FACT CHECK: Trump Claims USA Saved Philippines From IS Terrorism
FACT CHECK – USA President Donald Trump claimed that their nation saved the Philippines from the terrorism of the Islamic State but is it really true?
SunStar made an article fact-checking Trump’s claims. In their article, they said that his claim overstated the threat the group posed to the Philippines and what they did about it.
This is what Trump said:
“We helped them defeat ISIS. … But if you look back, if you go back three years ago, when ISIS was overrunning the Philippines, we came in and, literally, single-handedly were able to save them from vicious attacks on their islands.”
The website then concluded that Philippines was very far from being overrun by the group.
In the month of May 2017, in an operation the US president touched, more than 600 local terrorists affiliated with the IS laid siege to Marawi. They were backed up by about a dozen foreign jihadists.
Marawi is a small Islamic city in the country which is mostly Roman Catholic.
The group held control of several neighborhoods and multiple structures. The Philippines made a huge offensive and routed them after five months. Aircraft from the United States and Australia aided with surveillanc.
The statement above implied that this was not mostly achieved by the US military.
As per the article, the number of Is-affiliated terrorists in the country has been extremely small. These came from tiny armed groups largely confined to the jungles of two southern islands and patches of marshlands in the central part of south Maguindanao region.
In 2013-2014, there was a the rise of the Islamic State in the Mideast. Few of those came from southern Philippine areas where there is a presence of Filipino extremists.
The group offered bomb-making training, Islamic lectures and money and aided plot attacks while granting a few dozen of its young fighters exposure to battle,
On Trump’s point that the said fighters are defeated in the nation, there haven’t been enough of those for Philippine leaders to make such a declaration. The leaders’ however, did repeatedly said that Filipino terrorists affiliated to the group were weakened by offensives.
It would be a breach of the Philippine constitution to have US troops and be opposed by the government, its leaders in the military and defense, nationalists and left-wing groups.
President Duterte stressed his displeasure with the US before and after he became president in 2016. Former US President Barack Obama had expressed alarm over Duterte’s war on drugs, eventually angering Duterte.
The Philippine president earlier notified the US government that they aim to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement. Trump reacted to ist and said:
“If they would like to do that, that’s fine. We’ll save a lot of money.”
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