Mayhem in Marawi

On May 23, a unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) operating on a tip, moved in on a safehouse in the southern Philippine city of Marawi, where a top Abu Sayyaf leader, Isnilon Hapilon, was said to be holed up. It was a setup. What was supposed to be a quick operation turned into a four month quagmire, with a death toll of some 147 members of the security forces and 45 civilians. Like the botched Mamasapano raid in January 2015 that led to the death of 44 Philippine National Police Special Action Forces, this was a tactical fiasco with strategic consequences. The Philippines is once again seen as the weak link in regional security, at a time when the Islamic State has lost nearly 90 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria and is seeking local conflicts in the post-caliphate era. With a city in rubble, and the majority of its 400,000 population still displaced, angry, and not confident in the government's ability to rebuild it and prevent future attacks, Moro grievances continue to grow, as new groups proliferate and metastasize.

An Intelligence Failure

By every measure, Marawi was a glaring intelligence failure. The AFP is spread thin. In addition to a resurgent New People's Army, the AFP is confronting the splintering of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a revived Abu Sayyaf, and a panoply of small groups that pledged bai'at to the Islamic State. The context of Marawi was the government’s abject failure to grasp a rapidly devolving security situation.