Growing al Qaeda threat in the Phillipeans

Fox News:

Security experts see growing signs of a link between Al Qaeda (search) and home-grown terrorists in the Philippines, raising fears that attacks against the United States could be launched from a country that used to be a U.S. colony.

"The terrorist threat in the Philippines has gone to a high point, especially with the concentration of Al Qaeda morphed into a group called Jemaah Islamiyah (search)," said Gen. Avelino Razon, director of the Philippine National Police.

Intelligence reports indicate that longtime separatist groups that have been fighting the Filipino government for an independent Islamic state are hooking up with Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, Southeast Asia's version of Al Qaeda, which has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for a string of attacks in that region, including the 2002 Bali hotel bombing that killed 202 people, a blast at Jakarta's J.W. Marriott hotel the following year that killed 12 and the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta last September that killed 10.

One of the troubling aspects of this report is that the Phillipeans government has not shown much backbone in the fight. This is coupled with a constitutional prohibition against having allied forces (i.e. the US) on the ground to help them fight . At some point these people are going to ask themselves who they have the most to fear.

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