This image, made from undated militant video, shows Canadians John Ridsdel, right, and Robert Hall. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday, April 25, 2016, in the southern Philippines belongs to Ridsdel, who was taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September, 2015. (Militant Video via AP Video)

The murderous thugs of Abu Sayyaf are a prime example of the unforeseen consequences of Saudi Arabian money financing and promoting Islamist fanaticism.

The southern Philippines-based group that killed kidnapped Canadian yachtsman John Ridsdel and is still holding another Canadian, Robert Hall, grew out of the largely Saudi-funded religious quest in the 1980s to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

For much of the last 25 years, Abu Sayyaf has been funded by Saudi religious charities, which aim to spread the regime’s Wahhabi brand of intolerant and violent Islam.

Most of the diplomatic efforts to free Ridsdel and Hall appear to have been conducted through the Philippine government. An obvious second route would be through the Saudi government. After all, both the new Liberal government in Ottawa and its Conservative predecessor maintain that selling $15 billion-worth of light armoured vehicles to Riyadh gives Canada leverage with the Saudis. But if any efforts have been made to get the Saudis to lean on the charities that have been funding Abu Sayyaf, they have not worked so far.

That said, pressure by the United States on Riyadh to curb its financing of Islamic terrorists has — coupled with the decapitation of al Qaida through the execution of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — slowed the flow of Saudi funds to Abu Sayyaf. That’s the main reason the group has turned more and more to banditry and hostage-taking to survive.

It was different in the 1980s when the U.S. administration was encouraging the Saudis to finance the international brigades of Muslims joining the Afghan mujahideen fighters in the war against the Soviet invaders.

One of the people who answered the call to jihad was a schoolteacher from Basilan, one of the islands in the predominantly Muslim region of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani was a perfect recruit. He had already gone down the path of self-radicalization by studying Islamic theology and Arabic in Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia before setting off to fight with the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

While in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Janjalani is believed to have met bin Laden — then, of course, a well-regarded dispenser of Saudi patronage to Islamic fighters. But bin Laden was already planning the next stages of his religious war and saw Janjalani as a candidate to help spread Wahhabist Islam throughout Southeast Asia.

There are no indications of any functional links between Abu Sayyaf and the Islamic State group. Knowledgeable hostages who have been released say their captors knew little or nothing about Islam or the Koran. There are no indications of any functional links between Abu Sayyaf and the Islamic State group. Knowledgeable hostages who have been released say their captors knew little or nothing about Islam or the Koran.

It has been claimed that when Janjalani returned to the Philippines in 1990, he came with $6 million given by bin Laden to establish a militant Islamist campaign.

Since the early 1970s, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) had been fighting for independence for the largely Muslim region of Mindanao. But at the time of Janjalani’s return from Afghanistan, the MNLF had negotiated a deal with Manila and had become the government of the semi-autonomous Muslim region.

Janjalani gathered militant members of the MNLF who wanted to continue the armed struggle and formed Abu Sayyaf, meaning Bearer of the Sword. They launched a campaign of bombings and attacks in the southern Philippines, but swiftly expanded their operations into the Christian north of the country and into neighbouring Malaysia.

A key figure in the organization was Saudi businessman Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of bin Laden. He moved to Mindanao where he set up an office of the Saudi-funded International Islamic Relief Organization in the city of Zamboanga, as well as outlets for other Saudi Wahabbi charities.

Khalifa operated only in areas controlled by Abu Sayyaf, where he funded the construction of schools, mosques and even a university. But according to intelligence obtained by Philippines government agencies, only about 20 per cent of the money went to education and religious projects. Most went to fund the terrorist campaign.

Two dramatic attacks planned in these early years by Abu Sayyaf in co-ordination with al Qaida were foiled — thanks to incompetence on the terrorists’ part, not the skill of Philippine and U.S. authorities. The 1995 plan was to kill Pope John Paul II during his visit to the Philippines and to blow up 11 airliners en route between Asia and the U.S. But the Philippine authorities were alerted by a chemical fire in the apartment of bomb-maker Ramzi Yousef and the plots were exposed.

Abu Sayyaf lost much of its religious motivation after Janjalani was killed in a fight with Philippine forces in 1998. His younger brother, Khadaffy, took over, but Abu Sayyaf split into factions and began to become the collection of bandits and hostage-takers it is today. Its big terrorist outrage from this period was the bombing of a ferry in 2004, in which 116 people were killed.

The descent into banditry hastened in 2007 when Khadaffy Janjalani was killed in a gun battle with the army. By this time efforts by Washington to shut down the most virulent Saudi charities were having an effect. The killing of bin Laden in his hiding place in Pakistan in May, 2011, severed Abu Sayyaf’s connection to al Qaida.

Abu Sayyaf’s current leader is Isnilon Hapilon. In 2014 he and other masked men issued a video in which they pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which holds considerable territory in Iraq and Syria, and which has taken over from al Qaida as the most prominent Islamic terrorist group.

But there are no indications of any functional links between Abu Sayyaf and the Islamic State group. Knowledgeable hostages who have been released say their captors knew little or nothing about Islam or the Koran.

Hundreds of people have been kidnapped for ransom by Abu Sayyaf in the last 15 years or so, and this is now the group’s core business. A favourite target is foreign visitors at Philippine resorts, and the country’s tourist industry has suffered as a result. The vast majority of Abu Sayyaf’s hostages are released after ransoms are paid, but the group has always been ruthless in killing its captives if money is not paid by the deadline.

The group is now holding about 20 hostages.

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