Asia Times: Uncle Sam's Philippine mission a mystery


	March 30, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Uncle Sam's Philippine mission a mystery
By Christopher Johnson

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines - There's a hot text message going around Zamboanga and the Abu Sayyaf-infested Basilan island these days. "From Basilan comes the latest coffee craze to hit Starbucks. Abu Decap. One sip brings a slashing sensation around the neck. Try it, you'll lose your head over it."

Instead of tackling Abu Sayyaf bandits who decapitated a Californian last year, American soldiers here seem to have plenty of time for text messaging. "I gave this one girl my number and she and five friends text me all day," says Jim, a brawny, tattooed US Green Beret.

At the seaside 103rd Brigade headquarters on Basilan island, it's not exactly Operation Anaconda. The big hype during a recent visit was a planned beauty pageant.

Among hammocks and coconut groves, US special forces complain about sitting on their butts instead of kicking those of others. "It's damn frustrating. We've got all this training and experience and we're sitting around here instead of freeing the hostages," says Dave, referring to Kansas missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham and Basilan nurse Ediborah Yap. "They've really got to get their act together up top and let us do our jobs."

Philippine army sources say they've intensified attacks against the Abu Sayyaf on Basilan in the past week. But they deny reports that an American shot and wounded Abu commander Bakal Hapilon.

More than a month since hitting the ground, the Americans still seem to be on the sidelines, an uncomfortable role for muscular guys who look like New England Patriots football players. Hardened veterans who saw Black Hawk Down first-hand in Somalia a decade ago have been busy showing videos to local kids skipping school to sell ice cream to men they call "Joe". Others play the role of Uncle Sam's ambulance service, 'coptering out Filipinos wounded in skirmishes with the Abus. Or they're working like the bin Laden construction family, building mosques on Basilan.

In the battle for hearts and minds, the US Army has cast itself as a development organization, a sort of non-governmental organization (NGO) with better funding. Among other Easter goodies, Zamboanga residents are getting new gym equipment.

"I shall return," American General Douglas MacArthur said after World War II, and now US military personnel, who vacated bases a decade ago, are returning to their former colony big-time. As if 660 US special forces and 5,000 Philippine troops aren't enough to mop up 100 kidnappers, defense chiefs here are talking this week of another 2,500 GIs, and possibly other Asian troops, coming next month for more "Balikatan" military exercises, this time in central Luzon.

Since the hot season is not a great time to be outdoors exercising, many opposition politicians and activists here wonder what Uncle Sam really has up his sleeve. Officially, the US says it has no interest in directly tackling the Abu Sayyaf, who've been passing hostages around the jungle like a football for 300 nights. They say Balikatan is a training and technology transfer mission for the under-equipped Philippine army. But their high-tech weapons exhibition didn't get off to a flying start when a Vietnam War-era Chinook helicopter crashed in the sea killing 10 US servicemen last month.

"This is really a case of overkill," said University of the Philippines professor Roland Simbulan at a peace conference this week in Zamboanga. "They're using extreme measures to fight what is basically a law-enforcement problem. We might as well invite troops to metro Manila because there are kidnap-for-ransom and robbery gangs."

With so many beefy guys around, some government officials are trying to drum up a sequel to Apocalypse Now, which was filmed here. Mindanao's governor said this week that Osama bin Laden came with weapons to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's (MILF) Camp Abubakar in central Mindanao in 1997. Police have arrested a handful of Indonesians and Malaysians allegedly carrying explosives or planning attacks for al-Qaeda. "In Vietnam, the [US] presence began as advisers, and very quickly, it escalated into a tragedy," warned American activist Earl Martin in Zamboanga.

But the enemy has not yet clearly materialized as it did in Afghanistan. Many Muslim leaders are instead curiously calling for greater US imperialism. "We don't want to be under the Manila colonial government, we would rather be a state of the US, like Hawaii," says Shariff M Julabbi, the MILF's main man in Western Mindanao. "The Philippine government cannot afford to maintain peace," says Amir Mahdi Baginda, head of a teaching center for the Jeddah-based al-Hadith sect of Islam, a fave of the Taliban and Osama's Saudi in-law Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, accused of creating the Abu Sayyaf in the early '90s. "It's better for America to get Mindanao, like before."

Even if the Americans are indeed here to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf, many question whether they can. Since US soldiers began scoping out Basilan jungles with night-vision goggles and spy planes earlier this month, the Abus have been moving the war to the city. City police say they, and not the US Army, are scouring Zamboanga for Isnilon Hapilon and his gang, the Abu Sayyaf unit accused of holding the American hostages. Minus goggles, drones, and jacked-up defense budgets, the low-tech cops in T-shirts and sandals have arrested a dozen Abu suspects in recent weeks. The US Army might see itself as the world's policeman, but the local cops still do the grunt work.

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