The deaths of Isnilon Hapilon and Omar Maute marked the end of the war in Marawi City, with President Rodrigo Duterte prematurely declaring the liberation of the city from the hands of the ISIS-backed terror group. Based on history, every death of a terror leader gives rise to a new group, or a continuation of the said terrorist actions – a foreboding vengeance the administration has failed to recognize. 

The death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan didn’t end global terrorism; in fact, it gave rise to ISIS, which shares the same goals of establishing a caliphate and sparking a global Islamic revolution.

However, what I have observed is these groups are using religion as a blanket to hide their true motives, war business.

Why is there still terrorism? Is it a state-sponsored militia? Why are these terror leaders always killed and never captured alive and interrogated?

Sun-Tzu, author of “The Art of War,” believed “strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter;” meaning, the death of a prominent leader will provide avenues of expansion.

The terror group Abu Sayyaf was founded in 1991 by Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who died in 1998. He was succeeded by his brother Khadaffy Janjalani, who implemented the strategy of abduction and demanding ransoms. He was later killed on September 4, 2006 and the same process repeats itself – as a terror leader is killed, the war continues.

Even though the president emphasized the problem stemming from education and poverty, for me, it is a misnomer to say the cause of terrorism is religion – these insurgents attack Muslims as well.

Based on my analysis, terrorist use religion to create a hostile environment for Muslims, even being behind the global phenomenon of “Islamophobia;” it encourages social conditioning of the public to believe Muslims are the purveyors of havoc in society. That discrimination, in turn, fuels anger among Muslims against non-Muslims, which is applied to the younger generation as they are more impressionable.

Their battle cry, besides establishing a caliphate, is destabilization.

They are not pursuing an Islamic agenda, but an economic and political one.

In addition, war is business. Fear is a necessity in order to gain control. Terrorism is not about religion, but business.

If nations unite, terrorism can easy be crushed. Terrorism is like the mythical Hydra of Greek and Roman mythology, whenever you cut off one of its heads, it regenerates and continues to grow. As with terrorism, we kill the leaders and their groups continue to grow.

We need herculean strength to combat this problem, however, the first thing we must do is eliminate terrorism and extremism in our backyard by providing our Muslim brothers the opportunity to modernize, break the stranglehold of the old families, and teach them about genuine democracy. These tools will allow them to change and develop without the necessity of taking arms./WDJ