Donate NowFeatured on Foreign Exchange the week of Friday, April 17, 2009
Produced by Orlando de Guzman in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
The Sulu archipelago in the southern Philippines has been the target of a U.S.- assisted counter-insurgency program since 2003, and American troops have helped rout the Abu Sayyaf rebel group. But it remains a dangerous place. Heavily armed rival clans have created an environment of ongoing violence largely unrelated to radical Islam - it's local politics through the barrel of a gun.
May 2009 News: Col. Julasirim Kasim, the main character featured in the video, was killed in an ambush by Abu Sayyaf militants on Thursday May 7th in Maimbung, Sulu. Read the related article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer 5/8/09