Satu Pulau Satu Negara

Overview

SPSN Flag

Satu Pulau Satu Negara (SPSN), roughly translating to ?One Island, One Nation?, believes that all of Mindanao should be united in a tribal confederacy of Islamic co-religionists collectively known as the Mindamoro (Mindanao "Moors" or Arabs). The Mindamoro are a collection of peoples who first arrived with the coming of Islam to Belesia in the fifteenth century. Their current conflict with the government of Belesia has its roots in a long and bloody separatist struggle against first the colonial administration and then the Belesian national government post-independence. The current leader of SPSN, Virid Sulayman, took over at the late 1990s after his father, the previous "Emir", died of his wounds following an exchange of fire with police.

History

Ethno-cultural differences combined with a significant socioeconomic gap and differing interpretations of Belesia?s majority religion, Islam, created a situation where the Mindamoro felt marginalised and oppressed. This was exacerbated when, shortly after independence, the Belesian government attempted to eliminate unrest on Mindanao through a strategy of "plantation". This involved incentivising internal immigration to the island as a form of population replacement. By the middle of the 1950s immigrants from other Belesian islands outnumbered the Mindamoro by four to one and frictions were compounded by the fact that many of the new immigrants were granted rights to land which had been considered by the Mindamoro to be traditional tribal possessions. Adding further tension was the fact that much of the infrastructure built in the rapidly growing towns was seen as being provided in spite of, rather than for the Mindamoro population, leading to their being effectively cut out of civil and commercial society by the newcomers.

Constant low level conflict, occasionally flaring into small scale warfare, plagued the island for most of the latter half of the twentieth century, prompting the Belesian government to attempt a variety of programs to pacify the region. One of the earlier plans involved the granting of university scholarships en masse to Mindamoro males in an attempt to "civilise" the largely rural and tribal groups. Contact with university culture, combined with the realisation of how negatively they were viewed in major urban centres led to the emergence of a number of ideologically motivated separatist activist groups. Many of these espoused political strategies, but some favoured armed resistance. The SPSN was one such armed group which quickly attracted attention and support in the form of arms and funding from various Islamic nations such as Ariana and rogue states such as North Torbia. Their early success locally can be attributed to their strict adherence to the Shafi?i madhab, a juristic version of Islam and the original version of the faith brought by their mediaeval settler and trader ancestors. This helped to enhance their local image of being defenders of Mindamoro peoples and religions against the influx of mostly Hanbali Muslim urban immigrants who came to both the island and greater Belesia over the course of the twentieth century.

The SPSN quickly grew to an estimated twenty thousand members by the early 1960s, peaking in the 1980s at approximately thirty to forty thousand members. The SPSN began conventional warfare against Belesian military and security forces, but rapid and heavy losses resulted in a quick transition to guerrilla and asymmetric tactics. Easily able to claim territory, which they call "camps", in poorly administrated remote areas of Mindanao, the SPSN subsumed the role of local government in sizeable stretches of territory often encompassing several large villages. They did not, however, gain control of any cities.

Ideology

The SPSN espouses a uniquely local Islamist ideology shaped by a diverse collection of influences. In a phenomenon widespread in SE Asian Islam, separate evolution over hundreds of years has caused a marked local divergence in the practice and understanding of their religion, which further exacerbated tensions with the more recently arrived Muslims in wider Belesia. The formation of their group in mid-twentieth century university campuses also means that there is a distinct Marxist flavour to some of the SPSN?s materials and practices, but their ideology lacks any trace of Marxist ideas. This is evident in their inability to form common cause with socialist insurgencies existing elsewhere in the region, despite frequent attempts. Finally, there are strong ethnic tribal influences evident, the Mindamoro tribes? comparative isolation and later effective segregation having crystallised a unique ethnic culture amongst them.

• The core tenets of SPSN?s beliefs are reducible to the following broad principles:
• Self-determination and prosperity for Mindanao?s rightful owners is only possible within the framework of an independent Islamic emirate.
• The Belesian government and its people think of the Mindamoro as inferior savages, making coexistence under the current system impossible.
• Soldiers, public servants and, to a lesser extent, citizens of the Belesian Federation are the enemies of "true" Islam and the Mindamoro people and therefore legitimate targets under Islamic law.
• The cause of independence is sufficiently important to justify dispensations for adopting all necessary means in its pursuit, including terrorist action, criminal activity, and accepting funds and support from apostates, heretics, and non-

Alliances

SPSN Alliances

Group	Relationship	Notes
Tantoco Cartel	Ally	SPSN fighters will frequently contract for criminal enterprises such as the Tantoco Cartel, and therefore tend to maintain good relations with them.
Free Sulu Movement	Neutral	Despite multiple attempts to join forces, SPSN has never been able to successfully forge an alliance with the FSM, despite strenuous efforts on both sides. These repeated attempts, however, have guaranteed a level of peaceful co-
Visayan People?s Front	Rival	SPSN fighters will usually attack VPF cadres on sight, and vice versa. The depth of this enmity originates in the deadly violence between Muslim and Christian militias which erupted in various islands in the late fifties and sixties. Members of VPF leadership were key players on the Christian side, and the feud had never been forgotten.

Organization

SPSN Organization based on functionality. Not all Roles are filled consistently and some change between actors and locations based on political dynamics.

Key Leadership

Name	Position	Bio
Virid Sulayman	Emir	Virid Sulayman is a lifelong revolutionary and jungle warfare expert. He inherited the leadership of the SPSN when his father, the previous Emir, was killed in an exchange of fire with police. (Full biography in development)

Membership and Demographics

The SPSN insurgency is overwhelmingly made of up of members of the five main tribal groups which form the original backbone of the Mindamoro peoples. While membership of the group is not dependent on tribal affiliation, tribal lines of loyalty and kinship make up a significant portion of its core, meaning there is a normal distribution of age and sex across the organisation overall. Among the non-Mindamoro members, who are believed to make up about 20%, the majority are converts from Mindanao or elsewhere in Belesia. The majority of these individuals were radicalised either in universities or mosques and are mostly males between the ages of 15 and 45.

Recruitment

A majority of SPSN recruitment is along kinship, friendship, and community/tribal lines. By far the most productive source of recruits are the madrasas within each of their camps. A large proportion of students who graduate become aligned members, and many elect to be combatant members as well. Additionally, the broadcast services (mostly pirate radio news, religious, and music programs) provided within SPSN camps are highly valued by Mindamoro locals, who are therefore more than usually receptive to recruitment drives conducted via these means.

Beyond the camps, SPSN recruiters have a strong presence in the universities which were their original birthplace, as well as in urban mosques and da?wa centres in major cities. Some recruiters are overt, but experience in training camps in the Middle East during the eighties, and fighting in insurgencies in the Caucasus, have also provided the SPSN with a strong skill base in clandestine recruiting and associated CI activities. The SPSN also run a sophisticated and medium to large scale media and social media enterprise calling for recruits to Jihad. The messaging of these campaigns contains unusually high levels of racial victimhood and is clearly aimed at disaffected minority youth abroad, especially in the West.

Area of Operations

The SPSN has its base of operations in remote rural areas in the west of Mindanao where it has several stronghold "camps". These camps generally exist in the liminal space between two or more villages and will contain a barracks and training ground, a madrasa (Islamic school), civic service centres providing judicial and hawala brokers, food and basic medical treatment, and weapons, fuel, and ammunition storage. Each camp covers a relatively large geographical area, but apart from semi-regular patrolling, little of this land is used apart from the central hub. These camps used to cover a significant portion of rural Mindanao, but recent improvements in the relationship between Mindamoro groups and the Belesian government have seen a contraction in their area of influence, and it is now believed that only a maximum of four such camps, widely spaced, remain.

Besides Mindanao, SPSN fighters have been known to be active in the western Visayas, especially Belesian Luzon and Panay, sometimes as mercenaries and sometimes in pursuit of their own military or ideological goals. Their long operational history and battle proven fighters have made the SPSN highly attractive as paid proxies for state actors interested in destabilising the region or furthering strategic goals, as well as for criminal groups and other Belesian insurgencies. The income derived from these activities has become a critical source of funding for the SPSN as their funding from zakat (alms) and various sympathetic national and transnational bodies has shrunk in line with their perceived relevance and reputation.

Operational Profile

Kinetic

• The SPSN most frequently conducts:
• Mass casualty bombings
• Mass shootings, especially at public events and landmarks
• Mercenary operations for both state and non-state actors
• Sabotage, both for hire and in pursuit of SPSN objectives
• Kidnap for ransom
• Raids against military and police patrols and installations
• Targeted politically and religiously motivated assassinations

Non-Kinetic

Owing to their operation as de facto local government in remote areas, the SPSN has a larger than usual footprint of non-kinetic activities. Additionally, SPSN members or affiliates will routinely stand for local and regional elections, and will frequently hold elected office at various levels in Mindanao. Strong revenue streams allow them to maintain a sophisticated media capability, with strong presence on both traditional and social media. SPSN materials are of generally very high production quality and have a dedicated audience both within and beyond territories under their direct control. In addition to this, SPSN members provide education as well as judicial, administrative, and limited civic services to the villages around their camps. The SPSN also has a political wing, which lobbies foreign governments, especially of Muslim states, as well as sending representation to various national and multinational fora to lobby for and represent the interests of the Mindamoro peoples.

• SPSN?s typical non-kinetic activities are:
• Provision of basic government services
• Law enforcement
• Political campaigns
• Zakat (alms) collection and distribution
• Hawala brokerage services
• Advocacy activities in national and international fora
• Media broadcasting, including pirate radio news services
• Social and traditional media campaigning
• Human trafficking, especially slave labour
• Arms Trafficking