Isis support in Philippines increasing and a battle to control a city (Marawi) has started.

[TheWPCTraveler]

binary solo said:

TheWPCTraveler said:

The Problem with the Philippines is that there is a very porous sea border, especially to the south. What compounds matters is that historically, the people of what used to be the Sulu sultanate were linked more closely to what is now Malaysia, than to the rest of the Philippines. This means that you can't really rely on ethnic nationalism (mind you, successfully utlized by Kemalists in Turkey) to suppress religious extremism.

I'm pretty disappointed that the thread devolved into a fight over semantics regarding countries that aren't even close to the Philippines or people virtue-signalling about "muh Duterte kills drug addicts" or trashing the Philippines as a whole.

I'm at least hoping that the army can get its act together and that Duterte is a lot better than Noynoy over handling of sensitive military operations.

wsell, someone did open the door saying "Asians" don't play around when it comes to terrorism. So that was a non-Philippines specific statement. Now if the statement had simply been "Filippinos don't play around with terrorism" things might not have spiralled. But given the Muslim seperatist history of the Philippines it's arguable that Filippinos don't play around with this sort of thing.

Not sure Duterte and "sensitive" really go together. Kind of like Trump and natural sun tan don't go together. So I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

Oh, we don't play around. It's just that the terrain is just great for guerillas. It's part of how Japan had so much trouble holding locations that weren't along the coast or in urban settings during World War II.

It's also part of why the NPA is still marauding around (the other part being that it is currently fashionable to be an outright "communist" in some public universities, thus easier recruits...)