Travel advisories during Holy Week? Hmmm!

We are now in the midst of Holy Week where the Catholic faithful will troop to their respective provinces to reunite with their families and attend the Holy Week Catholic rites, which for many centuries have become part of Filipino culture and tradition. Of course the less devout Filipino uses the Holy Week holidays as his vacation from daily work. But for most Catholics, Holy Week is a welcome tradition to nourish our souls and renew our souls to God our creator.

While we expect our airports, seaports and bus terminals (I also got a report that the other day in MCIA, even if the planes have arrived at the terminal, it still took 30 minutes for the plane to get into its parking slot! What’s wrong here?) to be filled to overflowing, it is unfortunate that the US embassy in Manila suddenly issued a travel advisory for Central Visayas citing an “unsubstantiated yet credible” information that a terror group may attempt to conduct kidnappings in Central Visayas, notably Cebu or Bohol. Although we haven’t heard anything of this sort from the Philippine National Police (PNP), perhaps this advisory could be the result of what we got in the news a couple of days ago.

Last week, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II together with Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente presented Kuwaiti national Husayn Al-Dhafiri and Syrian national Rahaf Zina, both ISIS members who were arrested last March 25 by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) at the Bonifacio Global City in Taguig. Sec. Aguirre citied intelligence reports that al-Dhafiri is a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and is also known as Warsh al-Kuwaiti and Abu Muslim al-Kuwaiti was allegedly involved in explosives manufacturing and in planning a terror attack against his home country Kuwait.

As for Zina, Sec. Aguirre said that she is the widow of Abu Jandal Al-Kuwaiti, a high ranking ISIS commander who was killed during an airstrike in December last year. The DOJ Secretary also pointed out that these two were arrested last March 25 and were only presented last week after a thorough investigation of their activities. They learned that the two have already travelled to Cebu and Davao for reasons we do not yet know.

But I would like to believe that the arrest of the two is a confirmation of that earlier report we got from the Philippine STAR last April 4 that the beleaguered members of ISIS of Syria and Iraq are planning to regroup and make the Southern Philippines as their new base. This news was in our national dailies a couple of days before the DOJ presented the two ISIS members who were arrested by the BI.

This case also reminds me of what happened on July 11, 2014 when Australian-born 29-year-old Musa Cerantonio, a Christian convert to Islam was captured in Cebu. His arrest was confirmed by my good friend, the Deputy Regional Director for Region I, Police Senior Superintendent Conrad Capa. Back then we learned that cerantonio was considered a “Person of Interest” who was using the social media to encourage young Muslims to join the Jihad in Syria and Iraq in the safety of Cebu.

I’m positive that these two ISIS members must have had some contacts with Musa Cerantonio. So is the US embassy Travel Advisory linked to the capture of the two ISIS members? It makes me wonder whatever happened to Musa Cerantonio? Is he still in detention in the Philippines or has he been repatriated to his native Australia? Abangan!

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The unexpected had finally happened when last week, Syrian planes bombed the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province with chemical weapons, killing 86 people, including 27 children. When the news of this heinous chemical bombing by Syria of its own people was exposed, the United Nations (UN) called for an emergency meeting of the UN National Security Council, but no response was heard as expected of the UN.

Sixty-three hours after this chemical attack, US Pres. Donald Trump held a National Security Council meeting on board Air Force One and apparently shaken by the videos of children gasping for breath  he authorized the US military to launch a cruise missile attack against the Syrian Airbase which US intelligence sources say was  where the planes that bombed the Syrian village flew from. This is a departure from US policy during the presidency of Barack Obama who refused to act against Syrian President Bashir Assad, except to demand that he step down from power.

The latest from Pres. Trump was his order to reverse the course of the Carl Vinson Carrier Group, which was headed toward Australia, and move them to patrol the Korean Peninsula due to North Korea’s “Reckless, irresponsible” conduct of firing ballistic missiles. Are we seeing an escalation of hostilities under Pres. Trump? This remains to be seen! Abangan!

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