If the current conflict in the Philippines is any indication, Southeast Asia may be the next major battlefront for Islamic State-supporting jihadists, according to a story by The Wall Street Journal.

Philippine soldiers have been fighting ISIS-aligned insurgents in Marawi City for the past month — and this is because more and more Islamic jihadists are traveling east, said Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, on Wednesday in a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that was covered by The Wall Street Journal.

"Marawi is a wake-up call for every nation in the Indo-Asia Pacific," Harris said. "These terrorists are using combat tactics that we’ve seen in the Middle East to kill in the city of Marawi, in Mindanao, the first time ISIS-inspired forces have banded together to fight on this kind of scale."

As they lose ground at home, Middle Eastern militants have been fleeing ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq and heading to Southeast Asia, said Harris. Once there, the jihadists use their vast resources and extremist ideology to radicalize new, local members to their cause.

Harris proposed closer ties between the U.S., the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia to counter the growing Islamic threat, which Harris called a "nemesis to humanity" in his speech.

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