Engineers conquer last ASG lair in Basilan

BASILAN --- It was the clatters of bulldozer engines and not artillery blasts that forced remnants of the Abu Sayyaf to abandon their last stronghold in this island province.The construction of the Basilan Transcentral Highway now traversing Sampinit Complex, where the Abu Sayyaf once ran a shadow government and held more than 200 kidnap victims from 1994 to 2014, is now more than 50 percent done.The project, costing more than P1 billion and expected to be completed by June this year, is being funded by the office of the now outgoing Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, soon to become the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM.Engineers and their foremen had last week a quick photo session in a channel of a river that springs from a rainforest at one side of the Sampinit Complex, where the slain Abu Sayyaf leader Khadafy Janjalani performed ablution rites prior to each of the five prayers he performed each day.The mountainous Sampinit Complex was once an impregnable Abu Sayyaf lair where no fewer than a hundred soldiers and militiamen perished in past operations meant to flush religious extremists out.Some of the Yakan skilled workers involved in the construction of the Transcentral Highway are related by blood to Abu Sayyaf stragglers whose activities they detest for being un-Islamic.The construction of the overland artery is a common initiative of ARMM’s executive branch, Engineer Don Loong, who is regional secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways, Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman and Soler Undug, the chief of the District Engineering Office in the province.The road network will interconnect the hinterland Sumisip and seaside Maluso towns from separate directions to Barangay Sta. Clara in Lamitan City, where there is an emerging Basilan provincial government center being established by the Hataman administration.Reforming former Abu Sayyaf members now being reintegrated into the local communities by the ARMM government are guarding construction workers under the supervision of the police and the Army’s 64thInfantry Battalion, a component-unit of the 104thBrigade.Lt. Gen. Arnel Dela Vega of the Western Mindanao Command and Chief Superintendent Graciano Mijares of the Police Regional Office-ARMM have both confirmed that there has not been any incident of harassment of workers since the construction of the highway commenced almost two years ago. Terrorists hiding in Sampinit must have realized that life out there is better now because of the livelihood opportunities spreading around after the rise in recent years of major infrastructures in all four corners of the province, Mijares said.Mijares and Galvez are both senior members of ARMM’s regional peace and order council, an inter-agency group responsible for securing the surrender of more than 200 hardcore Abu Sayyaf militants in Basilan in the past two years.Maluso Mayor Hanie Bud said there is now fragile peace in the border of Barangay Mahayahay and Sampinit Complex, where many Christian settlers were brutally killed by Abu Sayyaf gunmen on mere suspicions of conniving with the military.The Transcentral Highway has an intersection that connects Sampinit Complex to Maluso town proper via Barangay Mahayahay, which is inside the territory of the municipality.Hataman said Sunday the smooth implementation of the road project is due to the security efforts of the ARMM police, the WestMinCom and former Abu Sayyaf gunmen now helping secure the local communities from Islamist extremists. The world has become too small for the remaining members of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan to move around. Those who haven’t surrendered yet are now seeing how their former companions are thriving in peace in the barangays in the lowlands, Dela Vega said.