AFTERMATH OF TERROR
September 9, 2002


U.S. Effort Against Guerrillas
In Philippines Is Messy Success

By JAMES HOOKWAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines -- When the U.S. traced tendrils of al Qaeda's 
network to the Philippines and sent in troops in February, military 
officials from both nations had high hopes.

Osama bin Laden had eluded the U.S.'s dragnet in Afghanistan, while 
Philippine soldiers had spent months fruitlessly chasing a tiny band of 
separatist rebels through the jungle. With a U.S. commitment to help wipe 
out the Abu Sayyaf and rescue their two American hostages, a much-needed 
public-relations victory seemed imminent.

Instead, they were left with a mission that might have been better suited to 
Hollywood than military strategy books. Officials from both countries call 
America's Philippine excursion a success. Yet, U.S. soldiers were barred 
from actual combat; instead, they were relegated to training Philippine 
troops and videotaping the action. U.S. surveillance equipment failed to 
pierce the dense jungle at a crucial moment, leaving local troops to track 
the rebels through the mud. Big breakthroughs in the search included 
following the thermal image of a piping-hot pizza on its way to the rebels' 
lair, and the discovery on the jungle floor of designer underwear that no 
local woodsman would wear.

Hampered by torrential rain, Philippine Scout Rangers nearly stumbled into 
the rebels' jungle camp, sparking a firefight that left one American hostage 
dead and the other wounded. A James Bond-like sequence, in which the troops 
rammed the Abu Sayyaf's getaway craft with their own speedboat, machine guns 
blazing, produced promises that the notoriously slippery rebel leader, Abu 
Sabaya, had been killed -- but no body. U.S. officials who saw a videotape 
taken from a Chinook helicopter at the scene say it is clear Mr. Sabaya was 
killed, though the tape hasn't been made public.

Taking down the Abu Sayyaf was always going to be difficult. The group was 
seeded by Mr. bin Laden's brother-in-law and counted veterans of the Afghan 
jihad against the Soviet Union among its members. Led by Mr. Sabaya, a 
drop-out criminology student, the group is as well known for kidnapping as 
for its fight to create an Islamic state in the Philippines. The Abu Sayyaf 
collected $15 million in ransom two years ago after abducting a dozen 
tourists from a holiday resort in nearby Malaysia, and spent the money on 
high-powered firearms and speedboats that could outrun the best of the 
dilapidated Philippine Navy.

Mr. Sabaya himself became a terrorist icon. He cultivated a Robin Hood 
image, wrapping himself in $120 Oakley sunglasses and a raffish bandana 
whenever photographers were near. When Mr. Sabaya kidnapped several more 
hostages from a luxury Philippine resort in May 2001, his face was beamed 
around the world. Three of the hostages were Americans, Mr. Sabaya's 
preferred target, including a missionary couple, Martin and Garcia Burnham.

One hostage, California resident Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded, raising 
fears that Mr. Sabaya wasn't simply after money. Indeed, there were signs 
that he would trade his life for notoriety. "I'm only worried that the 
government will get happy if I die," Mr. Sabaya wrote in a letter to a 
childhood friend on Dec. 24, 2001. "How I wish to die as soon as possible in 
this cause."

By April, after months of U.S. training, Philippine soldiers were on the 
hunt. Col. Juancho Sabban of the Philippine Marines was chosen to lead the 
search for the hostages because of an intelligence network of informers he 
had developed on Mr. Sabaya's home island of Basilan. He had early success, 
and before long, Mr. Sabaya was looking for a new hideout on the mainland. 
There, near a village called Sibuco in the remote province of Zamboanga del 
Norte, Mr. Sabaya dug in and began ransom negotiations.

An unexpected shift in U.S. policy led to an ill-fated round of talks. In 
February, the Bush administration backed away from the U.S.'s longstanding 
vow never to negotiate with terrorists. Its new policy was to "make every 
effort" to secure the release of American hostages, and that included 
offering support when private groups started ransom talks.

With this tacit nod from Washington, the Burnham family and the 
Florida-based New Tribes Mission to which Martin and Gracia belonged began 
raising cash, U.S. military officials say. In all, they pulled together 
$300,000. Some of that amount, U.S. officials privately say, came from 
federal coffers.

The talks moved swiftly, say people who monitored them. Little wonder: The 
negotiators were dealing with the wrong faction of the Abu Sayyaf, a 
frustratingly loose-knit alliance of rebel chieftains. Instead of going to 
Mr. Sabaya, the money went to another Abu Sayyaf leader, Khadaffy Janjalani.

Enraged when he learned of the mix-up, Mr. Sabaya called Mr. Janjalani to 
demand a share of the $300,000 and was rebuffed. "But I have the hostages," 
he said before hanging up, according to recordings of the call.

Mr. Sabaya wasn't alone in his frustration. The Philippine military was also 
tiring of the ransom talks. "They felt badly betrayed" by the way 
negotiations had broken down, says one U.S. military officer.

On May 27, the anniversary of the Burnhams' kidnapping, "Operation Daybreak" 
was put into action. Although the Philippine Constitution prevented U.S. 
troops from playing a combat role in the rescue -- Col. Sabban says U.S. 
special forces initially planned to dropped from helicopters and pluck the 
hostages to safety -- U.S. officers played a role in planning it.

The joint forces had pinpointed Mr. Sabaya's general location by tracking 
the signal from his satellite phone. But they needed to know if Mr. Sabaya 
still had the hostages. To do that, the U.S. armed forces tried a novel 
tactic: They tracked the thermal images from his take-away pizzas.

Mr. Sabaya regularly used couriers to deliver hamburgers, fried chicken and 
pizza to his hostages in the jungle, confidential military reports say. The 
pizzas, delivered piping hot to an Abu Sayyaf courier, worked particularly 
well and an unmanned spy plane would track the thermal image on a boat as it 
made its way out of Zamboanga City's crowded harbor. Once the boat was in 
clear water and the pizzas had cooled, the spy plane could easily follow it 
north to Mr. Sabaya's hide-out.

"We had to make sure the pizza was hot," Col. Sabban says. "Otherwise, we 
would have lost the trail."

Tracking pizzas helped convince the Philippine and U.S. soldiers that the 
Burnhams and another hostage, Filipina nurse Deborah Yap, were still with 
Mr. Sabaya.

The showdown came June 7. The day dawned, barely, with slabs of rain falling 
from the sky; visibility never reached more than a couple of dozen meters. 
With the Southeast Asian monsoon hampering electronic surveillance, Col. 
Sabban sat in Zamboanga City worrying the rebels might slip away again.

"The jungle is so thick, the heat-imaging equipment couldn't penetrate the 
foliage," Col. Sabban recalls. "We had to rely on old-fashioned human 
intelligence."

It was around then that the scout rangers found a brand new pair of Playboy 
underpants in the undergrowth. "We thought they belonged to the Abu Sayyaf," 
Corporal Rodelio Tuazon says. "Woodcutters couldn't afford them."

Other rangers found candy wrappers and chewed coconut husks. Before they 
realized how close they were, the soldiers nearly stumbled into the Abu 
Sayyaf.

A group of armed men was spotted just 20 meters away, near a stream running 
through a ravine. But the downpour was so thick the rangers couldn't see if 
the hostages were with them. Three rangers inched down a steep slope to see 
if they could get a closer look. Rocks loosened by the wet weather tumbled 
down with them.

"The Rangers thought their position was compromised," Col. Sabban says. 
"They had no choice but to fire."

The rangers, Col. Sabban says, feared Mr. Sabaya would order the Burnhams 
killed as soon as he knew troops were closing in. Indeed, an Abu Sayyaf 
fighter captured during the battle, Adzmar Aluk, later told interrogators 
that another rebel had standing orders to kill Mr. Burnham if the military 
attacked.

Mr. Aluk said he heard Mr. Sabaya during the encounter shout, "Kill Martin," 
and said he heard the rebel soldier, Ibno Hajar reply, "It's already done."

Fifteen minutes later, four rebels were also dead. The rangers found Mr. 
Burnham slumped over his wife, shot in the back at close range, according to 
the Philippine military's battlefield report. Mrs. Burnham was wounded in 
the leg. A few meters away, rangers found the limp body of the third 
hostage, Deborah Yap. She had been disemboweled.

Mr. Sabaya, however, was nowhere to be seen. He had managed to escape the 
military cordon with 11 of his men.

Still, it appeared time was running out for him. The military was close on 
his heels, and without a guide he was vulnerable in the unfamiliar terrain 
of Zamboanga del Norte. On June 16, Mr. Sabaya stumbled into another army 
patrol, losing two of his men and his Oakley shades in the firefight.

Oblivious to the risks of using his satellite phone, Mr. Sabaya called a 
boat operator in Zamboanga City to fetch him. "Pick me up where you brought 
me before," he said, according to phone recordings.

Col. Sabban and his intelligence team were listening in. They arrested the 
boat operator, and prepared to spring their trap.

At 10 p.m. on June 20, the outrigger boat Mr. Sabaya had ordered left 
Zamboanga and began chugging up the coastline to Sibuco, 64 kilometers away. 
It was crewed by two civilian agents, one of whom used to be Mr. Sabaya's 
guide. And it had company.

Escorting it was a speedboat carrying 16 heavily armed Philippine Marines. 
An unmanned spy plane flew overhead. Still higher in the sky, a U.S. Orion 
aircraft circled taking photographs. Two rigid inflatable boats full of U.S. 
Navy SEALs came along to videotape the ambush. And a twin-rotor Chinook 
helicopter fitted with a powerful spotlight was poised to fly to the scene.

Five hours later, Mr. Sabaya's outrigger boat puttered into Sibuco Bay. The 
marines waited while Mr. Sabaya and his men waded through the shallow water 
to the outrigger, casting off at 3:30 a.m. and heading for Zamboanga, hoping 
to hide in the backstreets of the crowded port city. Mr. Sabaya settled in 
for a nap.

Capt. Gieram Aragones, meanwhile, was in the marine speedboat. He says he 
worried whether the bright moonlight would give away his position. When the 
moon ducked behind clouds, his troops taped Krypton flashlights to the 
barrels of their rifles.

His orders were to tackle the Abu Sayyaf out on open water, ramming their 
boat and hopefully stunning them into submission. "They are more vulnerable 
there because there is nowhere to run to at sea," Capt. Aragones says.

At 4:20 a.m., Col. Sabban in the Zamboanga City control room gave Capt. 
Aragones the go-ahead signal. Capt. Aragones ordered the 250-horse-power 
engines put on full throttle, and the boat sped across the waves, the pilot 
steering with the help of night-vision goggles.

Just as his boat came up on the outrigger's port side, Capt. Aragones 
switched on two searchlights mounted on the speedboat's bow -- a prearranged 
signal that allowed the two undercover crewmen to dive off the outrigger 
boat to safety.

Capt. Aragones braced himself for impact, hoping that the tired Abu Sayyaf 
fighters wouldn't see him until it was too late. The speedboat hit the 
outrigger broadside at full speed, and the startled rebels opened fire.

The Chinook helicopter, Pentagon officials say, then swooped in and powered 
up its spotlight. With the sea bathed in light, the marines raked the 
crippled Abu Sayyaf boat with their automatic weapons. Mr. Sabaya was hit at 
least a dozen times, Capt. Aragones says, and the sea churned as bullets 
tore up the water. U.S. officials say the Chinook crew and the Seals filmed 
the firefight, with the Chinook relaying its video live to the Pentagon by 
satellite.

During their interrogations, all four Abu Sayyaf survivors said they saw Mr. 
Sabaya fall into the sea. One said they saw smoke rising from his wounds.

Later, Capt. Aragones spent two hours searching the water, hoping to find 
Mr. Sabaya's remains. "In the back of my mind I was hoping he had made it 
and we could capture him," he says. "But I don't think Sabaya even had time 
to recognize the speedboat."

The marines had retrieved the boat several months earlier. It was the same 
one Mr. Sabaya had used to wrench the Burnhams from their holiday over a 
year before.

The U.S., meanwhile, has pared back its role in the Philippines. Some 200 
troops are still in Basilan constructing roads. But U.S. officials say, they 
have rebuffed Filipino requests to finish off the Abu Sayyaf, the remnants 
of which are bunkered down on the remote island of Jolo with a new clutch of 
hostages. Six local Jehovah's Witnesses were kidnapped last month selling 
Avon cosmetics door to door. So far, two have been beheaded.

-- Greg Jaffe contributed to this article




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