This article forms part of a series of think pieces to be released by the Ateneo Bangsamoro Initiative of the School of Government, Ateneo de Manila University. The series is intended to contribute to the ongoing discourse on governance and development in the Bangsamoro region.
For more than three decades, the island province of Sulu was Southeast Asia’s most intractable security nightmare. It was in Sulu that the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), founded in 1991 by Abdurajak Janjalani, a former member of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), transformed deep-rooted historical grievances over the political annexation of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago into a campaign of spectacular violence. Emerging from Janjalani’s initial organization, the group Harakat al-Islamiyyah embraced a radical ideology that diverged sharply from the MNLF’s secular nationalism. After Janjalani’s death in 1998, the ASG splintered into scattered, decentralized armed factions across southwestern Mindanao, yet it retained an unusual, violent resilience.
The group sustained its operations through a lethal combination of bombings, high-profile maritime kidnappings, extortion, and deep integration into illicit transnational drug networks, including regional marijuana rings. By aligning structurally with global terror apparatuses, receiving training, funding, and operational guidance from al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS, the ASG exploited local clan conflicts, systemic poverty, and governance deficits to survive. This collaboration included historical involvement in the early 1990s Bojinka plot to bomb multiple Western airliners over the Pacific.
For decades, the state responded almost exclusively using the only tool it trusted: heavy, kinetic military power. While these aggressive, reactive operations occasionally yielded tactical successes, such as the neutralization of founding leaders, they also left a deep, disruptive ground footprint. Too often, localized military overreach fostered civilian resentment, deepened historic distrust, and widened the chasm between vulnerable communities and national security forces. The ASG became adept at regenerating its networks within these societal fractures. Every time Manila declared the group’s imminent demise, it re-emerged, a cycle culminating in the catastrophic 2017 Marawi Siege and subsequent suicide bombings in Jolo.
A significant but understated transformation has occurred since then. An extraordinary wave of defections and surrenders compelled the Sulu Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) and military task forces to officially declare the province free of active ASG presence as of September 6, 2023, thereby signifying the group's strategic defeat.
This pronounced decline signifies not merely a tactical victory, but also reflects a fundamental shift in the paradigms of national security strategy. It highlights a critical realization that the security apparatus has been perennially reluctant to acknowledge: that counterterrorism measures cannot rely solely on tactical engagement. Rather, they necessitate a nuanced integration with the social, political, and cultural contexts of the local populace.
Findings
From Combat to Community Preservation
Qualitative insights from local civil servants, security officials, civil society organizations (CSOs), and residents reveal that Sulu’s stabilization stems from a multi-dimensional strategy that moved away from pure combat toward community-led preservation. This modern security paradigm is built on three operational pillars: holistic community engagement, localized military recruitment, and formalized mechanisms for combatant reintegration.
The most visible shift is the transition toward a whole-of-society approach. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) fundamentally reallocated its operational bandwidth, shifting its primary focus to Civil-Military Operations (CMO). Key military informants noted a strategic reorientation, focusing heavily on non-kinetic, humanitarian civil-military engagements with tangible, sustainable results. Government resources were synchronized to deliver vital services directly to vulnerable communities, ensuring that state interventions built goodwill rather than feeding local resentment.
Crucially, security forces partnered directly with the Ulama (Islamic religious leaders). These trusted scholars entered vulnerable areas to directly counter the ideological misinterpretations of Islam propagated by the ASG. By teaching authentic Islamic values that promote peace, the Ulama successfully closed off avenues for extremist recruitment, reduced community isolation, and restricted the spaces where extremist recruiters could operate.
In tandem with community outreach, the military executed a structural game-changer by deliberately recruiting more local Tausug individuals into the regular ranks of the AFP, particularly within the 11th Infantry Division. Enlisting thousands of local Tausug youths into combat, medical, and administrative units bridged a deep historical divide. Employing native speakers who thoroughly understood the sociocultural landscape, geography, and local clan structures transformed public perception. The AFP shifted from being viewed as an alien, external occupying force to fostering a new image as a protective, local institution, one that has earned community trust and encouraged families to cooperate with the state.
Finally, the regional adaptation of directives, cited by respondents via platforms such as the Bangsamoro Task Force to End Local Armed Conflict (BTF-ELAC), provided clear administrative and legal guidelines for processing ASG surrenderers. This structure modified top-down, communist-centric frameworks like ELCAC into tools suited to the region's specific armed dynamics. On the ground, the practical core of these efforts was driven by the locally led Balik Barangay Program. This initiative focused on context-specific, community-centered repatriation of displaced residents and former combatants, framing reintegration within familiar cultural and Islamic contexts, which ultimately cleared the path for the landmark September 6, 2023 declaration.
The Economics of Peace and Infrastructure
Sulu's community-centric strategies efficiently neutralized the ASG by depriving it of its primary means of survival: the ability to pressure and coerce local communities. Empowering active citizenship and building community trust served as an effective deterrent. When local populations actively denounced extremist activities and began reporting suspicious movements directly to authorities, the ASG lost its local sanctuaries, prompting mass defections without the need for high-cost, large-scale tactical military campaigns. In one instance, members of a youth organization facilitated medical missions that brought together the military and local communities.
This demonstrates how civil society organizations can strengthen civil-military relations, foster community trust, and support non-kinetic efforts in the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf Group by reducing local alienation and enhancing cooperation with security forces.
Concurrently, the rollout of tailored socio-economic packages served as a countermeasure against recruitment by extremist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, especially since poverty is cited as one of the motivations for joining. The expansion of madrasah education equipped youth with critical thinking skills grounded in peaceful Islamic values, while targeted agricultural and fisheries assets enabled former combatants to earn a halal (permissible) and productive livelihood. Former mountain fighters received agricultural supplies, and coastal returnees improved their fisheries skills, allowing them to feel a genuine sense of belonging and economic security within society.
Infrastructure development served as both a geographic and tactical tool for threat mitigation, validating the local sentiment that "where the road ends, the war begins". The aggressive, rapid construction of highways and farm-to-market roads systematically undermined the insurgency. Concrete roads eliminated the isolated hideouts previously used as safe havens by the ASG, effectively reducing the physical battle space available to the network.
These clear transit routes allowed emergency responders and state forces to mobilize quickly during crises and enabled the Balik Barangay program to safely access, rebuild, and monitor previously cut-off conflict zones. Most importantly for the population, improved roads enabled the secure transport of local agricultural goods and sparked a booming local tourism industry that residents are now enjoying.
Governance and Local Politics
While socioeconomic and military shifts were vital, they were significantly accelerated by a crucial political transformation across the province. In recent years, Sulu has seen a significant consolidation of local political groups and coalitions. This political alignment led to fewer highly contested areas in local elections, resulting in a marked decline in localized electoral violence.
This newly stabilized political environment directly aided the anti-terrorism campaign. Rather than being distracted by bloody, fractured clan wars, intense political rivalries, or horizontal family feuds (rido) that historically consumed local governance resources, consolidated local leaders were able to present a unified front. Local chief executives and political power-brokers leveraged their consolidated authority to present a cohesive stance alongside the military. By aligning their governance apparatuses with regional peace and order goals, local leaders actively led the fight against the ASG, effectively denying the group political sanctuary, intelligence networks, and local leverage. The experience in Sulu suggests that reduced political fragmentation and greater coordination among local leaders can contribute to a more conducive environment for peacebuilding and security initiatives.
Persistent Gaps and Vulnerabilities
Despite clear advancements, current security frameworks must evolve to prevent potential resurgences of armed conflict. Stakeholders emphasize that future policy formulation must continue to move away from top-down, coercive mandates, focusing instead on deep, context-specific institutional adjustments to eliminate local corruption and historical systemic injustices. True positive peace requires the complete eradication of these systemic grievances rather than just the temporary absence of active hostilities.
Furthermore, structural flaws persist in the delivery of short-term aid. One-time livelihood grants or standard social welfare packages are often insufficient to sustain a family over the long term, risking the marginalization and remobilization of returnees if follow-up support falters. This highlights the need for truly sustainable development and continuous socioeconomic monitoring, rather than temporary, document-focused assistance.
Sulu’s unique island topography, rugged interiors, and porous maritime borders also leave it structurally vulnerable to transnational smuggling, including illegal firearms, drugs, and foreign terrorist fighters seeking to revive defunct extremist networks. While digital expansions, such as the tactical deployment of advanced satellite internet networks like Starlink and localized digital broadcasting, have modernized communication, physical maritime patrolling remains a critical gap. Security frameworks must be consistently upgraded through multi-agency intelligence-sharing and continuous naval surveillance to proactively disrupt illicit shadow economies before they take root.
Conclusion
The successful counter-terrorism model developed in Sulu demonstrates that violent extremism is best countered not by overwhelming external force, but by establishing responsive governance, economic opportunities, inclusive local partnerships, and reduced political fragmentation. It highlights the power of combining localized military recruitment with community-led normalization.
However, a significant macro-level shortcoming persists: the national government has neither articulated nor implemented a cohesive, comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy that functions as a unified national framework. The successes observed in Sulu were predominantly the result of an ad hoc, bottom-up convergence of local political will, tactical military flexibility, and community mobilization, rather than the outcome of a strategically devised plan conceived in Manila.
Without a formalized national blueprint that codifies these lessons into permanent policy, these hard-won gains remain vulnerable to political transitions and shifting local alliances. Maintaining this hard-won stability will depend on a long-term institutional commitment to sustaining multi-sectoral reforms, preserving local political stability, and bridging localized successes to form a cohesive national counterterrorism policy.
Mr. Amir S. Mawallil is a Contributor at the Ateneo School of Government Policy Center. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ateneo de Manila University.