Signs of a Nascent Islamic State Province in the Philippines

In last week’s issue of al-Naba’, the Islamic State’s weekly newspaper, an articleclaimed that “soldiers of the Caliphate” in the southern Philippines had killed around 300 members of the “Crusader Filipino Army” in the last few weeks, and forced around 2,000 others to retreat. It went on to report that a number of new jihadist brigades in the archipelago state had joined their brethren in pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph. This came on the back of a video that was released two days earlier by the organization’s Barakah Province Media Office in Syria, in which Filipino immigrants – children and adults – were filmed burning their passports alongside fighters from Malaysia and Indonesia.

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Image courtesy of War on the Rocks