| |
HEY JOE
The Philippines' bumbling
terror war
By Ted Lerner
When
a bomb blew up inside a provincial-bound bus late last
week in the Metro Manila town of Quezon City, instantly
killing two passengers and wounding 20 others, the mayor
of Quezon City didn't waste any time fingering the
culprits as suicide terrorists. How the mayor
immediately knew this was anyone's guess. Local mayors
in the Philippines aren't exactly trained in the
complicated nuances of terrorism. But he claimed to know
it was a suicide bomber because the angle of the dead
man's body as it lay mangled and charred inside the
smoldering wreckage indicated as such.
Manila
police still have no idea who was behind the bus
bombing, but the Quezon City mayor's quick analysis and
bold pronouncement to the media surely highlight the
state of things as regards the authorities in the
Philippines when it comes to a peace-and-order situation
that has gotten completely out of control. In a word it
can best be described as absolutely "clueless".
One would be hard-pressed to find a more apt
description. Three bombs have gone off in the southern
city of Zamboanga in the past few weeks, with the death
toll now at 10 Filipinos and one US special forces
serviceman. Around the time of the Quezon City bus
bombing, a grenade blew up in the financial district of
Makati. Several days before that a bomb blew up in a bus
station in the southern city of Kidapawan, killing eight
and injuring scores. On top of these there have been
numerous daily bomb scares in Manila and elsewhere as a
result of pranksters or pedestrians noticing a box or
bag left unattended.
In these days when
everything bad is automatically attributed to Muslim
terrorists, authorities in the Philippines always
immediately finger two groups: the Abu Sayyaf bandit
group, which operates on two islands in the southern
Philippines and has been linked to al-Qaeda, and the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which also operates in
the southern Philippines and, by some accounts, has also
been linked to al-Qaeda. The MILF, however, claims to be
a solely political organization with no violent
intentions.
Surely the Quezon City mayor meant
the Abu Sayyaf when he said "suicide bomber". Although
perhaps the mayor forgot that the Abu Sayyaf has never
engaged in suicide attacks. The Abu Sayyaf were
originally thought to be behind the Kidapawan bombing.
Indeed the Philippine military wasted no time in
fingering the Abu Sayyaf in the Zamboanga bombings. The
military brass claims the blasts in Zamboanga were the
Abu Sayyaf's way of retaliating for the military's
relentless assault against the group on Basilian and
Sulu islands.
That the authorities are claiming
the Abu Sayyaf has suddenly brought its murderous
operations nationwide and now has the ability to strike
in major urban centers almost defies logic. Back in June
no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced
before the world that the Abu Sayyaf menace had been
completely wiped out. Crack Philippine military men,
assisted by US technical capabilities, had supposedly
killed one of the group's leaders, Abu Sabaya, in a
brief battle at sea. Even though a body was never
recovered, Arroyo said she had seen a movie of the
incident supposedly filmed in its entirety by a US spy
plane. The movie, she said, could not be shown to the
public because of national-security concerns. Still,
though, Sabaya was history, she said, and that took care
of the Abu Sayyaf.
Arroyo went so far as to
claim that the Philippine military, with the assistance
of more than 600 US special forces, had been so
successful in neutralizing the Abu Sayyaf that she was
ordering troops away from Basilian to other parts of the
Philippines to take on the New People's Army (NPA), the
armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines,
which incidentally had recently been labeled an
international terrorist group by the United States.
Of course, only the completely gullible believed
that the Abu Sayyaf problem had been solved. Untold
millions of dollars in ransom money from kidnappings has
led to infighting and the group has split in to several
factions, each with its own agenda. Indeed, at about the
time the authorities claimed Sabaya was killed, a bandit
group abducted four Indonesian seamen. One escaped and
three are still being held captive to this day. Another
faction later abducted six Jehovah's Witnesses and
beheaded the two male members. The four women are still
being held hostage. Several days ago a Chinese trader in
the southern islands of Tawi-Tawi was abducted by a
still unknown group. Then, just last week, 11 marines
were killed in an ambush in Sulu by a faction of the Abu
Sayyaf.
But while the Abu Sayyaf is clearly
alive and kicking in and around Sulu, it is surely a
real stretch to proclaim that they are capable of
striking major urban centers, especially Manila. Even
taking into account its various factions, the group is
said to consist of only a few hundred hardcore men. They
have also been on the run for well over a year now. If
the Abu Sayyaf is behind the spate of recent bombings
and bomb scares in the Philippines, then surely it can
only mean one thing: that the intelligence services of
the Philippine military and government have suffered a
complete and total meltdown.
It should be noted
that before the days when every little incident was
labeled a terrorist act, bombs and bomb scares were
nothing new to the Philippines. Then most of the
atrocities were always considered the result of a local
issue, not something related to an international cause
like al-Qaeda.
Now, though, with the catch
phrase of the day being "international terrorism", the
menace is seemingly everywhere one looks. Or at least
where the authorities look. And it doesn't always look
pretty, either.
Arroyo recently presented before
the media a young man who she said was one of the
leaders of the Abu Sayyaf. This was part of her
high-profile, hands-on crime drive where she presents
suspected criminals to the media and goes to the crime
scene to oversee the operations of the police personally
(see Crimebuster Arroyo hypes it up,
August 29). As a bonus, she pointed out, this young man
and his group were involved in the Kidapawan bus station
bombing several weeks back.
But, as it turned
out, the man she zealously presented as a leader of the
Abu Sayyaf was actually a minor underling in the group,
if he was in the group at all. The real wanted leader is
still free in the southern Philippines.
As for
the bus bombing, most of the clues have indicated the
incident to be a clear case of local mob retaliation:
the bus company refused to pay protection taxes to a
group of Communist rebels.
Because terrorists
are supposedly in every nook and cranny of the
Philippines, the president recently floated an idea
brought to her by several national and local officials
to arm every single one of the village leaders in the
country, whose numbers are in the tens of thousands. In
the Philippines a local village is referred to as a
barangay. The leaders and administrators of the
barangay are considered minor local authority
figures with few enforcement powers except to help
settle disputes.
The idea is to arm these
village officials because, since they are close to the
action in every village, they can act as the eyes and
ears of the national authorities and help to root out
terrorists. But critics have howled that putting guns
into the hands of men and women who have little or no
training in using them is a recipe for disaster. Besides
the dark specter of vigilantism cropping up, armed
village leaders could easily use the terrorist label to
extort money out of hapless residents, or to dispose of
someone they have had a dispute with.
Whether
this plan to arm village leaders will push through is
not yet clear. Up to 20 percent of the ordinary
policemen in the Philippines don't even own their own
gun, so funding such a program would seem economically
impossible.
Still, even the fact that Philippine
leaders are considering such a plan shows how inept the
government has become at keeping the peace in the
country. It seems the Philippine government has
completely lost control of the situation and has no
clear idea on what to do to fix it.
Hiding
behind the all-encompassing bogeyman of "terrorism" is
hardly going to make criminality go away.
Ted Lerner is the author of the book
Hey, Joe - A Slice of the City, an American in
Manila, as well as an upcoming book of Asian travel
stories, The Traveler and the Gate Checkers. He
can be reached via e-mail at tedlheyjoe@yahoo.com
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
