SOON AFTER THE ASSAULT on the cistern, I accompanied Sabban on a civil-affairs mission to the seaside village of Pansul. We rode in his beat-up Toyota Land Cruiser, sandwiched between a six-by-six truck loaded with marines and a monstrous vehicle that looked like a steel hippo with an anti-aircraft gun bolted onto its back. There were several plainclothes security officers darting around on Japanese dirt bikes, and an advance unit had already swept the road for mines. Sabban's was probably the most valuable head on the island.

With the truck's air thick with pine freshener and the seats slick with Armor All, Sabban talked about the war. They'd turned the tide, he felt, but all the same the progress was tenuous at best.

"As a young lieutenant," he told me, "I discovered you get

The Princess brought a stylist, a parasol bearer, and a bodyguard. The sultan rode up on a dirt bike with his son, a twig with the warmth of a chained cobra. This was Sabban's donor pool: a handful of extras from 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'

better intelligence when you are with the people. And when I was a rebel and on the run in 1990, the authorities can't catch me if I have supporters. Who else will get the best intelligence but the civilians themselves? If they don't want to tell on the enemy, even if area is size of basketball court, you will not find the enemy."

Sabban pursued graduate studies at the Naval War College, in Rhode Island, so he's thought about this a lot. "People know you are more powerful than them," he said. "You don't have to rub it in, but when you go down to their level, adopt their ways, they will take you in. The more you hurt them, the more they fight back. Even if they are inferior, they will find a way to get you."

Changing minds takes cash. The U.S. embassy in Manila estimates that, between 2002 and 2006, the American aid agency USAID spent $4 million a year in Sulu province. In the Jolo area, the embassy reports, the U.S.-Philippine forces have completed more than 50 development projects—roads, classrooms, wells—valued at $4.5 million since 2003. This includes projects with big PR value, like the eight-day visit of the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy last June, but, say some troops on the island, fewer behind-the-scenes, long-term initiatives.

"I'm sometimes afraid all this stuff about Jolo being the 'new model to win the war on terror' is PR bullshit," an American soldier familiar with the operations on Jolo had told me, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media. "The money goes everywhere but where it's going to do the most good."

According to Sabban, the JSOTF-P has provided around $50,000 in in-kind donations to the projects he has personally directed in the last year. His largest donor, he maintains, is not the American government, not the Philippine government, not the World Bank, but a private citizen named Andy de Rossi, a slightly manic Italian expat engineer and businessman living in Manila. Through his personal aid group, the Promotion of Peace and Prosperity Foundation, de Rossi has to date given $600,000 worth of in-kind donations, his own little mini Marshall Plan. He has also donated $850,000 in development aid for Jolo in partnership with the U.S. government and the JSOTF-P, including shipping used ambulances from the United States via the U.S. Navy. ("Already, with basically nothing, we've performed miracles down there," he told me in Manila.) After de Rossi, Sabban's most generous supporters are a small network of relatively wealthy Tausug elites, whom he'd invited today to Pansul. As we drove along, I asked Sabban what he needed the Americans for. Although he deeply appreciated the U.S. efforts on Jolo, he said, he wasn't exactly diplomatic, either.

"I don't need the Americans here to train my men. I don't need them here to fight," he said. "I need the Americans here because I hope they can provide strategic investment. Because to keep the momentum moving in our favor, we are soon going to need to fund not just schoolbooks and chairs but large projects, expensive projects."

"How much to do all of Jolo, get the place up and running?" I asked.

He thought for a few seconds. "Two, maybe three million," he said. "That would do a lot."

At midmorning we pulled into a heavily secured pasture, near an idyllic stretch of beach, where the marines and Green Berets were running a free veterinary and medical clinic. Tied to coconut trees were 30 or so malnourished cows and an equal number of hard-luck goats. A row of Tausug men squatted on their haunches and smoked butts while a Green Beret veterinarian, wielding a hypodermic needle the size of a caulk gun, wrestled a moaning cow against a fence. An American medic took a little girl's blood pressure; another U.S. officer handed out posters of the USDA's food pyramid in English.

The Tausug elite were gathered around a picnic table at the far end of the field. In addition to a marine colonel and the well-regarded local chief of Buhanginan, there were five others. One was a woman named Hadja Nur Ana "Lady Ann" Sahidulla, although most people call her simply the Princess, as her clan traces its lineage back to Jolo's old royal family. Recently elected vice governor of Sulu province, the Princess is dark-haired, petite, and cosmetically pale; besides her involvement in politics, she's also a local rock star (she was performing in a few days at a party for Sabban) and a gun enthusiast. The Princess's entourage included a stylist, an effeminate young man bearing a parasol, and a bodyguard with a pearl-handled .45 strapped to his leg. She herself was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans: Sabban had only recently convinced her that, when intermingling with commoners, it was perhaps wise not to wear her traditional princess attire of flowing silks and jewels.

Also at the table was an old man in leather boots and tight jeans who'd ridden up on a 250cc Suzuki dirt bike. This was the sultan of Patikul, a quasi-religious figure among the Islamic Tausug. When he perspired, a young woman patted down his brow with a pink kerchief. The sultan was pursuing an ambitious plan to develop a half-mile of Sulu Sea beachfront into a first-class resort, a no-brainer but for the fact that Jolo was still a war zone. Finally, there was the sultan's son, a twig with a ponytail and the personal warmth of a chained cobra. Like the Princess's, his business dealings were veiled.

This was Sabban's donor pool: a handful of extras from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But the general, ever respectful, began his pitch. In total, the Upper Tanum diversion would cost $10,000. He explained how many villagers would benefit and how it would help push Abu Sayyaf farther into the hinterlands. He tried to convince them that they had a financial stake in its success. As he spoke, a subtle ballet began around the table. The Princess's parasol bearer slipped a portable electric fan in front of her. Luxuriating in the artificial breeze, she acted as if she couldn't hear a word Sabban was saying. The sultan feigned interest, but his son took offense at some undetectable slight. He pirouetted and, with his back to us, held his hand up, as if he were on Jerry Springer. In the end the only people listening were the marine and the chief of Buhanginan, the only two at the table without money.