Sri Lanka Army assisting Phlippines to demolish Abu Sayyaf

(September 08, 2009 - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka Army Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe has made a presentation to the senior officials of the state and the Army of Philippines on the strategy Sri Lanka Army followed to demolish the Tamil rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) that ran a bloody separatist campaign for more than three decades in northern and eastern parts of the Indian Ocean island.

A Sinhala nationalist newspaper in Sri Lanka reported that Philippines has asked for the assistance of Sri Lanka Army to tackle the problem of Abu Sayyaf terrorism and the Army is willingly providing it.

The Abu Sayyaf Group, also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya is one of several militant Islamist separatist groups based in and around the southern islands of the Philippines, in Bangsamoro (Jolo, Basilan, and Mindanao) where for almost 30 years various Muslim groups have been engaged in an insurgency for a state, independent of the predominantly Catholic Philippines.