$90-M Aid Project Given By Australian Government

Australia is pressing on with a $90m aid project to educate Muslim children in war-torn parts of the southern Philippines, even though the money will head straight into the turf of the region’s worst terror group.

The money will be directed to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, home to the Abu Sayyaf Group, which has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.

The Jihadist terror group kidnaps foreign nationals, executing them if huge ransoms are not paid.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade calls it a nine year “peace-building project” between rebel groups and the Philippines government to educate children studying at fundamentalist madrasah, or Islamic schools.

DFAT has identified the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, currently in stop-start peace talks after decades of war, as key to the program’s success, hoping it will prove constructive participants. But Abu Sayyaf is not a player in the talks and runs riot across the Mindanao area, which DFAT has declared a total no-go zone for Australian travellers.

DFAT told News Corp that its previous aid efforts in Mindanao had “resulted in as many as 76,000 children now being able to attend school who previously had no access to education.”

Earlier programs mainly assisted older kids with vocational training to hopefully divert them from taking up with terrorist or separatist armies.

This time, the funds will target younger children in madrasah, or madaris (Islamic schools).

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The program will deliver a “conflict-sensitive basic education curriculum” from kindergarten to Grade 3; and try to improve the quality of Muslim teachers by turning them into “peace builders”.

But peace is fleeting in the autonomous Muslim region.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte — who comes from the Mindanao city of Davao, where a market was bombed in September, killing 14 — last month declared the “lawless” region under a state of emergency.

He identified a recent spate of “abductions, hostage-takings and murder of innocent civilians, bombing of power transmission facilities, highway robberies and extortions, attacks on military outposts, assassinations of media people and mass jailbreaks”.

With Abu Sayyaf’s switch to ISIS, and fears it will shelter jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq, it is hard to picture this region as a place of positive education outcomes.

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The project, “Education Pathways to Peace in Conflict-Affected Areas of Mindanao”, due to start in 2017, will require contractors to budget for armed security — paid for by Australia.

DFAT rejected concerns raised by News Corp that schools taking Australian money could become targets of Abu Sayyaf.

Canadian Robert Hall is the latest westerner (and second Canadian) executed by Abu Sayyaf. He was beheaded in June after his government refused to pay a ransom. Abu Sayyaf posted the video online.

Australian Warren Rodwell was released in 2013 after his family paid a ransom. He was held for two years on Mindanao.

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This still image from a video obtained by AFP in 2012 courtesy of the SITE Monitoring Service shows Australian man Warren Rodwell at an unknown location in the Philippines during his capture. (Pic: AFP)
Duterte has ordered an all-out assault on the insurgents. His predecessors did the same, with huge losses. And it continues, with 15 soldiers killed in an Abu Sayyaf ambush on the island of Sulu in August.

As part of Duterte’s anti-American swing and his new friendship with China, he no longer wants US special forces advising his military on tactics to rout the terror group.

This, with his startling attack on “son of a whore” US President Barack Obama, and calling an end to joint military exercises, has led to uncertainty for America, which has long considered the Philippines a useful friend.

Australia, close ally of the US, has 200 companies operating in the Philippines and constant two-way traffic between both countries due to tourism, trade and thousands of marriages.

Foreign aid is presented as a form of philanthropy, but it is also about buying access and influence.

Australia is watching closely to see whether Duterte views it and America as identical brands.

A DFAT spokesman told News Corp: “We remain committed to improving development outcomes in Mindanao where the incidence of poverty is the highest in the Philippines.”

Guidelines for prospective tenderers state the funds not be used “to support institutions and/or individuals that promote a radical view of Islam”.

The package is similar to a $35m initiative by former Foreign Affairs minister Alexander Downer, who after Bali 2002 wanted to broaden the minds of children in Indonesian madrasah, or the “pesantren” where kids board and can be subject to 24/7 indoctrination.

Such places — including terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir’s school at Ngruki, central Java, and the al Islam boarding school in east Java — produced students directly connected to the Bali bombings. Downer’s program received mixed reviews.

Source: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/is-this-really-a-wise-investment/news-story/4950c2f68784f8190e2de6fb98d7c383