Beaches in former Abu Sayyaf enclaves in Sulu now tourist attractions

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Unknown to most Filipinos, white sand beach resorts in all four corners of Sulu are operating round-the-clock for two years now and that the province was declared “Abu Sayyaf free” by a provincial peace and security coordinating group last month.

Army Lt. Gen. Steve Crespillo, commander of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, said Sunday credit for feat has to go to local government units and the multi-sector Sulu Provincial Peace and Order Council that were responsible for having secured the surrender of no fewer than 400 Abu Sayyaf members in the past six years through backchannel negotiations.

A physician, Michael Macion, the regional coordinator for hospital management and concerns in the Bangsamoro health ministry, said he was amazed with the peace and calm Sulu has now that he personally felt during an official tour in the province last August.

“Me and my companions were so impressed. Our hosts, health ministry employees in the province and chief of the Integrated Provincial Health Office there, doctor Farah Tan Omar, toured us around and we went to a very nice beach resort in Parang municipality and enjoyed a lot while we were there,” the Cotabato City-based Macion, an orthopedic surgeon, said.

The Abu Sayyaf, founded in Basilan by the religious extremist Abduradjak Janjalani, who, while an overseas Filipino worker in the Middle East studied Islamic theology in Syria, once had bastions in most of the 18 towns in Sulu.

“Their strongholds got transformed into `peace villages’ and those Abu Sayyaf members who had returned to mainstream society are the ones protecting these areas now from incursions by bad people,” Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said Saturday.

A member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament, the lawyer Hadji Nabil Tan, said the deployment about three years ago in Sulu of an Army battalion comprised of Tausug personnel that the public virtually patronized was one of the factors that weakened the presence of the Abu Sayyaf in the province.

“That was a big problem, a serious threat for them. They avoided getting into actual combat with