Asia Times: Region uneasy about US troops in the Philippines


	February 9, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Region uneasy about US troops in the Philippines
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - The hostile reception that some 650 US troops are receiving in the Philippines is a pointer to the opposition that lies ahead for US military adventures beyond Afghanistan, analysts in the region say.

Thus far, the most vociferous objections have come from activists in Manila. There, street protests against US military presence - and cries of "Yankee go home" - are being heard in a reminder of the atmosphere during the 1980s when the Philippines was host to Washington's huge military bases. Local media have been asking questions about the "help" that US soldiers will give Filipino troops to crush a small extremist Muslim group in the southern Philippines, and whether it merits the large troop deployment from Washington under the two countries' agreements on military cooperation.

To the United States, the group in question, the Abu Sayyaf, is an Islamic radical organization with some links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. US officials consider this opening of its second front in its war against terror as essential to combat the presence of militant Islamic groups in Southeast Asia. But it is a view that has observers in the Philippines' neighboring countries worried about Washington's real agenda, and the long-term implications of a bigger US military presence in the region.

But the United States is serious in its aims, the officials say. Washington is prepared to accept injury and death of its troops in this military effort due to last for six months, a US general told the media in the southern Philippines on Wednesday.

But Filipino political analysts disagree about Washington's reading of the Abu Sayyaf, labelling the group a "band of local kidnappers". Writing in the English-language daily Philippine Daily Inquirer, columnist Randy David states that Abu Sayyaf's members are "homegrown criminals, bred by endemic poverty, social marginality and a perverted understanding of the Islamic faith".

"It is a bandit group or in earlier times would have been called pirates," Robert Karniol, Asia-Pacific editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, says of Abu Sayyaf, whose fighters are estimated to number less than 1,100.

Since the 1990s, Abu Sayyaf has armed itself through million-dollar ransom payments from the kidnappings of civilians, both local and foreign. They are still holding hostage two US Christian missionaries and a Filipina nurse.

Like Filipino analysts, Karniol argues that if the United States wanted to target Filipino rebels advocating the militant brand of political Islam, it should have zeroed in on bigger groups like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). "These groups have ideological objectives," says Karniol.

From Malaysia, human rights activist Chandra Muzaffar sees something more sinister in Washington's attempt to gain a military foothold in the Philippine archipelago. "The dispatch of troops is part of the larger US agenda of demonstrating its military power and imposing its hegemonic will upon other nations," asserts Chandra, president of the Penang-based International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

The entry of US troops to help quell a local extremist group is a development that will unnerve people in Southeast Asian countries that are home to Muslim militant groups, he adds. "The Malaysian government and, perhaps, a significant segment of the populace, have always been uneasy about US hegemony and the expansion of its global military might," he explains.

Concern has been expressed in other quarters, too. "Indonesia may be the next target of the United States to combat terrorism," says Sartika Susilowati, political science lecturer at the University of Airlangga in Surabaya. Such thinking from Indonesia - the largest Muslim country in the world with a 170.3 million Muslim population, and Malaysia, with 10.8 million Muslims - comes in the wake of increasing reports about cross-border ties between Islamic militants in Southeast Asia.

For instance, intelligence reports have identified the Jemaah Islamiah organization (See The Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda of Southeast Asia, Asia Times Online) as among those pursuing such links. Described by regional security officials as a "terror group", it seeks to create "Daulah Islamiah", an Islamic state spanning the southern Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

There are also other traces of the region's like-minded Muslim youth taking to arms, some reports say. Youth from the southern Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, for instance, were drawn to Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion to join the thousands of mujahideen (Islamic fighters) who pledged to fight a jihad (holy war). And once the United States declared war last year on Afghanistan's Taliban regime for harboring bin Laden and his allies, another generation of Muslim youth lined up to participate in another jihad in that country.

"The proportion of those who share the al-Qaeda ideology in Southeast Asia is not disproportionate to that of other Muslim countries. It is the same," explains Karniol, the defense expert. "It is a concern: the al-Qaeda presence in the region."

But he doubts that the United States will go full-steam ahead with a heavy military showdown in the region, as it pursued in Afghanistan. The region will not witness a replication of the Philippine scenario in other countries, he says, but there will be increased intelligence activities by Washington in the region. "The United States will seek to expand its intelligence to achieve the objectives," he explains. "The US has a presence in all the countries in the region and there are different agreements with each government."

Even then, the region's governments have not done much to pursue a common security strategy. There has been little movement on a call made last year by Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to create a Southeast Asian anti-terrorism coalition.

This is not surprising for Susilowati, the political science lecturer, given the complications that would arise within countries with Muslim populations, since the US enemy list contains "mostly Muslims". It was quite different when governments cracked down on the threat of communism in the region five or six decades ago, she says. "Communism being identified with atheism made it also the enemy of Muslims."

Asserts Muzaffar of JUST: "It makes no sense to talk of a 'red peril' or a 'green peril'. The real peril comes from hegemonic dominance and the multitude of injustices that emanate from it."

(Inter Press Service)

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