Bikers tour former Abu Sayyaf stronghold in Basilan

BASILAN, Philippines — Bikers on Sunday pedaled through mountain ranges that people used to fear because of their dangerous reputation. 

A concrete “peace highway” now cuts through the Sampinit Complex in the center of Basilan, a former enclave of the Abu Sayyaf and where it held 200 captives from 1994 to 2015. Many of the captives were beheaded for failure to pay ransom.

Bikers toured in columns over the highway that now straddles through the hills in the Sampinit Complex on Sunday in an event meant to show that the area is now under government control.

Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman said it was the roars of bulldozer engines that engineers used to open the route that forced the remnants of the Abu Sayyaf to abandon the Sampinit Complex, where at least 100 soldiers were killed in past attempts to recover the area from Abu Sayyaf control.

The construction of the new Basilan transcentral road, or peace highway, was a joint initiative of the provincial government and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, now replaced by the Bangamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Salliman said he is thankful to local officials in Lamitan City, whose business community stand to benefit from the transcentral road, for helping push the highway project forward.

Lamitan City is the central commercial hub of the island province.

The transcentral project, expected to be completed by June this year, costs more than P1 billion, funded out of the yearly infrastructure development budget of ARMM, now the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The highway connects Sampinit Complex to trading centers in the lowlands in Maluso and Sumisip towns and in Lamitan City.

Among the participants of the bike tour were officers of different Army units under the 104th Brigade and personnel of different municipal police offices, now under the Regional Police Office-BARMM.

Salliman said their main concern now is declaring the tropical rainforests in the Sampinit Complex a protected wildlife sanctuary.

From the forests there spring more than a dozen rivers flowing to farming communities downstream.

Chief Superintendent Graciano Mijares of the Police Regional Office-BARMM, said law enforcement around the Sampinit Complex is easy to carry out now that there is a highway where their patrol cars can easily get through.

“That biking event there was an indication that peace has set in,” Mijares said.

He said he has directed the Basilan provincial police office to focus on programs that can boost the restoration of normalcy in the former Abu Sayyaf bastion.