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Philippines: Blurring the boundaries of
terror
By Marco Garrido
MANILA - Instead of labeling the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) terrorist, as the United States
had threatened to do only months earlier, President
George W Bush lauded them as peacemakers. At 12,500
members, the MILF is considered the largest insurgency
group in Southeast Asia. Twenty-five years of fighting
for an independent Islamic state in the southern
Philippines have left hundreds of thousands dead and
tens of thousands displaced. Yet, instead of freezing
their funds, Bush pledged an enormous influx of new
funds - US$30 million to be exact - earmarked for MILF
territories "when a lasting peace is established".
In his speech before the Philippine Congress
last week, Bush even cited a letter written to him by
MILF chairman Hashim Salamat renouncing terrorism.
Shortly before his death on July 13, Salamat publicly
committed to resuming peace talks with the Philippine
government and denounced terrorism as "anathema to
Islam". He also vehemently denied alleged links between
the MILF and terrorist organizations Jemaah Islamiya
(JI) and al-Qaeda.
This last point the United
States is not buying. And while Bush made no mention of
it, it is, perhaps, precisely the point driving his
overtures of goodwill toward the MILF - and imbuing them
with an edge of menace. There is an "or else" implicitly
tacked at the end of Bush's call for the insurgency to
renounce terror and conclude peace negotiations with
Manila. He is really serving the MILF its last notice.
It must choose on which side of the "war on terror" it
stands: with the US or against it. His promise of aid
doesn't quite eclipse - and it's not quite meant to -
the threat of some form of punitive action should the
insurgency retain affiliation with terror groups.
The MILF is just as eager to avoid being labeled
a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
In the months when a terror tag seemed imminent, MILF
spokesman Eid Kabalu accused the Philippine government
of alleging terrorist links in order to intimidate the
insurgency either into peace talks or out of them: into
them from a position of disadvantage or out of them in
order to justify renewed military action and even US
intervention.
Regardless, the allegations
against the MILF have become increasingly well
evidenced. The arrest of Riduan Isamuddin, alias
Hambali, believed to be al-Qaeda's point man in Asia,
has proved particularly incriminating. Hambali confirmed
suspicions that JI members train in MILF camps and that
"most likely a large number of members of JI Indonesia
are hiding in the Philippines and supporting the MILF".
He also told American interrogators that al-Qaeda
transferred $27,000 to MILF coffers in recent months.
Hambali's testimony corroborates other evidence.
A number of JI members arrested in Singapore last month
attested to having trained in the MILF complex Camp
Abubakar. According to Time magazine, Omar al-Faruq, a
senior al-Qaeda representative in Southeast Asia,
admitted to having spent time in an MILF base in the
mid-1990s.
These links, while in the spotlight
now, are hardly new. Osama bin Laden is reported to have
visited the Philippines in 1993. According to CNN, in
1999 he asked Hashim Salamat to set up training camps
for al-Qaeda in Mindanao. Salamat had admitted to
receiving funds from bin Laden but only for mosques,
health centers, and Islamic schools. Bin Laden's
brother-in-law, Mohammed Khalifa, purportedly ran an
Islamic charity during his tenure in the Philippines but
is suspected of having financed the bandit-cum-terrorist
Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). And, of course, Ramzi Yousef,
who masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center in New York, had once collaborated with Filipino
militants in foiled plots to assassinate US president
Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II in 1994 and 1995
respectively.
The history of such links would
seem to make the MILF an appropriate target in the "war
on terror", certainly more appropriate anyway than the
ragtag Abu Sayyaf bandits, who have been the focus of so
much US ire and effort. However, labeling the MILF
terrorist would be far more consequential: it would risk
inflaming the war in Mindanao past manageable
proportions and driving a legitimate insurgency to
extremism, to living up to their label by solidifying
ties with terrorist groups and engaging themselves in
acts of terror.
While "there can be no
compromise with terror", Bush maintained in his address
to the Philippine Congress, it seems one can compromise
in what counts as terrorist. The administrations of Bush
and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo make a
distinction that preserves their hard line against
terrorism while sparing them the catastrophic
consequences of labeling the MILF terrorist. They have
drawn a line, perhaps through the MILF, with the
insurgency on one side and the terrorists - JI members
and radical MILF elements - on the other. And they are
doing their utmost to make sure the line isn't crossed.
In the days following Bush's visit, President
Arroyo declared JI "the top national-security priority"
(with "the second top national-security priority" being
- surprise - the MILF). The Philippine military
accompanied by US "biowarfare experts" raided an alleged
JI safe house in Cotabato and discovered documents and
substances purported to be "bioterror weapons". While
only 40 JI members are estimated to be in Mindanao,
Arroyo has called the group's plans "both deadly and
far-ranging" and a threat to regional stability.
The Philippine and US governments' hard line
against JI contrasts with its carrot-and-stick handling
of the MILF. Peace talks are scheduled to resume early
next month. The United States has expressed interest in
brokering these talks, and, in any case, has promised
its "vigorous support" for the process. All the same,
the MILF is expected to toe the line accordingly - or
else. Arroyo demanded that the insurgency purge its
ranks of terrorist cells. She considered this "the
sine qua non" to continuing peace negotiations.
The US, meanwhile, has threatened to withdraw its pledge
of $30 million in development aid should the group
retain its terrorist links. The gambit is this: if the
stakes are made painfully clear to the MILF - peace or
relentless war - then the sides will clarify, and the
terrorists will leaven from the real insurgency.
The problem is that the ties affiliating the
MILF to terrorist groups may be more real than the line
separating terrorist from insurgent. Even if the
insurgency wants to repudiate its terrorist
affiliations, it may not be able to. For one, the MILF
and groups such as JI and al-Qaeda share formative
references. The pan-Islamism of the late Egyptian
president Gamal Abdul Nasser shaped their thinking
(Hashim Salamat attended Cairo University in the 1970s),
the experience of Afghanistan conditioned their methods
(MILF commanders served alongside the likes of Osama bin
Laden as mujahideen), and the situation in Palestine
reminds them of their grievance with the non-Muslim
world. (One might even add that the "war on terror" has
so far exacerbated that grievance.)
Moreover,
however generous the terms of any peace agreement it
signs, the MILF must realize that it will never be
granted what it took to arms for in the first place: a
Muslim homeland in Mindanao. The Philippine government
has expressly ruled this out of its framework for
negotiation: "The government shall assert and uphold its
authority under the constitution to preserve our
territorial integrity as one nation." With independence
out of the question and with the Autonomous Region of
Muslim Mindanao already under the charge of former Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) insurgents, there isn't
much in the way of territory that the government can
really offer the MILF. This fact may dampen the
insurgency's incentive to negotiate - or, for the rank
and file, to cooperate wholeheartedly with the terms of
any negotiation - and encourage its looking outward,
toward the Islamic world, for affirmation of its
essential aspirations.
Dr Samuel Tan, author of
several books on the Mindanao conflict, maintains that
the Philippine government has long belittled certain
"fundamental realities" in the Moro consciousness: that
independence is essential, that the Tripoli Accord
(signed by the MNLF in 1996) was merely tactical in
nature and represented no long-term solution, and "that
the ultimate hope for the Muslim Community in the
Philippines for progress and prosperity lies not in the
Christian-dominated state but in the dynamic relation
and linkage to the Islamic world". Tan concludes: "There
is no perceivable indication that these premises are
weakening. The contrary is what is obviously emerging."
The failure of the state to provide genuine autonomy and
sufficient development to Muslim communities, the
failure of civil society to neutralize long-standing
anti-Muslim bias, and the exploitation of the conflict
by self-serving and nefarious interests - politicians,
the military and terrorists - have deepened a well of
Muslim frustration and resentment that any peace
agreement short on substance will find impossible to
paper over.
Protracted peace, like protracted
war, might only spell the further disintegration of the
MILF into "lost commands". If the focus of insurgency is
allowed to dissipate under a superficial peace, it will
breed desperation manifesting as criminality and
terrorism. The well of resentment is there to tap,
decades of war have already created an undergrowth of
illicit economies (gun smuggling, drug trafficking,
kidnapping for ransom), and the bounty of peace would be
irresistibly available to divert. Imagine the US
unknowingly funding JI.
The point is this: the
outcome of the "war on terror" largely depends on the
quality of the peace - whether the legitimate
aspirations of the Bangsamoro people will be
accommodated. This may not mean independence, but it
does mean some form of genuine and substantive autonomy,
one that is buttressed by the state and the
international community. The Philippine government's
efforts to restart peace talks and the US government's
generous support of the peace process are steps in the
right direction, but the commitment of both nations to
eradicating terror in Mindanao will be truly tested only
after the peace agreement has been signed.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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