Over 100 years ago, U.S. forces battled savage Islamic warriors called the Moros in the Phillippines. Things haven't changed at all. Just one year ago, in May 2017, an armed group of pro-ISIS fighters, called the Islamic Maute, wearing black and carrying ISIS flags, overthrew Marawi City, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. They conducted jailbreaks, killed Christians, beheaded Catholic priests and police officers, and torched homes, schools and universities. Over 400,000 Christian residents fled. The Maute destroyed the city.
President Rodrigo Duterte, then on an official visit to Russia, cut his trip short and flew back to the Philippines. He immediately declared martial law across Mindanao, which is still in effect today. Muslims make up about 5 percent of the country’s 100 million people and most live in Philippines’s only Islamic city, Marawi. The siege was triggered when the military tried to arrest top ISIS leader Isnilon Hapilon.
The Maute declared the city a new caliphate of ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group. Initially, Duterte predicted the battle would be over within weeks. It is still going on. Now, Duterte has another concern. That the Islamic Moros will join forces with the remaining ISIS Maute terrorists for another war. Who are the Moros? We need to go back over 100 years for the rest of the story.
In the early 1900s, U.S. forces battled the Philippines' fiercely independent Islamic Moros. The Moros, a Malay Muslim warrior elite, numbered 300,000 persons and controlled Mindanao, the second largest of the Philippine Islands. They were seafarers, pirates and slave-holders. The Moro philosophy, "That he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can."
Their Christian neighbors on Mindanao counted only 65,000. They hated each other. Christians saw the Moros as cruel, cunning raiders, polygamists and slavers, whereas the Muslim Moros viewed the Christians primarily as land-thieves, bullies and cowards. Sound familiar?
Moro fighters included Amoks and Juramentado. An amok was a Moro who went berserk and tried to kill as many of the enemy as possible before meeting his own, expected death. Juramentados were religiously motivated by Islam and swore a formal oath before the proper Muslim authority to attack anybody considered to be a foe of Islam. Those fanatics were secure in their belief that they would be whisked to the Muslim paradise for their valorous self-sacrifice. The Moros as Muslims believed that one who takes the life of an infidel increases his own rewards in paradise. Spanish soldiers who attempted to subjugate the fanatical Muslim Moros were dragged into the jungle, tortured for hours over a slow fire, and castrated after the Moros sliced off his legs.
In 1898 the United States declared war on Spain. As a result, Spain agreed to sell the Philippines to the United States. The Moros expected independence after America defeated Spain in 1898. All a Moro wanted was to be left alone to rob, plunder and fight. Those who denied him these "rights" were his enemies, and the Moro knew how to deal with an enemy in only one way. If the Americans wanted to abolish slavery let them come and try. The Moro people resisted U.S. invasion of the island of Mindanao, Philippines, that the armed resistance to U.S. occupation was extended till 1913.
Amoks and Juramentados attacked with the Malay Kriss, a wavy-edged sword, in length halfway between a long dagger and a saber and easily disguised under their clothes. In addition, they were deadly with a blowgun and poison darts, and were quite good with their muzzleloading rifles. Moro warriors wore black trousers for fighting. They made their own weapons like the "Barong", a 16 inch long butcher's meat cleaver with a thick back and a razor thin cutting edge used to decapitate easily.
In the spring of 1902, the U.S. military command sent 40-year-old Captain John Pershing. He believed that the Moros were savages who respected nothing but force. John Pershing wrote of the Moros: "The only principle for which they fought was the right to pillage and murder without molestation from the government." The U.S. Army adopted the Colt .45 Model 1911 semiautomatic pistol after American soldiers found that the .38 caliber Long Colt and Smith and Wesson revolvers they had previously used were unable to stop the fierce Moro Warriors of the Southern Philippines who often appeared drugged for battle. Eyewitness accounts describe Moros continuing to kill American soldiers with their Barongs and Kriss after receiving multiple rounds from the .38 pistols and .30 caliber rifles.
The American position in the Philippines was not to destroy the Moros, but intended instead to suppress piracy, eliminate their slave trade, prevent intertribal war and bring the “natives” into the modern world. But piracy, slavery and fighting were as much a part of the Moro way of life as was Islam. Pershing left in 1903, but returned in 1909 as governor. He supported reforms but chafed at the persistent disorder. His solution was to disarm everyone.
In 1913, when the Moros challenged their enemies in the ultimate battle with 6,000 to 10,000 Moros, the Moros lost to superior U.S. weaponry, with at least 500 killed.
The Philippines did not gain independence until 1946, but by the 1930s the Philippine army was battling Moro rebels, and it still is today. The Islamic Moros never accepted rule from Manila. Powerfully armed and trained by wealthier Muslims, they clamorously demand self-rule. 300 years after the Spanish assaults and 100 years after the American efforts, the Moros are as resistant as ever.
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