What's gong on in the Philippines?

[LuxuryDrinks]

This post may be from a point of ignorance, but I'm trying to educate myself (and 'speaking' online is sometimes more informative than an article on Google...)

I've just seen a report about all the fighting. I knew something happened a while back, but am horrified to see the war (?) that's raging now.

Is there a background to this or has it just escalated?

This is horrific. I saw the special report on sky news today and was also ignorant.

Yes, there is a background to do with extremists taking over part of the country. I read a report a while back.

It's the very southern tip if I remember rightly - I went travelling in the Philippines about 10 years ago and even then the home office advice was to avoid that part of the country.

I used to live there. It's Mindanao island. The Philippines is overwhelmingly Catholic but there is a Muslim contingent in Mindanao and islamic extremist forces (Abu Sayyaf for eg) have operated there for years. FO advice has been against travel there for a very long time. It's currently under martial law and the extremist problem has been exponentially worse as ISIS is becoming more desperate after defeats elsewhere e.g. Mosul and Maute rebels take up the cause and foreign extremists try to to enter the country probably to attempt establishing a caliphate there. Security has been upped to try to stop foreign extremists entering the country.

It's so sad.

As it happens, I'm just reading an article from last year, so thought I'd share if, if you're interested:

When a Populist Demagogue Takes Power
By Adrian Chen

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/when-a-populist-demagogue-takes-power