The U.S. military battled Islamists in the Philippines beginning in 1899, when the islands — the spoils of the Spanish-American War — became an American territory. The fighting raged in fits and starts for the next hundred years, mostly in the southern region of Mindanao. By 2001 Mindanao was a haven for a shifting alliance of Islamic groups dominated by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf — the latter two Al Qaeda affiliates. In December that year Jemaah Islamiyah plotted an attack on the U.S. embassy in Singapore, but Singaporean authorities intervened.
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