Marawi: How Violent Extremism Reached the Southern Philippines

Criselda Yabes, Independent Scholar

Research Grant, 2018

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My objective was to interview as many as possible of the key “players” involved in the battle of Marawi that took place between May and October 2017. That meant talking to military officers ranging from generals to sergeants; Muslim rebels who joined the pro-ISIS insurgency and later surrendered; hostages; and refugees. These  interviews enabled me to write a nonfiction book that tells the story of the historic battle from beginning to end—the forces and circumstances that led to it, and how the jihadis lost and died in the five-month siege after challenging government forces. 

The daily grind of the battle also showed the unit rivalries in the military and the lack of coherence in leadership

A combination of background research, visits on the ground, and mostly one-on-one interviews took more than eighteen months (of which six months, the most intensive, were made possible by the Harry Frank Guggenheim research grant).

Writing and fact-checking took about seven months, and the book, The Battle of Marawi, was eventually published in late August 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic. It was the first book that gave a full account of the battle, including chapters on the rebel leaders, who they were, why they did it, and the alliances they made with foreign terrorists to carry out their plan to take over the Islamic City of Marawi in the southern Philippines.

It gives answers to the pressing problems of the region of Muslim Mindanao, which has been beset with on-and-off rebellions since the 1970s and which had come to this: an extremely violent situation involving an ideology taken from abroad, enmeshed with the complexities of poverty, warlord governance, corruption, and clan feuds.

The daily grind of the battle also showed the unit rivalries in the military and the lack of coherence in leadership. All of these strands came out of the interviews, bringing to the fore the significance of an event that destroyed a symbolic city and that spoke of the region’s fate.