Abu Sayyaf: Displays of Violence and the Proliferation of Contested Identities among Philippine Muslims

C H A R L E S 0 . F R A K E / S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K A T B U F F A L O

Abu SayyafDisplays of Violence and the Proliferation of Contested Identitiesamong Philippine Muslims

Killing is an act of classification.

—Michael Herzfeld, paraphrasing Edmund Leach1

"ABU SAYYAF" BECAME, on April 4, 1995, a new andnotorious identity label throughout the Philippines. Itsubsequently received worldwide press attention. OnMay 26, the International Herald Tribune featured astory, dramatically illustrated with a pagewide photo,obviously staged, of prototypic terrorists trying to lookgrim (a difficult task for Filipinos, Muslim or Christian)while brandishing a threatening variety of weapons.The headline read: "Islamic Rebels Stun Manila withTheir Ferocity" (see Figure 1). The stunning display offerocity was an attack, attributed to the Abu Sayyaf, onthe Christian town of Ipil, in western Mindanao, by a siz-able number of raiders who robbed banks, looted shops,killed some 40 people, and reportedly abducted manyothers. The actual details of the incident and the identi-ties of the perpetrators are unclear, but the impact onPhilippine perceptions of a 400-year history of Musliminsurgency is abundantly plain. My concern here is notwith documenting the events themselves or ChristianPhilippine reactions to them, but rather with examiningthe entailment of these events and perceptions with thechanging social, political, and cultural worlds of MuslimFilipinos. The examination must be historically embed-ded, not only because the current situation is a verycomplex product of both history and local perceptionsof history, but also because on-the-spot ethnographicdocumentation of violent acts is difficult to obtain and,if obtained, sensitive to report.2

This history of local violence, old and recent (likeall histories imperfectly understood), contains lessonsrelevant to current concerns about the sources and ef-

CHARLES 0. FRAKE is the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Anthropology inthe Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo,Buffalo, NY 14261

fects of displays of violence throughout the world. Cur-rent violence, in the mountains of Bosnia, the streets ofNew York, the pubs of Belfast, the subways of Tokyo,and the islands of the Philippines, is, in the situation andmoment of occurrence, an act of individuals with indi-vidual motives and intent. Someone has to pull the trig-ger, activate the bombs, or plant the gas capsules. A ma-jor motive in human life, on occasion not even second tosurvival, is the need to be somebody. To be somebody,one must have recognition from one's fellows. Violence,by threatening survival, one's own as well as others',provides a sure route to recognition. But who are one'sfellows? Who are those like you? And who are the "oth-ers," those to whose fate one can be indifferent? Whomshould you seek to kill? And who is out to kill you?These are the issues from the individual perspective.From the wider social and political perspective onemust ask, what are the conditions of conflict and whatare the available resources for identity construction?And, historically, how did these particular conditionsand resources come to be at hand? Fully appreciatingthe power of each of these perspectives (agentive,structural, and historical) within a single account is thenecessary but elusive goal of any proper social theory.3

The issue is manifest in the paradox posed by MichaelHerzfeld (1993) in his classic study of bureaucracy: howcan notably gracious, kind, hospitable people be, attimes, so maddeningly indifferent to their fellows? Thisis a paradox of individual actions. The traditional expla-nation of bureaucratic behavior, given scholarly sup-port by Weber and Tonnies, is structural: bureaucracy isthe niche of "modern rationality." Ties of gemein-schaftliche kindness and feeling are not relevant in thisrealm of implacably rational Gesellschaft. But this ex-planation, as Herzfeld nicely shows, is part of the prob-lem to be explained. Its invocation allows bureaucraticpractice to be a form of symbolic violence against theother. Unlike bureaucracy, militant insurgency confronts

^-American Anthmoologist 100(1 ):41-54. Copyright© 1998, American Anthropological Association.

42 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL 100, No 1 • MARCH 1998

Figure 1A display of violence: Abu Sayyaf fighters pose for the press. Drawing by Terence Loan, based on newspaper photos of purported Abu Sayyafinsurgents, with modifications to disguise persons and place. Used by permission.

us not with a form of symbolic violence, but rather withthe symbolic implications of the practice of unarguablyreal violence. Killing a fellow human is the ultimate madexpression of indifference, a convincing way of class-ifying someone as the other.

Herzfeld's paradox is relevant here because, as I orany other ethnographer of the southern Philippines cantestify, Philippine Muslims (like all Filipinos) are as hos-pitable, friendly, kind, cheerful, and helpful on most oc-casions (outside government offices and combat zones)as one could possibly desire. Members of the AbuSayyaf are no exception. But there is yet another para-dox that arises in this case: why is it that this 400-yearconflict has been characterized by a proliferation ofcontested identities among the insurgents, among thosewho most need to be united? Muslims in the Philippineshave no more been able to present a united front tothose whom they consider their oppressors than haveothers in similar conflicts elsewhere in the world. Why

is it that in conflict it is so often the weaker side thatfragments into rival factions? Is this another case of themysterious force of "hegemony"? The oppressed seemsomehow to be duped into practices detrimental totheir own interests. But how? And by what agency? Anexamination of the Philippine case reveals the challeng-ing complexities of identity construction to be faced inany attempt to reach an understanding of these issues.

A digression deserving more attention than a noteis required. I will be talking about labels, proclaimedand imposed, for identities. The highly problematic ref-erence and symbolism of these labels is a subject of thisinquiry But before we can begin talking, we need labelsto identify, at least provisionally, the players in this grimgame. Following traditional Philippinist scholarly prac-tice, I will simply use "Christian" and "Muslim" to distin-guish the major divide among identities in this part ofthe Philippines. This choice should offer no offense toanyone on either side of the divide, or to those who

V I O L E N C E A N D I D E N T I T Y A M O N G P H I L I P P I N E M U S L I M S / C H A R L E S 0 . F R A K E 4 3

straddle it. These are, however, only labels. They arenot descriptions. The actual religious, ethnic, national,or class components of the identities of those so labeledis, again, a matter for investigation.

The recent notoriety of the name Abu Sayyaf is notthe first time in the long history of Philippine Christian-Muslim conflict that a label of Muslim identity hasstruck terror in Christian hearts. The first terrorist la-bel, Mow, was imposed by the Spanish themselves andhas haunted Philippine Christians ever since. The Span-ish arrived in the 16th century, rapidly Christianizingthe lowland portions of the northern and central is-lands. But in the south, Islam was too firmly entrenchedto be removed. To these pertinacious Muslims the Span-ish gave the same name they had attached to their long-time Muslim enemies in Spain. They were the Moors, theMoros. And the bearers of this terrorist identity im-posed by the Spanish did indeed create terror. Duringthe following two centuries, Philippine Muslims, takingadvantage of their strategic position, frustrated Spanishefforts to gain access to the Spice Islands to the south.The Spanish, consequently, felt forced to abandon Ter-nate, the central Spice Island, after a brief occupation.After failing to gain control of the two major Moropower centers in central Mindanao and on the island ofJolo in the Sulu Archipelago, the Spanish built a militarybase located between them at Zamboanga, on the tip ofthe southwestern peninsula of Mindanao. This base wasgarrisoned by Christian Filipino soldiers and sailorswho spoke a variety of central Philippine ("Bisayan")languages, who intermarried with immigrant and localwomen speaking an even greater variety of languages,and who raised families among speakers of a similar va-riety of local languages. Out of this situation therearose, as a native language and local lingua franca, aSpanish Creole locally known as "Chabacano" or "Zam-boangueno." With this language, a new local identitywas born.

To Christian Filipinos, the base at Zamboanga musthave seemed more a prod that stimulated Moro aggres-sion than a shield that deterred it. The central and north-ern islands of the Philippines were plagued for threecenturies by raids of plunder and pillage from the south,terrors that have been enshrined in popular folklore andfolk drama in the Christian and pagan Philippines.4 Al-though typically all raiders from the south were called"Moros," a few other, ostensibly more specific labelssometimes gained prominence. In this atmosphere ofviolence, what promoted an identity distinguishablefrom the ordinary violent Moro was a display of extraor-dinary fierceness, on the one hand, or of exemplary do-cility, on the other. "Tidong," "Ilanun," and "Balangingi"'were, at various time in history, the bad guys; "Lutao,""Samal," and "Bajao" were the (relatively) good guys.Neither set of identities was typically "Moro." In fierce-

ness of reputation, the former, like the Abu Sayyaf to-day, rose above an ordinary wMoro" identity, whereasthe latter fell below it (Frake 1980:311-332, 1996).These were distinctions imposed by outsiders on a cul-tural world of which they had little understanding. Yetthey do reflect something of the bases of differentiationrecognized by the Muslims themselves. In fact, eachside provides for the other the context for giving mean-ing and purpose to displays of violence. Being recog-nized by outsiders because of displays of stunning fe-rocity becomes, with opposite evaluations, a basis ofinternal recognition, differentiation, and ranking. Buttalk of "sides" introduces an anachronistic distortion ofthe Muslim perspective. During most of the 400-year his-tory of Christian-Muslim struggle, the players on theMuslim side played without benefit of any encompass-ing framework of a Moro (that is, a Philippine Muslim)identity. The Muslim appropriation of the Christian-im-posed identity of "Moro" is a recent event in this unfold-ing story of identity construction.

If it is "anachronism" (history's version of the an-thropologist's "ethnocentricism") to project a presentconception onto the past, it is equally a distortion, oneakin to the anthropologist's tendency toward "exoti-cism," to construct, as a beginning point of one's his-tory, an imagined past of unchanging traditional socie-ties, each a neatly bundled package of cultural,linguistic, and political distinctiveness. When the Span-ish arrived in the 16th century, they found peoples in themidst of rapid economic and ideological changes, im-pelled by long involvement in a proto-world system fo-cused on a circulation of tropical products, Chinesemanufactures, and Hindu symbols. Local societies, incompetition for power and wealth, were manipulatingmaterial and symbolic resources, of cultural identitywith as much fierceness as today. Local traditions, frag-mentary historical sources (largely Chinese), and lin-guistic evidence (relevant archaeology is practicallynonexistent) enable us to project this picture of changeand complexity back several hundred years prior to thecoming of the Spanish. In known history, the big pre-Spanish event was the appearance of Islam in the south-ern Philippines, beginning at least by the 14th century.5

Islam's triumph here, as elsewhere in island SoutheastAsia, was a conquest not of invading peoples but of aninviting identity, a new kind of cosmopolitan identitythat was particularly appealing to seafarers and tradersin a vast multicultural, maritime area that reached fromChina to southeastern Asia and across the Indian Oceanto South Asia, Arabia, and East Africa.

Well before Islam arrived in the Philippines, theSulu Archipelago, which straddled the trade routes be-tween the Spice Islands to the south and China to thenorth, had been playing a major role in this commerce.The rising prominence, as an entrepot and a political

4 4 A M E R I C A N A N T H R O P O L O G I S T • V O L 1 0 0 , No 1 • M A R C H 1 9 9 8

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THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES

100 ZOO 300 400 500

LEGEND

COUNTRIES : INDONESIA ISLANDS : BORNEO

CITIES: • Xiunte,^

SAMALAN LANGUAGES (jv^

MARANAO LANGUAGE ^ TAUSUG LANGUAGE HMACINDANAO LANGUAGE^ YAKAN LANGUAGE [[JJ

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Figure 2The southern Philippines. Map by Terence Loan. Used by permission.

power, of Jolo,the archipelago's central island, entaileda very revealing example of identity construction withconsequences that still inform current events in thesouthern Philippines. We do not know quite what hap-pened, but we do know the outcome. A new languageand a new identity appeared in Jolo that distinctlystands out amidst the other Sulu languages, all of whichform a closely knit group of "Samalan" languages.6 Thisnew language was one of the Central Philippine lan-guages of the Bisayan group, closely affiliated with lan-guages spoken now by Christians in the Butuan area ofnortheastern Mindanao, some 500 miles by water fromJolo (Figure 2). The language, as well as the identity ofits speakers, have come to be called "Tausug" in con-trast to what the bearers of this new identity called the"Samal," a language and identity attributed to mostother peoples of the archipelago.7 The appearance of aBisayan language in Sulu could have been the result of apopulation intrusion from northeastern Mindanao or ofthe appropriation, by local Samalan speakers, of a new

language, access to which was achieved through tradeand intermarriage, as a means of securing economic andpolitical domination by means of a cultural identity dis-tinct from those now deemed inferior.8 An ethnohistori-cal account, which survives locally among both Tausugand Sama speakers, enshrines the Tausug accomplish-ment in a story that reverses known historical fact: itmakes the Tausug the original occupants of Sulu andrelegates the Sama to the status of late, post-Islamic ar-rivals invited by the Tausug to work for them in mari-time endeavors, a sort of seagoing Gastarbeiter What-ever the actual events and their sequence, it is clearthat, with the arrival of Islam, the Tausug embraced thenew religion, giving it a prominent role in securing adominant mercantile and militant identity in Sulu andsouthwestern Mindanao.9 Their rivals in central Min-danao, already securely distinct from their neighbors inlanguage, gained, at the same time, equal prominence asmilitant Muslims.10 From Sulu and Mindanao, Islamspread northward to trading centers in the Bisayas and


Luzon, but its hold there proved too weak to resist Span-ish-imposed Christianity. The current division betweenMuslim and Christian in the Philippines is a survival ofthe conflicts of this era. The position of the divide is ageopolitical product that is arbitrary with respect topreexisting linguistic and ethnic boundaries. The peo-ples who became Muslims did not share anything incommon, other than their new religion, that distin-guished them as a group from other inhabitants of thePhilippines. Moros did not become Muslims. Muslimsbecame Moros, Philippine Muslims. But first there hadto be a Philippines.

After Islam came the Europeans, competing witheach other first for resources and ultimately for colo-nies, a competition that accelerated the development ofnationalism in Europe while inflicting colonialism onthe peoples of much of the rest of the world. At the be-ginning of European colonial rivalry in the 16th century,the Pope divided the world between the two major play-ers, Spain and Portugal, by a great circle of longitude:45°W-135°E.n Both the limitations of mapping technol-ogy and the realities of political power (including therapid entry of further players into this game) preventedthe Pope's actual line from having much subsequent in-fluence (the Philippines were in fact on the Portugueseside of 135° E), but the idea of the entire world being cutup into discretely bounded polities, each separatedfrom its neighbors by a precisely drawn line, has shapedthe political map ever since. Ironically, in contrast tothe national boundaries drawn in Europe, it has beenthe colonial borders imposed by Europeans, mostly incomplete disregard for any local ethnic attachments,that have shown the most remarkable resiliencethrough all the subsequent transformations and ulti-mate demise of colonial power. It was the fate of Sulu tofind itself just on the Spanish side of one of these borderlines. On the other side lay colonies of the Dutch (whoquickly replaced Spain's original rivals, the Portuguese)and the British. Even though effective Spanish politicalcontrol rarely extended anywhere close to this invisibleline drawn on water, it has had surprising and lastingconsequences for local identities. Unlike the mountainsof the Pyrenees (Sahlins 1989), the seas of Sulu did notprovide suitable material for the construction of na-tional identities. Nevertheless, local cultural identitiesand political allegiances were warped and reshaped bythe border. And even though the border did not easilymake "Filipinos" out of Muslims on the Philippine sideof it, it did, in the course of four centuries, manage tomake "Moros," Philippine Muslims, out of them. Thismaking has been reflected in a linguistic boundary, notof local language affiliations, but of language use.

Negligently patrolled as it was, the Spanish colonialborder seems to have been curiously effective in re-stricting the spread of the Malay language as a lingua

franca, a usage prevalent since before colonial times,among sailors, merchants, traders, and officials fromMalacca to the Moluccas ("Melaka" to ttMaluku" in cur-rent national spellings).12 The de facto exclusion of Ma-lay was not the result of any Spanish policy to discour-age its use. The Spanish appear to have had no languagepolicy at all. Local Spanish clerics, officials, and mer-chants evinced little interest in promoting their ownlanguage or any other. No alternative lingua franca ap-peared in the Philippines until the arrival of the Ameri-cans, who quickly sent over a troop ship of Englishteachers to set the country on the right linguistic track.Since those turn-of-the-century days, English has be-come an effective second language throughout most ofthe Philippines. It is also the language of a vibrant press,of government publications, of the courts, and of theAmerican movies shown throughout the Philippineswithout dubbing or subtitles. But the Muslims of thesouth, especially prior to recent decades, were less wellserved by the English-promoting public education sys-tem and national media. A rival lingua franca, Tagalog,the language of the Manila area and the official nationallanguage, has been gaining in use in the southern Philip-pines. It is, for one thing, the language of communica-tion with the military. A minimal proficiency in check-point Tagalog is advisable for anyone, Christian orMuslim, who ventures very far on public highways orseaways. Several Basilan Muslims of my acquaintancelearned their fluent street Tagalog while serving time inthe national prison near Manila.

Such a history of language use has left the Philip-pine Muslim world not only with practical difficulties incommunication across local language boundaries but,more significantly in that multilingual world, with con-flicts in the symbolic implications of language choicefor the presentation of cultural and political identity.One's own native language has a place in a regionwideranking of languages and associated ethnic identities. Aproperty of language use that bears on this ranking iswhether nonnatives regularly learn it. Hardly anyone(except the local anthropologist) who is not Yakanspeaks Yakan, the language of Basilan Muslims. Thesame is the case for most other Samalan languages.Tausug, on the other hand, is widely spoken in Sulu bynon-Tausug Muslims (but hardly ever by Christians) ininteraction with Tausug and with each other in multilin-gual situations.13 It is also a language used by non-Tausug among themselves in certain formal legal andreligious occasions, in certain genres of heroic songs,and when writing in Arabic script (Frake 1980:233-252).Yet nonnative use of Tausug is colored by the consider-able animosity, expressed in a history of violence, felttoward the Tausug by other Sulu Muslims. Outside ofSulu, in central Mindanao, the Maranao/Magindanaolanguage occupies a place of prestige equivalent to that

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of Tausug in Sulu. Neither language has yielded to theother as a pan-Muslim lingua franca, a Moro language.The Tausug-Maranao/Magindanao linguistic divide andthe identity division that goes along with it has not yetbeen effectively bridged, not even by the most militantinsurgents. The first m^jor pan-Moro organization, theMoro National Liberation Front (MNLF), soon splitalong this divide, even though the ostensible reasonswere matters of policy and challenges to leadership.The only common languages between Sulu and Min-danao Moro leadership are Tagalog and English. Taga-log is too closely associated with Christian Filipinos,the government, and the military to be appealing. En-glish is more practical, and until Abu Sayyaf, most insur-gent groups, such as the MNLF, named themselves withEnglish-based acronyms. But for militant Islamicists,English, a language identified with Christians, the na-tional government, and (perhaps most importantly) theMNLF university-educated elite, has little symbolic ap-peal. Yet it is the militant Islamicists, fiercely dedicatedto uniting all Moros in their struggle, that most need acommon language, if only for the practical purposes ofplanning their next raid.

These practical issues of language use reflect theethnically based fault lines that shape divisivenessamong insurgents. There are other fault lines as well.There are, as everywhere in the world, conflicts be-tween those who support their social position by appealto the "tradition" of their particular local culture andthose who challenge these traditionalists by appealingto the rival attractions of the "modern" world. But forPhilippine Muslims, there are rival modern worlds vyingfor attention. There is the world of Western technology,Western education, the Philippine political system (orits Marxist alternative), and the English language. Thenthere is the world of modernist (as seen from the Philip-pines) Islam: Koranic education, "authentic" Islamicreligious services, the pilgrimage, and Muslim (as op-posed to traditional or Western) dress. All three routesare available to Philippine Muslims in their very com-petitive struggle to realize their social and political aspi-rations.14 Each has its appeal; each has its problems.Each route has its moderate and extremist versions; alljointly have an "outlaw" counterversion, of which morelater.

Orientations toward modernity and religiositycrosscut ethnic loyalties that, in turn, are constructedatop local political networks, cobwebs of fragile and un-stable threads linking a set of supporters to a centralleader, who, though he may (but need not) claim a titlefrom a large traditional hereditary set, maintains andextends his power by constant reweaving and expan-sion of the delicate ties of dependency and obligationthat link him with his supporters. From the supporters*point of view, such ties form a kind of local political

identity, which in Yakan is queried by asking, "Who doyou follow?" (amban sine kewy literally "from whom areyou?"). The response can have critical, even fatal, con-sequences for the outcome of the interaction (Frake1980:202-213; Kiefer 1972).

These problems of adaptation to the conflictingpulls of modernism in the context of the intricacies oflocal political conflicts became manifest in the emer-gence in the late 1960s and early 1970s of several insur-gent groups, each bent on overriding local ethnolin-guistic divisions by forming a truly Moro resistancemovement.15 Their appearance reflected the intensify-ing pressures of government-supported Christian settle-ment in Muslim areas, which led to increased violenceby paramilitary groups such as the Christian ilaga'("Rats"), led by Kumander Toothpick, and the Muslim"Barracudas." The national government was seen byMuslims as supporting the Christians, though this wasduring a period of widening Muslim participation in na-tional and local government politics. In Muslim locali-ties, political contests for official government officeswere fought with as much passion, frequently leading toviolence, as among Christians. And, as among Chris-tians, local Muslim political figures often had their ownminiature armies. These political battles were foughtwithin the framework of the national two-party system,with party affiliations mapping onto local, regional, andnational dualistic factions without any pretense of ideo-logical agendas.16 As this free-for-all violence escalated,and amidst other events—such as a mysterious massa-cre (the "Jabidah" incident) of Muslim recruits fromSulu to a secret government military force (reportedlyassembled to invade north Borneo) and a particularlyfierce power struggle between Muslim politicians incentral Mindanao—there arose several organizations,each proclaiming itself to represent a pan-Moro move-ment demanding independence or autonomy from thePhilippine state.

Early on the scene appeared the MIM (Mindanao/Muslim Independence Movement) in central Mindanao,the result of an apparent move by a traditional politicalleader in both local and Philippine government spheresto strengthen his support among Muslims by challeng-ing the government and demanding independence forMindanao. Intensified by local and national interpreta-tions of this move, the MIM quickly became involved inarmed conflicts. During this time, in the late 1960s, anew and quite different insurgent movement appearedamong Muslim students at the national university in Ma-nila. These radicalized students challenged not onlyPhilippine government rule but also the leadership ofthe traditional Muslim elites in Mindanao and Sulu. Thegroup they formed under the leadership of Nur Misuari,the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), togetherwith its military arm, the BMA (Bangsa Moro Army),


was destined to become the dominant Muslim insurgentgroup. As a radical, secular Islamic movement led by in-tellectuals, the MNLF was able to develop associationswith other Muslim countries, notably Mu'ammar Gad-hafi's Libya.

In a tactic now familiar in ethnic conflict, the MNLFappropriated the ethnic slur "Moro" as a label of self-identity. Misuari explicitly denied that this was a reli-gious movement. It was a movement of the Moro peo-ple, the Bangsa Moro. Even a Christian, he announced,could be a Moro: "The correct name is Moro, becausethat is our nationality.... This is not a religious war.Christians can also be Moros." Ethnic divisions amongMoros are to be ignored: "From this very moment thereshall be no stressing the fact that one is a Tausug, aSamal, a Yakan, a Subanon, a Kalagan, a Magindanao, aMaranao, or a BacUao. He is only a Moro" (Misuari,quoted by Cayongcat 1986:118). Not unexpectedly, nei-ther the religious nor the ethnic proclamations hadgreat effect. The MNLF was, from the beginning, seen asTausug-dominated and secular. Neither the ethnicistsnor the Islamicists were long to be denied.

In 1972 a political event occurred on the nationalscene the motivation for which had little, if anything, todo with the Muslim insurgency. To preserve his own re-gime, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos declaredmartial law and established a military dictatorship. Hisefforts to extend military control in the south simply es-calated the violence. Terrible battles occurred in cen-tral Mindanao and throughout Sulu. The town of Jolowas devastated, as was the island of Basilan. New com-munities of refugees within the Muslim areas had to re-make their lives and redefine their identities (see, forexample, Blanchetti-Reville 1993). Following a visit toLibya by Imelda Marcos, a meeting between the Marcosgovernment and the MNLF was held in Tripoli in 1976,resulting in agreement, "in principle," to the establish-ment of regional autonomy in the "southwestern" Phil-ippines (no boundaries specified). But challenges tothis agreement were quick to come from the PhilippineMuslim camp. Though couched in Islamicist and revolu-tionary rhetoric, these challenges were motivated by lo-cal politics and took advantage of the old, familiar eth-nic affiliations. The MIM faded away with the defectionto Marcos of its leader, but an established Maranao po-litical leader of central Mindanao formed the BMLO(Bangsa Muslimin Liberation Organization), a namethat rejected Misuari's use of "Moro" as demeaning. Inmeetings in Mecca in 1977, a Magindanao leader,Hashim Salamat, unsuccessfully challenged Misuari forleadership of the MNLF. He received backing fromLibya's enemy, Egypt, and was thereby branded anagent of Anwar Sadat by Libya. Philippine Muslim di-visiveness had become enmeshed in Middle Easternconflicts.17

Back home, Salamat formed a rival Magindanao-dominated organization, the MILF (Moro Islamic Lib-eration Front), which remains a major player today. Inthe meantime (we are now in the early 1980s), Maranaomembers of the MNLF again broke away. An elitistleader formed the MNLFR, the R standing for "Reform-ist." Radical, largely Maranao groups also appeared: theRNRC (Ranao Norte Revolutionary Committee) and theMNRDF (the Moro National Revolutionary DemocraticFront). These groups challenged traditional Muslimelite leadership, as well as the Philippine government,by linking themselves (or threatening to link them-selves) with the NPA (National People's Army), the na-tional revolutionary organization then fighting Marcos.There was also an official Communist Party Muslim or-ganization, the MCCCP (Moro Commission of the Com-munist Party of the Philippines) that formed the MRO orMORO (Moro Revolutionary Organization). None ofthese radical leftist movements has had much appeal toPhilippine Muslims, not so much because of their Marx-ism as because of their Christian Filipino associations.

With the demise of the Marcos regime, the Philip-pine government and the MNLF have resumed negotia-tions under a cease-fire. The government thereby ac-knowledged the MNLF as the political voice of the Mororegion. The MNLF, in turn, has agreed to settle for an"autonomous region" rather than a fully independentstate. Tense negotiations over just what an "autono-mous region" means, and who is to be included in it,have been going on for the past several years. Opposi-tion to the negotiations by Mindanao Christians hasbeen vociferous. They do not want any autonomy at all.There has been opposition by rival Muslim groups aswell, especially the MILF. They demand independencerather than autonomy, thus challenging MNLF leader-ship of the proposed autonomous region. Despite theopposition, progress was being made in the negotia-tions and a shaky peace prevailed over most of Min-danao and Sulu.

But as in Palestine and Northern Ireland, just aspeace seems to be at hand, the process quite literallygets blown apart. Abu Sayyaf attacks Ipil. "Spoilers ofthe Peace," announced the Washington Post in its cov-erage of the Ipil raid: "Militant young Muslim forceemerges in Philippines as older rebels negotiate" (Rich-burg 1995:A33). Faced with such a reality and such arepresentation of that reality, it is to the advantage ofboth parties in the negotiation to attribute the disrup-tive violence to an extremist splinter group. That waynegotiations can continue even as one side engages inretaliatory violence, not ostensibly against the oppos-ing negotiating party, but against the extremists. Bysuch devices of attribution, the MNLF negotiations havestruggled on in spite of repeated outbursts of violenceand recriminatory accusations by both sides. Abu Sayyaf,


however, is not simply a convenient invention. It is aself-proclaimed identity.

Whatever its actual role in the Ipil raid of 1995 andin the many other attacks attributed to it, Abu Sayyafundoubtedly had existed for at least several years be-forehand. During the previous year, Abu Sayyaf wasmentioned in the Philippine press in connection withseveral attacks, a few kidnappings, and a provincial hallburning on the Muslim island of Basilan, but given thatMuslim raids have been regularly reported in the pressfor at least the previous 40 years, the new nom de guerrereceived little national and no international attentionbefore the Ipil attack in a solidly Christian area. On Basi-lan, reportedly the group's initial home base, I heard ref-erences to "abusayap" in early 1993. The name AbuSayyaf literally means "sword of the father" in Arabic,though, in the tradition of acronymic names, the mostcommon local explanation in Basilan and Jolo is that itrepresents the initials of the founders of the move-ment. l8 The new kind of name signals a new kind of in-surgent group, though the tradition of English nick-names for notorious battle leaders continues: following"Kumander Toothpick" of the old Christian "Rats," theAbu Sayyaf now has its "Kumander James Bond" (vi-cious violence cannot kill Filipino humor). The found-ers of Abu Sayyaf were neither from the traditional elite,like the leaders of the MILF, nor were they universitystudents, like the founders of the MNLF. Principalfounder Abubakar Janjalani was a student of a funda-mentalist imam in a Muslim community in the otherwiseChristian city of Zamboanga, a community then filledwith refugees from the violence. He was sent for reli-gious and military training among revolutionaries inEgypt and then returned to organize a militant funda-mentalist insurgent force. For recruits he tapped a largepool of young, unemployed, and disaffected Muslims,many of them torn from their ethnic roots during thepreceding decades. The members of Abu Sayyaf are saidto be mostly Tausug and Yakan (a combination of his-torically bitter enemies). Their main bases are in Basi-lan and surrounding islands. This ethnic and localprovenance has not, however, prevented the press fromblaming them for attacks all across the breadth of Min-danao, as far as the city of Davao in the southeast end ofthe island. The Philippine military has linked them to "aworldwide Muslim terrorist network." Their name isnow enshrined in the Britannica Book of the Year for1995 (Bradsher 1996:456).

The appearance of Abu Sayyaf filled a logical gap inthe identity matrix of Philippine Muslim insurgency.The Tausug-dominated MNLF is identified with secularIslam and is led by a nontraditional, university-educatedelite. The leadership of the Magindanao-dominatedMILF, on the other hand; though it sometimes employsIslamicist rhetoric in opposition to the MNLF, is drawn

from the established political elite, which is secular inbackground and orientation. In contrast to these twomovements, the program of Abu Sayyaf is militantly Is-lamicist. Its leadership comes from neither the Western-educated elite nor the traditional local elites.19 Its heavyrecruitment from the displaced, unaffiliated youth ofrefugee communities, as well as its geographical base intraditional "outlaw" areas of Basilan and neighboring is-lands, frees it to some extent from the stigma of a domi-nating ethnic identification. Members are typically seennot as Tausug, Magindanao, or Maranao but as being"like outlaws," but outlaws with an agenda and an ideol-ogy. These differences are sufficient to mark out theAbu Sayyaf as representing a new layer in the strata ofkinds of identity laid down in the long history of conflictin the Muslim Philippines, The appearance of pan-Morogroups beginning in the late 1960s added a stratum of"political" identities to the previous layers of ethnic andreligious divisions. These identities were political inthat their agendas were defined vis-a-vis the Philippinestate. They construed "Moro" as political identity, a dis-tinct "nationality" deserving its own sovereignty. Tothis stratum of political identities, Abu Sayyaf adds anIslamicist identity defined not only in opposition to thePhilippine state but also in opposition to secular leader-ship in the Muslim community. Familiar enough in theMiddle East, this militant cry for an Islamic state is anew voice in the Philippines.

Our story of identity proliferation among Philip-pine Muslims is not quite over. The mention of outlawsin connection with the Abu Sayyaf points to anotheridentity, an alternative to all the rest which has longbeen available as sometimes convenient to embraceand sometimes useful to attribute to others. I encoun-tered this identity early on, in the 1960s, when collectinglife histories among Yakan elders. Quite commonly, thenarrator would describe a period of his or her life as be-ing "when we [usually a whole kin group was involved]were mundu" that is, when they, for a time, became"outlaws." Being a mundu frequently entails being awantid sought by the authorities, a proudly proclaimedidentity that provides one with sanctuary in the homesof nonhostile fellow Yakan (Frake 1980:225-226). Theoutlaw identity has a long history in the Muslim Philip-pines.20 The earliest recorded mention of the Yakan,by a 17th-century Jesuit, refers to a Yakan bandit namedTabaco (Combes 1897:498-502). Among Philippine Mus-lims, the careers of famous outlaws of history are en-shrined, like that of Jesse James, in story and song. Inthis day of political conflict with the national authori-ties, an outlaw is someone who is seen to fight withoutan agenda other than personal gain. When a violent at-tack such as the Ipil raid occurs, there is always the op-tion of attributing it to "outlaws, bandits, and pirates,"an option with a continuous record of use throughout

V I O L E N C E A N D I D E N T I T Y A M O N G P H I L I P P I N E M U S L I M S / C H A R L E S 0 F R A K E 4 9

colonial history. The title of one 19th-century Spanishhistory of the southern Philippines translates as The Pi-rate Wars of the Philippines against the Mindanaos andJoloanos" (Barrantes 1878), and another, in two vol-umes, proclaims itself as "The History of Malayo-Mohamedan Piracy in Mindanao, Jolo, and Borneo"(Montero y Vidal 1888).

The German ethnologist Blumentritt (1882), usingSpanish sources, published an ethnographic map of thePhilippines identifying 51 ethnic groups, each with adistinctive color. One color, green, covers all the Mus-lim areas. The ethnic identification is Die Piraten-stamme [pirate tribes] von Mindanao und Sulu. A U.S.Army poster, published in 1963 and entitled "KnockingOut the Moros: The U.S. Army in Action" (see Figure 3and cover photo), commemorates a 1913 battle in Jolonow conveniently forgotten, during which U.S. forces(under the command of soon-to-be-famous GeneralPershing) annihilated a defending Tausug force of men,women, and children. The poster describes the defend-ers (pictured falling under the firepower of the .45-

caliber pistol, invented to stop "fanatical charges of law-less Moro tribesmen") as "outlaws of great physical en-durance and savage fighting ability " n A current varietyof outlaw is found among the "lost command," consist-ing of bandit gangs reputedly made up of MNLF desert-ers who no longer fight for the cause but for plunder andpillage alone. Yakan life histories show that being anoutlaw can be a self-proclaimed identity (after all, thelaw one is "out of is not one's own), but it is equally anidentity ascribed by others as a way of attributing basemotives to acts of violence. If outlaws did not exist, theywould have to be invented to account for what one sees,or would like others to see, as totally unjustified vio-lence.

All these possibilities of identity choice create linesof potential cleavage, which together shape the out-come of conflicts that are typically quite parochial inorigin. And when disparate local conflicts inde-pendently produce eruptions of violence sufficientlyimpressive to receive regional and national attention,they are subject to interpretations that, even though

Figure 3"Knocking Out the Moros: The U.S. Army in Action." U.S. Army poster 21-48,1963. Commemorates a 1913 battle in Jolo.


uninformed as to local causes, provide a new contextfor framing "what happened." This new context, in turn,becomes a frame that shapes local interpretations ofsubsequent events. Interpreting what happened re-quires identifying agents and victims. It requires iden-tity ascription. Repeated cycles of contested interpreta-tion and reinterpretation foster identity proliferation.Each attribution is made in an arena of competing politi-cal agendas under an ever-present cloud of threateningviolence. Local and national reactions to the Ipil raidand its precedents nicely illustrate this process.

During the year prior to the raid, there had been inthe Zamboanga-Sulu area a number of incidents of vio-lence, mostly kidnappings of local Christians and of anAmerican missionary/linguist which were locally attrib-uted by some to the Abu Sayyaf, by others to the MNLF,by others to the "lost command/' and by still others sim-ply to common outlaws. One that received nationalpress attention was the June 1993 burning of the provin-cial hall in the Basilan capital. A Manila newspaper ranthe story under the headline "Abu Sayyaf Eyed in Basi-lan Capitol Blaze" {Philippine Daily Inquirer 1993.A1).The Abu Sayyaf, at this time new to Manila readers,were characterized by the paper as a Basilan-basedgang of "Muslim extremists" responsible for recent kid-nappings. Inserted into the story, with no obvious directconnection, was a report that Philippine president FidelRamos had warned against terrorist attempts to "sowterror and destruction" during the upcoming Inde-pendence Day celebrations. The article also acknowl-edged that local authorities had in fact suggested faultywiring as the cause of the fire. Locally in Basilan, I heardboth of these stories, but the real truth, I was told, wasthat the fire was set by provincial government officialsin anticipation of a national government audit of theirrecords, now conveniently transformed into ashes. Theprovincial government has been in the hands of localYakan politicians since the fighting during the Marcosperiod drove out most of the Christian residents, whopreviously controlled Basilan politics. These local poli-ticians share official power with a large contingent ofPhilippine marines stationed along the north coast.They represent one of several Yakan factions contend-ing for land and power after the violent upheavals anddiasporas of the 1970s and 1980s. The story I heard wastold as a strategic move during a land dispute betweentwo other factions, by a disputant who was seekingsome basis of strength in an appeal to unity in commonopposition to the faction then in provincial politicalpower. Yakan friends not involved in this particularlabyrinth of disputations acknowledge that the story ofdeliberate arson was, given the state of Basilan govern-ment, quite plausible. Most also granted that, given thestate of local electrical installations, bad wiring was anequally plausible cause. Nevertheless, on the national

scene, the Abu Sayyaf got the credit. It was, for the na-tional audience, a better story.

Less than a year later came the Ipil attack. Thisblow was big enough and destructive enough to receivemuch greater attention locally, nationally, and even in-ternationally. By the time this happened, an abundanceof usable interpretative resources had accumulatedfrom the history of accounts of prior conflicts. Only thebare essentials of what happened at Ipil were needed toconstruct long narrative accounts of the event in localstorytelling and in national press reports. None of theseaccounts seemed particularly constrained by the lack ofreliably confirmed data or by the absence of any publicclaims of responsibility by the perpetrators. The mili-tary, vowing to avenge the attack, embarked on raids byair, sea, and land, striking alleged Abu Sayyaf bases onislands in the Basilan area. The MNLF denounced theseraids as arbitrary attacks on Muslim communities, at-tacks that thereby violated the cease-fire agreementwith the government. Neither side challenged the attri-bution of the deed to the Abu Sayyaf, who themselvesseemed to have had no voice in this discourse. In spiteof the mutual recriminations, these attributions did infact enable negotiations between the government andthe MNLF to stumble on through the subsequent year. InAugust 1996 an agreement between President Ramosand MNLF leader Nur Misuari was announced. It in-volves setting up a Southern Philippines Council forPeace and Development, to be led by Misuari, whichwill oversee the 14 provinces of the Mindanao-Sulu re-gion for three years. During this period the Philippinemilitary and police will absorb some 7,000 MNLF fight-ers into their ranks. There will then be a referendum todecide which provinces want to join an autonomousMuslim region.22 Opposition from local Christians, aswell as from Muslim groups opposed to MNLF leader-ship (notably the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf, who are ofcourse opposed to each other as well), remains firm. Anatmosphere of threatened violence continues to hangover a fragile peace.

Peace can only be negotiated when the parties ofthe new political order are publicly identified. Thosenot a party to the proposed new order may well betempted to challenge the prospective leadership bydisrupting the peace process with a display of violenceidentified with a new and more "nationalistic," "revolu-tionary," "fundamentalist" movement. As Donald Horo-witz puts it in his worldwide review of separatist con-flicts, "Quite often the swirl of conflicts is reflected in abewildering succession of separatist organizations,each with more uncompromising demands than the onethat preceded it" (1985:237). As a move in this game ofpolitical challenge, renewed violence has the propertyof promoting solidarity among those who, at risk tothemselves, join in perpetuating it (Keane 1996). As a


device for political challenge, violence becomes moreattractive when the existing political order is weak. Itbecomes even more attractive when the common cul-ture of "civility," extending through that political order,is also weak. These weaknesses, confronted by theeruptive pressures of everyday political conflict, easilyallow violence to erupt through widening faults of eth-nic, class, and religious divisions. An end to violencemeans the acceptance on all sides of some kind of politi-cal order and, ultimately, the appearance of some kindof framework for a "civil society," a culture of the every-day in which political violence is not a moral alterna-tive.

In the southern Philippines, violence, in varying se-verity, has been a pervasive context for even the mostmundane activities over at least the last 400 years. Likethe climate, it is a prevailing condition to which indi-viduals and groups must adapt. One may stoically sub-mit to it, desperately flee it, or defiantly adopt it. Butone cannot ignore it.23 A violent event commands atten-tion. It cries out for explanation. It demands either con-demnation or justification. Its interpretation requiresattributions of the identity of perpetrators and victimsin a context of multiple, fiercely competing politicalagendas that foster flexible, ambiguous, imaginativeconstructions of what happened. And the assignmentsof identity that result are not idle games. They have fatalconsequences.

During the course of southern Philippine history,ethnic, religious, political, modernistic, and religionis-tic strata of identity formation, together with outlawoutcroppings in each stratum, shape the fault lines of di-visiveness along which violent conflict threatens toerupt. Political violence seizes on fault lines of identityconstruction to define and promote itself. But the faultlines do not cause the quakes. What causes acts of vio-lence to occur? The unleashed passions of individuals?The machinations of evil villains (thanks to AdolphHitler, a notion not easily dismissed)? The temptationsof fanatical, self-righteous ideologies, be they national-ist, religious, racist, or anarchist? The hidden hegemonyof cultural power? The not-so-hidden power of the po-litical state? The easy availability, right in one's hand, ofweapons with incredible destructive effect? The oppor-tunity, thanks to the reach of the modern media, to dis-play one's violence (if horrific enough) to the entireworld? Since political violence is a recurrent phenome-non in all sorts of polities around the world and at allstages of economic development, it would seem to be apromising candidate for understanding within a generalsociopolitical theory. Political scientists and sociolo-gists have produced a number of treatises on violence,each of which seems to bemoan the lack of a generaltheory of violence.24 The theories proposed are quitediverse in their approaches and assumptions, but for an-

thropologists what they seem to share is a tendency toignore the meaning of violence to the participants:victims, perpetrators, onlookers, and commentators.These meanings are constructed by participants' inter-pretations and experiences of particular events. Howdo they, in all their antagonistic diversity, decide whodid it, to whom, and with what motive? These issues, notHarry Eckstein's (1992:334) vain search for the "under-lying determinants," are what need attention. And theyare issues to which anthropologists, immersed in thecomplexities, the passions, and the sorrows of particu-lar cases, can make a contribution. Ultimately, perhapswe can come to an understanding of the paradox withwhich we began: how can such nice people, at times, dosuch horrible things?

Several decades ago Clifford Geertz made his nowfamous appeal for "thick description," produced by theinvestigator's interpretive skills, as the goal of a properethnography. The force behind Geertz's appeal lies inthe reality of how people do things in the conduct oftheir lives and in the explanation of their experience: al-ways thickly garnished and embellished to make a dra-matic story, an effective argument, a moving complaint,a funny joke, or a memorable event. But thickness ineveryday accounts, as well as in professional ethnogra-phies, can cover over the unremarkable but hegemonicdetails of everyday life and the basic structural regulari-ties of history's longue duree. For the participant andthe investigator alike, much of what is going on in theproduction of social and cultural worlds may be hidden.As the ethnomethodologists were insisting way back inpre-Geertzian times, "interpretation" is not only amethod of the investigator but also the proper object ofinvestigation. It is in the everyday repetitive applicationof interpretative procedures by ordinary people advanc-ing pressing agendas, in the face of deadly indifference,and within constraining contexts of prevailing violencethat results in the proliferation of contested identitiesamong those who most need unity. In a world where oneis continually redefined as nobody, one can only keeptrying to be somebody.

Notes

Acknowledgments. I am indebted first of all to my oldYakan friends who welcomed me back to Basilan with theirindefatigable spirit and humor after a long and, for them,horrendously violent hiatus. One old friend, especially, whohas become an accomplished master of military-checkpoint-interaction ritual (a topic itself worthy of a paper), made itpossible for me to get in and out of Basilan on a number ofoccasions. Jayoung Park, currently doing doctoral researchin Jolo, has kept me up to date on events from the Tausugperspective. Readers of earlier drafts, notably Joanne Coury,Robert Knox Dentan, Michael Herzfeld, Ray McDermott, and


Keith Otterbein, have made helpful suggestions and correc-tions.

1. Herzfeld 1993:173 paraphrases one of Leach's argu-ments. Leach summarizes his own argument with somewhatless felicitous wording: "killing is a classifying operation"(Leach 1965:175). I am grateful to Keith Otterbein, who hashimself had occasion to cite this quotation (Otterbein1974:931); for supplying the Leach reference.

2. Both the difficulty and the sensitivity are apparent inFeldman's (1991) impressive ethnography (and in reactionsto it) of violence in Northern Ireland.

3. Comaroff (1996) provides an important theoreticaltreatment of these issues in his recent discussion of "thepolitics of difference."

4. Combes 1897; Forrest 1779; Montero y Vidal 1888; War-ren 1981.

5. There is a Muslim grave in Jolo dated A.H. 710 (AD. 1310)(Majul 1963:xii). The standard works on the introduction ofIslam to the Philippines, based on local traditions and docu-ments, are Saleeby 1905 and 1908. For evidence of the eco-nomic and social complexity of Island Southeast Asia at thetime of the spread of Islam, see Reid 1993.

6. Though not a conventional practice and one whose po-litical correctness may be suspect, it is nevertheless conven-ient to use "Samalan" as a purely linguistic label for a set ofclosely related languages, with no implications for the cul-tural identities assumed by or assigned to speakers of thoselanguages.

7. Most, but not all, of those labeled "Samal" by the Tausug(and traditionally by anthropologists) prefer to call them-selves "Sama," the final / having become a symbol of imposed(versus embraced) identity (Blanchetti-Reville 1993; Co-juangco 1993; Geoghegan 1975; Horvatich 1993). The name"Tausug" (tausug) is relatively recent in the literature and,though understood, is not commonly used locally in ordinaryreference to the language or the identity. Locally, the termssu(l)ug (Tausug) or su(i)uk (Samalan) name the language,the people, and the island of Jolo. The Spanish, in borrowingand spelling the term; dropped the final letter, retained themedial I (often dropped locally in pronunciation), and appliedit to the whole archipelago. In spelling the name of the islandproper, they used an initial j and then pronounced it as asibilant in Spanish. For some reason they here spelled /u/ aso. (In Tausug, but not in Samalan languages, there is nocontrast between [u] and [o].) For added measure, perhaps intribute to the discarded terminal consonant, they accentedthe final vowel. When the pronunciation of j changed to avelar spirant in Spanish, the new pronunciation, a simple [h]in the Philippines, made possible a distinction between theisland [holo] and the archipelago [sulu], a distinction main-tained in Philippine English usage. In Spanish accounts, theTausug people and their language were generally called"Joloano," a label still common among local Christians. Suchaccidents of linguistic change and orthographic practice in acolonial language produce distinctive ethnonyms and topo-nyms that mark out and put in place enemies and allies.

8. Bentley 1981; Frake 1980:311-332; Pallesen 1985.9. Sather (1971:62) has proposed that it was in fact the

peoples subordinate to the Tausug who, in an effort towardempowerment, first embraced Islam. Whatever the sequence

of events, the Tausug now definitely consider themselves theprimary upholders of the faith in Sulu.

10. These central Mindanao peoples are known in the lit-erature as Maranao, Magindanao, and Ilanun, depending onwhether their locus is the upland lake area of Lanao, theriverine plain of Cotabato, or the maritime coasts of centralMindanao and eastern Zamboanga. Similar distinctions havebeen made locally, but to the peoples of Sulu their centralMindanao rivals are all "Ilanun." All of these terms (Lanao,Maranao, Magindanao, Ilanun, and Mindanao) are West-ern-language versions of variants and derivatives of the com-mon local form lanaw-danaw-ranaw (lake), referring tocentral Mindanao's large upland lake or, according to some,its often-flooded river basins.

11. For a map of the world displaying this line, seeMcEvedy 1972:18-19.

12. Evidence of the lack of use of Malay in the Philippinesduring Spanish colonial times is presented in Frake1980:317-318. Further sources on the colonial period in theMuslim Philippines are Blair and Robertson 1903-09, Co-juangco 1993, Forrest 1779, Geoghegan 1975, and Warren1981.

13. Among Christians, and in some Muslim-Christian inter-action, Zamboangueno (the Spanish creole) has practical useas a lingua franca, but it is accorded very little prestige evenby native speakers, an evaluation stemming from colonialattitudes toward this "corrupt Spanish."

14. See Horvatich's (1993, 1994) accounts of the complexi-ties of these alternatives among the Sama, Muslims of thewestern Sulu archipelago.

15. Of course I cannot report these developments withoutframing them within my own interpretations, which are se-verely weakened by limitations of my (or anyone else's) first-hand knowledge of all the relevant events, by weaknesses ofmy narrative skill, by the thinness of my allotted journalspace, and by my undoubtedly already too-generous estima-tion of readers' patience for obscure detail. On the otherhand, my interpretations are minimally warped by any agendato favor any particular side in conflicts reported. For moredetails and varying interpretations, see Casino 1987, Cayong-cat 1986, Che Man 1990, George 1980, McKenna 1993, andNoble 1987.

16. See Lande's (1965) description of Philippine politics,which holds true today since the old system has prevailedover both the National People's Army's revolutionary agendaand Marcos's fumbling attempts at military dictatorship. Thedescription is updated by the papers in Lande's (1987) editedcollection.

17. Compare Eckstein's (1992:304-342) remarks on theimportance of external support to the relative success ofcompeting successionist movements.

18. The information from Jolo was provided by my col-league Jayoung Park.

19. See Horowitz 1985:238-239 on the critical role of elitesin successionist movements among what he, in his develop-mentalist framework, terms "backward groups in backwardregions."

20. I use the term outlaw here because the distinctionbetween bandit and pirate, based on whether one finds terrafirma or a wobbly deck under one's feet, is not reflected in


local languages. Also, outlaw, being a bit antiquated, seemssomehow less pejorative.

21. This poster was first brought to my attention long agoin the form of a gift from my colleague Karl Heider. Thefine-print text at the bottom notes that "it is suitable forframing and preserving for permanent display in dayrooms,clubs, and offices of the Army." Then in larger and bolderprint comes a restriction: "Distribution will not be made tounits in Korea." It would be interesting to uncover the militarylogic (or fear?) that lay behind this prohibition.

22. For the terms of the agreement, see Economist 1996.23. The dilemmas of adaptation to pervasive violence in

Ireland, Guatemala, and Palestine are vividly described, re-spectively, by Aretxaga (1993), Warren (1993), and Wood(1993).

24. Examples go back to Leiden and Schmitt 1968 andcontinue with Horowitz 1985, Eckstein 1992:204-342, andKeane 1996.

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Documents

Abu Sayyaf: Displays of Violence and the Proliferation of Contested Identities among Philippine Muslims