THERE is an ongoing cat and mouse game taking place in the Central Visayas island of Bohol. Since news broke out of the arrival of the 11 Abu Sayyaf bandits to the island famous to foreign tourists for its pristine beaches and five-star resorts and attractions, which was followed immediately by an armed encounter in the town of Inabanga, Bohol between the military and the bandits last April 11, the Northern Mindanao and Central Visayas regions have placed on alert.
Three bandits were killed in that initial encounter including notorious Abu Sayyaf leader Muammar Askali or Abu Rami and an elderly couple caught in the crossfire according to news reports together with three government troops.
Since this initial encounter, government forces have been on the hunt for the remaining members who managed to escape and fled to other areas within the island. Last Saturday, April 22, a new encounter broke out in the neighboring town of Clarin, 17 kilometers away from Inabanga and just 52 kilometers away from Tagbilaran City, the provincial capital. This time an alleged Balik Islam Bol-Anon and native of Inabanga, but now a newly-recruited sub-leader of the notorious kidnap-for-ransom group, was killed together with two other bandits by government troops.
News report reveal that Joselito Melloria was just the son of a lowly farmer from Barangay Napo, Inabanga, but in 2005, he married the daughter of an Abu Sayyaf group leader from Zamboanga del Sur. This marriage became the pathway to his radicalization if the military intelligence reports are to be believed. He worked for a time in Cavite in 2007 but became an OFW in Saudi Arabia from 2013 and 2014. Upon his return to the country in 2015, he supposedly touched base with radical groups in Mindanao and became assigned as the new leader of the Anzar Kalifa with the new moniker Abu Alih. The attempt to land and launch a kidnap-for-ransom operation in Inabanga, Bohol, his hometown, was supposedly his test mission as an emergent leader of the new and enlarged notorious bandit group aligned with the IS (Islamic State)terror movement.
Melloria is already an interesting character in the unfolding narrative of what appears to be a new script regarding the pivot of the Abu Sayyaf to the Central Visayas region. But the plot thickens considerably with the arrest of a police official who was nabbed at a police checkpoint in Barangay Bacani, Clarin, the area where the bandits have been hiding, on the same day that the recent armed encounter broke out.
Police Superintendent Maria Christina Nobleza, the Deputy Regional Director of the Davao Regional Office’s Crime Laboratory was nabbed with a certain Reenor Lou Dungon, a known bomb expert, allegedly involved in the Maxandrea Hotel bombing in Cagayan de Oro City last 2012 where two civilians died. Caught in their possession were food supplies, snorkeling gear, first aid kits, and clothes.
Arresting police suspected that the two were in the area to spirit out the bandits hiding in a cave after the police official threw out a cellphone with an incriminating message while they were being accosted.
The involvement of a high-ranking female police official in an attempt to free the cornered bandits only adds credence to floating theories that Melloria may have been a military intelligence asset, who was ultimately silenced.
Melloria’s supposed process towards radicalization to become the leader of a new Islamic State-affiliated group, Anzar Kalifa, is far too fantastic and clean that the story warrants serious vetting. It is tragic but not the first time for a dead man to be set-up ironically to tell tales.
Melloria may just be that unprotesting character useful in solidifying public opinion on the presence of terror in the Central Visayas region.
But what really indicates the play of sinister hands in this unfolding game of the generals is the resuscitation of the bogey of “Anzar Kalifa.”
Years ago, in 2013, they had another name for this group, “KIM” or Khilafa Islamiya Mindanao, a group they labeled to be the behind the deadly bombing in Limketkai’s Rosario Arcada that killed six. This same group was supposedly behind the Maxandrea bombing a year earlier where the recent suspect Reenor Lou Dungon arrested in Clarin, Bohol last Sunday was also allegedly involved. Remember that the spectre of terror and bombings in 2013 in Cagayan de Oro stole the headlines from the brewing pork barrel scandal of the Pnoy administration.
Something is being cooked by some quarters and the plot thickens so to speak. And the stew has been thickening to a degree approaching incredulity. There seems to be a concerted effort to place in the public’s mindset the presence of the Abu Sayyaf and allied radical Islam groups in the Central Visayas region no matter what the cost.
Before more civilians are victimized as collateral damage in this unfolding charade, we should always ask: who benefits from sowing this kind of public fear at this time and why?