-Maute and the so-called Emir of ISIL in Southeast Asia, according to the Philippine military, and Abu Morsid, the leader of the DI-Maute group. logistics mastermind.

Inside the house where Abu Zechariah was shot dead during a five-hour raid by Philippine security forces [Nathan Paul Southern/Al Jazeera]

The deaths have left the group leaderless and reduced its local footprint to a retreating gang of mostly child soldiers, according to a source in the Philippine military on condition of anonymity.

But the carnage also left the local population in Marawi reeling, much of which is still in ruins from the devastating five-month siege that followed DI-Maute’s capture of the city in 2017.

In the house where Abu Morsid was murdered, the family who unwittingly rented him the premises pointed to the bloodstains and brain matter mixed with broken concrete on the floor.

“We are anti-ISIS. We have already experienced the Marawi siege. It was a nightmare. We don’t want it to happen again,” said an elderly relative, who declined to name for fear of reprisal. “We just pray every month that this will be the last. We are grateful that the authorities discovered them.”

Neighbors reported seeing soldiers unharmed remove the female lodger and three children from the apartment with Abu Zechariah, as well as one of the two women claiming to be sisters, who rented the house where Abu Mosid was killed. However, a second woman and her baby who lived in the building had already gone into hiding, according to the landlady and her family.

Meanwhile, officers at a military base in Marawi were exhausted but thrilled with the outcome.

Abu Zacharia, who also went by the names of Jer Mimbantas and Faharudin Hadji Benito Satar, was the target of what a senior commander called a “sustained, carefully planned operation”.

The exterior of the apartment. The walls are painted in a peach color. There is a shoe rack outside one of the doors. A window is missing and appears to have been blown out. There are buckets and other paraphernalia lying around — Abu Zacharia allegedly holed up in the Marawi apartment after four DI-Maute group members were killed by security forces in May [Nathan Paul Southern/Al Jazeera]

Abu Zacharia, a cousin of Alim Abdul Aziz Mimbantas, vice-chairman for military affairs at the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, separated from his influential family in 2012 when the front – a group that has been fighting for an independent Muslim state since the 1970s – signed a provisional agreement. peace agreement and began to pursue autonomy by political means rather than violence.

Abu Zacharia joined the hardline DI-Maute, which pledged allegiance to ISIL, with brothers Omar and Abdullah Maute. In 2016, Abu Zacharia helped DI-Maute take control of his hometown, Butig in Lanao del Sur, and the following year the group launched the attack on the town of Marawi.

In 2022, he succeeded Owaida Marohombsar (Abu Dar) as DI-Maute leader in the Philippine military, claiming he had been designated ISIL’s new Emir for Southeast Asia – although Georgi Engelbrecht, a Philippines-based senior analyst at Crisis Group , says the movement’s ties to ISIL in the Middle East are “somewhat murky,” with nearly all funding and recruits now coming from local sources.

On May 31, four members of DI-Maute were killed in a clash with Philippine troops, and Abu Zacharia appears to have taken refuge in the house in Marawi afterward.

Shift to peacebuilding

Mindanao has been host to a plethora of armed groups for decades, ranging from Islamists to separatists to communists, but support is dwindling across the spectrum.

This is due in large part to a shift in policy – on all sides – towards peacebuilding and improving livelihoods rather than crushing the opposition.

The Tripoli-Jakarta Agreements and the Bangsamoro Peace Process helped end the armed conflict with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Moro National Liberation Front. The government has created avenues for hardliners to surrender, which has seen more than 1,000 fighters have laid down their weapons since 2016.

Derelict houses along an empty street in Marawi — Marawi has become a ghost town since a months-long siege in 2017, when the DI-Maute group took control of the once bustling town [Nathan Paul Southern/Al Jazeera]

All over Mindanao, military bases now refer to soldiers as peacemakers and display incident notice boards showing the number of days without a person killed or a human rights complaint filed.

The attacks on Abu Zechariah and Abu Morsid — both of whom military and local residents say threw a hand grenade, fired their guns and were armed with M16s and Glock pistols — resulted in no more casualties, with only one soldier of the Philippine Army suffered a leg injury.

This is in stark contrast to previous clashes, including the siege of Marawi, which killed 1,200 civilians and forced hundreds of thousands to move to displaced persons camps, where many remain today.

“It was good that the encounter did not cause massive damage to property or civilians,” said Engelbrecht. “In the past, these operations took a toll on communities. If the government makes an effort to prevent this, we will already see an improvement.”

Still, community members are skeptical that the deaths of the two men mark the end of ISIL in Marawi, especially given that one lodger, believed by some to be a sister of the Maute brothers, is on the loose.

The military base in Davao. Plaques hammered to the trees depict the 'Raptor's Milestones', with no combat casualties. no human rights violations and no gun losses. — Military bases in Mindanao now refer to soldiers as peacemakers and display incident notice boards [Nathan Paul Southern/Al Jazeera]

But many believe this is a major strike against hardliners in the Philippines. Englelbrect says Abu Zechariah’s death is “first and foremost a blow to the remnants of the militants,” while a U.S. State Department spokesman said in an email the “continued and years-long effort to clear the country from ISIS to liberate” applauded. ”.

In Marawi, the military commander described Abu Zechariah’s former comrades as “on the run and in a state of demoralization”, creating an opportunity to defeat them.

More importantly, he said, “It’s time to give peace a chance.” After years of conflict, he and his community are just tired of the war.