General dolorfino biography

“Take a seat,” the soft-spoken and charming Maj. Gen. Benjamin Muhammed Dolorfino says as he offers us a cup of what’s called “warrior’s coffee”. The strong local brew is grown in the hinterlands of troubled Mindanao – the Muslim heartland in the south of the predominantly Christian Philippines.

“This has been the longest week of my life,” he confides, sitting down to finally eat a late lunch.

He’s only been in command of Western Mindanao for two months, but already in that time, the area he’s responsible for has suffered some of the bloodiest encounters in the military’s pursuit of the Abu Sayyaf (ASG) – a notorious group responsible for bombings, kidnappings, extortion, murder, and a variety of other attacks on civilians, including what’s been labelled as the world’s “deadliest terror attack at sea” that left over 100 people dead.

Western Mindanao is the most “active” frontier in the Philippines: here, the military confront the 3 largest threats to natio