Inside the Terror City of the Philippines 🇵🇭

Harry makes the long overland journey from Davao to Marawi in Mindanao, Philippines, arriving — by coincidence — on the sixth anniversary of the 2017 siege in which pro-ISIS militants seized the city and fought government forces for five months. He walks a high street that no longer exists, goes inside shelled buildings where the militants knocked holes between walls to move unseen by drones, and then spends most of the video with the people the siege displaced: families in permanent housing that is still unfinished four years after being awarded, and others in “temporary” shelters six years into what was meant to be a short stay. He buys donuts for the bus crew on the way out and chicken franks for the children at the shelter, and leaves saying the people of Marawi were the kindest he has met anywhere in the country.

Key moments

• [00:00] The premise: in 2017 pro-ISIS militants took the city, triggering an all-out war with government forces that displaced 98% of the population and killed over a thousand people. Harry estimates a fifteen-hour journey to get there.
• [01:09] The bus is delayed, so he buys eight bags of Dunkin’ Donuts for the workers at the terminal — a spontaneous giveaway before the journey starts.
• [03:56] On safety: roughly half the people he asked said Marawi was fine and half said don’t go, with a recent kidnapping in Zamboanga cited. His position is that you can’t believe everything you hear and should go and find out yourself.
• [04:28] Tickets are handwritten with names on a sheet of paper — he notes there’s still no online system.
• [05:00] Meets June, a fellow passenger, who becomes his company for the ride; the fare is 700 pesos and the journey runs most of the day (from video – unverified). The bus turns out to be air-conditioned and shows a film.
• [07:52] Language shifts on the way — people are speaking Bisaya rather than Tagalog.
• [10:05] Arrival in the Islamic City of Marawi, and Harry is openly lost for words. 350,000 people had to leave; the former high street is gone.
• [10:41] Six years on, he sees no rebuilding beyond the roads, and no electricity restored.
• [11:12] He lays out what displacement actually meant: people left expecting to return within days, came back five months later to find everything looted, and were moved to huts outside the city away from everyone they knew — still there six years later.
• [11:43] Going inside the ruins, with a warning that unexploded ordnance remains.
• [12:14] The holes the militants cut between buildings, to move through the city unseen by drones.
• [12:50] The scale: five months of siege, large areas held, infrastructure and landmarks destroyed, over a thousand killed including civilians. He stops at an obliterated school.
• [14:03] He’s with Cocoy, a local contact whose own house was destroyed and is now being rebuilt — and realises the date is exactly six years since the siege began.
• [15:43] The permanent shelters: awarded in 2020, still under construction, and largely uninhabited.
• [16:48] A resident describes the siege — the displacement compounded by lasting trauma, and the fear that returns whenever soldiers appear in numbers.
• [18:32] The temporary shelters, which are worse. The contract runs five years, after which the landowner takes the houses back.
• [19:10] Harry bets the kids 100 pesos on a basketball shot.
• [21:22] He buys chicken franks from a shelter stall for the children who say they’re hungry.
• [24:21] Inside a temporary shelter — electricity but no running water. Three families share the area, and the resident says they have had no food supplies for almost two years.
• [25:35] The hardest part, in her words: no business and no income, and the paperwork to return home requires money to rebuild that they don’t have.
• [26:49] Walking Marawi at night, he finds it peaceful and says he feels very safe.
• [27:22] Cocoy insists on paying for Harry’s hotel — clean, and $30 a night.
• [28:36] His conclusion: not all places are bad and not all people are bad, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and the people here were the nicest he’d met in the Philippines.

Extracted pages

• Place: Marawi
• Country: Philippines
• Tips: Judge a place for yourself, Reward honesty and hard work