The release of Australian hostage Warren Rodwell after being held hostage for the past 15 months has provided a lucky ending to hostage-taking in the southern Philippines. In a region that has had perhaps the world’s most consistently high kidnapping rate for the past couple of decades, it is an especially rare outcome for a kidnapping allegedly by the Abu Sayyaf Group.

The ASG is notorious for executing its hostages if ransoms are not paid quickly. That Rodwell has been released with a payment believed to be less than 5% of the original demand of $2 million suggests that while he was indeed kidnapped, it was not by the ASG as claimed.

On Saturday morning, Rodwell was put in a boat near the town of Pagadian City and told to “paddle for your life” following the payment of what is believed to have been a little more than A$90,000. While the ASG claims an Islamist rationale and has engaged in bombings and other terrorist attacks in the Philippines, its principle method of operation has been kidnappings for ransom.

The ASG has developed a fearsome reputation for executing hostages, often by beheading, if ransoms are not paid quickly in full. This has led some counter-terrorism experts to suggest that either the ASG has “gone soft” or, more likely, the group that kidnapped Rodwell was not ASG.

“A lot of us agree that something about this whole affair does not sit right,” one CT expert said shortly after Rodwell’s “proof of life” video last December. He said at that time that if Rodwell were released, “he would be one of the longest foreigners ever held captive by the ASG, for the least amount of money in their sordid history”.

It was noted at that time Rodwell looked relatively well, clean-shaven and did not have a gun at his head, which had been used in videos of other ASG hostages.

The Zamboanga peninsula on the island of Mindanao has for a couple of decades had a reputation as consistently the worst place for kidnapping in the world. As well as three armed separatist organisations operating in the region — ASG, the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front — there are also elements of the communist New Peoples’ Army and numerous freelance kidnapping gangs, all of which have competed with each other to kidnap people most likely able to pay ransom.

The ASG does not generally operate on mainland Mindanao but in the Sulu Archipelago. That Rodwell was released in an area well outside of the ASG’s operational zone indicates it is likely he was abducted by a smaller kidnap gang which claimed that it was ASG in order to stimulate action on the part of parties that might consider paying a ransom for his release.

But even if Rodwell was not kidnapped by the ASG, he was lucky to have had a deal struck on his behalf to be freed. While the ASG’s name may have been taken in vain, the region remains intensely dangerous, with foreigners in particular being victims of choice for kidnappers, with outcomes that are often less successful than Rodwell’s.

*Professor Damien Kingsbury is director of the Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights at Deakin University