Amplified by a suicide bombing and ongoing military clashes, alarm bells are ringing loudly across Southeast Asia: Mindanao, it seems in some quarters, is about to emerge as the next Syria. As local Muslim insurgents regroup following their siege of Marawi city last year and foreign fighters associated with the Daesh move in on the chaos, local and foreign media experts are pointing to the Phiiippine's second largest island as the epicentre of a new jihadist threat to stability across the region and beyond. Tediously, the reality is more prosaic. Mindanao remains perennially prone to insurgent violence but will not become the next Syria, either as a hearth of regional Islamist revolt or as a home for a significant contingent of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) fleeing the collapse of Daesh's Middle Eastern 'Caliphate'. There are good reasons for Southeast Asian security planners to monitor events on the island and in the adjacent Sulu Sea region closely: breathless media reporting notwithstanding, the 'second coming' of Daesh need not be one of them.
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