Counterinsurgency missions on Sulu have been held up as a model in the battle against militants because a combination of aid programs and military force has brought relative peace to the island. But insurgents are staging a comeback, and clashes have escalated over the last year.
With kidnappings and decapitations fairly common, tourists rarely risk coming anymore. Yet anger and suspicion toward Philippine forces and U.S. advisors also run deep here, even though, Rafael said, U.S. aid for projects including new schools, roads and drainage is expected to total more than $12 million over the next 18 months.
Ipil is a small village on Sulu's southern shore, accessible only by water. Most of its people earn a meager living farming seaweed that yields agar, used as a laxative as well as a gelatin substitute and thickener for soups, desserts and pharmaceuticals.
The Philippine military says a dense network of seaside mangroves here are prime Abu Sayyaf turf and that the assault, which included U.S.-trained Special Forces, was an effort to rout them. Since the troops didn't identify themselves, Wahid, a former rebel who joined the army as part of a 1996 peace pact, feared they were bandits or insurgents, relatives said.
He drew his licensed .45-caliber handgun from its holster and went out on the rickety bamboo porch, ready to defend his family, which insists he did not fire it. When he saw fellow soldiers, he put the gun down, raised his hands and shouted, "Papa Alpha, Papa Alpha," signaling he was in the Philippine army, said his wife, Rawina Lahim Wahid, 24.
Within minutes, Wahid, his wife and parents, and 9-year-old nephew, Nurjimer Lahim, were ordered to lie face-down on the white sand, according to his widow and parents, Udam Lahim, 70, and Andiyang Lahing, 65.
Soldiers tied Wahid's hands behind his back. Then one leveled an assault rifle at his head, and pulled the trigger, his widow said. The weapon jammed. The soldier recocked the M-16 and fired a bullet into Wahid's head, said family members, who were later released.
On the other side of the small, southern Philippine village, 17 members of three families were fleeing the gunfire in a long canoe. They headed straight toward a blocking unit of Philippine soldiers on the edge of a thick mangrove swamp.
From a few yards away, the soldiers opened fire, and kept shooting, ignoring the screaming villagers' pleas, witnesses said.
