Crisis Puts ‘Forgotten Island’ on Map

JOLO, Philippines —  Filipinos call Jolo the forgotten island. It is no more than a jungle-covered speck at the nation’s southern tip. Even the mayor of the town of Jolo finds life so dull here that he lives in Zamboanga, three hours northeast by boat on another island.

There hasn’t been much of a foreign presence on Jolo since the Peace Corps pulled out in 1974, and so few tourists come that the occasional backpacker who shows up on the dawn ferry draws curious stares. “There’s an afternoon boat back to Zamboanga, so they only stay a few hours,” noted Yacub Ismi, a police officer.

Except for ransom kidnappings--which are so common that they are ignored by the national media--Jolo island never gets in the news unless something terrible happens, such as in 1876, when colonial Spaniards leveled the town to punish Muslim separatists, and in 1974, when the Manila government did the same thing for the same reason.

So the fact that the town’s only hotel--the Peacekeepers Inn, located inside the police compound--has had a “no vacancy” sign up for two weeks is not a good omen. The occupants are journalists, from as far away as Munich, Germany, and Johannesburg, South Arica.

What has brought them here is the kidnapping of 21 people--believed to be a South African couple, a German family of three, two Finnish men, two French nationals, a Lebanese woman, 10 Malaysians and a Filipina--who are being held in the rain-soaked hills 11 miles southeast of here.

They were snatched April 23 from the Malaysian resort island of Sipadan by Abu Sayyaf, a group that is in the kidnapping business to further its announced aim of creating a “pure” Islamic state in the southern Philippines. The group is so discredited that even Luis Jalandoni, a prominent member of the Communist Party in Manila, on Monday dismissed Abu Sayyaf members as “nuts.”

There was a flurry of diplomatic activity Tuesday as Philippine negotiators tried to formulate a strategy for winning the hostages’ freedom. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, flew into Manila to meet with President Joseph Estrada, and Libya’s former ambassador to the Philippines, Rajab Azzarouk, arrived in Jolo. Azzarouk has negotiated freedom for several hostages in the Philippines, including the 1993 release of Charles Walton, an American linguistics scholar.

Estrada is cool to the involvement of outside negotiators, saying they would serve to heighten Abu Sayyaf’s profile. Estrada and other Philippine officials believe that the immediate priority is to gain the release of 57-year-old Renate Wallert of Gottingen, Germany, who has a heart ailment. She is being held with her husband, Werner, and son, Marc.

In the town of Jolo, which has little to offer but an attractive view of the sea, the international incident seems to have hardly affected life. Shops and schools are open, the narrow, little streets are packed with trikes--bicycle taxis with sidecars--and the sidewalk cafes are full of idle men sipping locally grown coffee.

“Oh, the trouble’s up in the mountains, not here,” said Flora Aamah, 55, who runs a coffee shop. “I was here in ’74 when the government destroyed the town with bombers and navy ships. Now, that was trouble! We rebuilt the coffee shop right here, where the last one stood. Those were bad days, but things are quite normal now.”

Normal? There’s a six-hour nighttime curfew, and the airport is closed to commercial traffic because pilots fear being hijacked or shot down. Visitors are required by the government to retain the services of two armed guards to go anywhere in town--many local kidnappers are freelancers who sell their victims to Abu Sayyaf--and there is probably not an adult among the island’s residents who doesn’t own a gun.

“Having only one gun is abnormal,” said Estino Ayyubie, a major general in an Islamic separatist guerrilla force that fought the government until a peace treaty was signed in 1996. “Most people have two or three. It is like an American family with their cars. If you have only one car in your garage, you are not keeping up with your neighbors.”

The peace agreement allowed the rebels to keep their weapons at home after registering them. To Jolo’s residents, almost all of whom are Muslim, the gun remains a symbol of their resistance to outside authority and a reminder that, as Ayyubie put it, “they tried to finish us off in 1876 and 1974, and we’re still here.”