The town priest, Father Faulcon, answered. He’d come the moment he had heard one of his flock had been hurt and was in critical condition.
“She is Graciella Ortega, Mister Hernandez. We have sent somebody to tell her family, they live in the south of the town. They will be here soon. But what can they do?” The Priest’s distress was obvious. Hernandez looked confused.
“What the Father means is that the lady has very serious injuries that will require much care and attention. She has lost much blood that we will have to replace by transfusion. Her wound is deep and will require careful treatment if it is to heal properly. Also, it is certainly badly infected and will require some expensive medication. The family are not poor but this amount of treatment is far beyond their resources. And without it, well, its not good.”
Hernandez looked at the doctor and thought it through. Ah well, perhaps his successful evening had been part of a greater plan, and anyway, there was always next week. He dug into his pocket for his share of the money his girls had earned that evening and gave it to the Doctor. “Will that cover the treatment necessary?”
The Doctor took the money and raised his eyebrows. It wouldn’t but it was a very substantial part of it. Across the room Hernandez’s girls had been trying to make themselves inconspicuous. It was a hard job, their heavy makeup and alluring clothes had made their profession obvious and they’d been the subject of quite a few hostile looks. Hernandez’s Best Girl had spoken to them quietly and they’d been digging in their bags.
Now she came over with another roll of money, smaller than Hernandez’s gift, the girls had to live after all, but enough to make up the difference. “Father, can you make up a story about this money. I do not think the family will accept it from people like us, even for their mother.”
Father Faulcon mentally agreed. The family would throw the money down the drain rather than accept help from the town pimp and five of his whores. But, Graciella needed the medical treatment the money would buy and the offer was sincere no matter who it came from. There was also a parable about a good Samaritan to keep in mind.
“Mister Hernandez, I believe the Knights of Columbus have established a fund to help provide treatment for those who have been the victims of vicious crimes like this. Or, they have, just this moment established such a fund, and I intend to see that they will support it generously. Mister Hernandez, ladies, the Ortega family will not know what you did tonight but remember God knows and God does not forget such things.”
Magasay Palace, Manila, Philippines
“The question is, just how closely is Abu Sayaaf linked to the Caliphate? Is it linked at all? Or is it a rival?” Prime Minister Joe Frye leaned back in his seat. With increasing numbers of Australian troops arriving in Mindanao, he needed to understand exactly what he was committing his troops to. And for how long.
“Prime Minister, the answer to all your questions is ‘Perhaps’.” Frye grimaced and The Ambassador smiled sympathetically. “That isn’t very helpful I know so let me explain further. Abu Sayaaf is just the local branch of a larger organization, Jamyaat lslamiyah. This is a fundamentalist organization that shares much in common with the Caliphate. Both look back to the days, centuries ago, when Islam dominated the area and its warriors swept all before them. The Caliphate seeks to revive the great days of an Islamic empire based on Baghdad, Jamyaat Islamiyah also seeks to revive those days but the state they wish to resuscitate is the Empire based on Malacca. That one was destroyed by Dutch traders and the troops of the Siamese Empire.
“So Prime Minister, in the short term, both the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah have the same aim and the same enemies. Their aim is to rebuild the ancient power they once held and to attack those who stand in their way. Even in the medium term, their aims, their methods and their objectives are the same. But in the long term, they are opposed. The Caliphate sees its Fundamentalist Islamic State being primarily a Middle Eastern one, owing its final allegiance to Baghdad, Jamyaat Islamiyah sees its state as a South Eastern Asian one, owing its final allegiance to Djakarta.
“There is one fundamental difference between the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah. The Caliphate is rich, it has oil revenues that bankroll its every move. Jamyaat Islamiyah does not. It is poor, it has few resources of its own and even the ones it can access are erratic and difficult to manage. Because, in the short and medium term, the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah share so much, the Caliphate is financing their operations. That won’t last, in the end the two groups will come into conflict, exactly when depends on how successful they both are. The more their success, the sooner war between them will occur.
“For that reason, Jamyaat Islamiyah has to establish its own financial independence. Without access to resources or to legal trading, they have resorted to criminal actions. They are behind the outbreak of piracy that has taken place in these waters, they are behind kidnapping and robberies here and in Malaya, they are behind bank fraud back home and in Singapore. In Mindanao itself we are seeing the start of a widespread and deeply rooted extortion racket, preying on families who have members working or living abroad. These criminal enterprises are Jamyaat Islamiyah’s future. Without them, they have no long term prospects.”
Sir Martyn Sharpe leaned forward. His left arm was aching unbearably and he had cramp in his back again. It as time to retire, more than time. If he could just see this crisis out, he could do so. Sadly, he thought, he’d said that about the previous crisis and the one before that. “Madam Ambassador” the formality felt strange talking to somebody who had become a firm friend over the years but he didn’t feel comfortable with any other form of address.
“If I understand you correctly, what we are treating as a single conflict is, in reality, two linked but quite distinct wars. The conflict we face along our north west frontier is ideologically and religiously linked to that we face in South East Asia but, defeating one of these threats will not implicitly mean the defeat of the other. We have to address both if we are to achieve long-term success.”
“That is perfectly correct Sir Martyn. We cannot afford to ignore or neglect either situation. The recent takeover of Egypt by the Caliphate has focused attention on their part of this conflict but we cannot allow it to absorb all our attention. If I may make a medical analogy, we have a patient suffering from appendicitis and cancer. We must treat the appendicitis now or the patient will die, but if we ignore the cancer the effort spent of treating the appendicitis will be wasted.
“It is my recommendation that we give priority to securing and containing the situation along the north west frontier. That is largely a military matter, we can push and push hard there. We have superiority in technology if not numbers and that runs for us. Here in the Philippines and at sea, we strike at the criminal enterprises of Jamyaat Islamiyah and cut them off from their source of non-Caliphate funding. Prime Minister Frye, I urge the Australian troops now arriving in Mindanao to treat the Jamyaat Islamiyah terrorists as gangs of criminal bandits and hunt them down accordingly.
“We have made a bad mistake in Mindanao and one for which I am responsible. We have treated the conflict down there as an insurgency and applied our counter-insurgency strategies to it. We failed to see they were inappropriate to what was happening and continued with those inappropriate strategies too long. We sought to win over those who could not be won over and attempted to conciliate the irreconcilable.
“Instead, we should hunt down and kill the bandits. Muslim commandments dictate that an observant Muslim must support other Muslims who are in conflict with unbelievers, even if the Muslim is in the wrong. That means we cannot separate the local population from the terrorists; their religious requirements make such policies futile. We have to eliminate the terrorist groups so that the requirement to support them is no longer of any consequence. The religious demand is to support fellow-Muslims. This can have a variety of meanings, ranging from joining in their efforts to simply not aiding their enemies. The more effectively we can eliminate the terrorist groups, the more likely it is that we can persuade people to adopt the least hostile of the possible interpretations. Of course, representing them as bandits and criminals who prey on everybody regardless of religion will not be a bad thing.