I visited the Philippines in February 2003. With 7,000 islands and a tropical climate, it is among the most beautiful nations I've seen and home to some of the friendliest people I've ever met. The ethnically diverse country, however, is plagued by corruption and uneven development that is leaving the vast majority of ordinary Filipinos economically behind their southeast Asian neighbors. The mostly Catholic and Christian land also is home to one of the world's oldest ethnic insurgencies that has pitted Moslem residents of Mindanao island against the central government. Despite years of violence on Mindanao and fighting that has been linked to the "war on terror," this conflict receives little coverage in the United States. Please click on the images to see a larger version of each picture on a separate page. Each enlarged image is approximately 35-65kb.

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