PART 1: The doctor's album
By Marco Z Garrido



Chapter 1
The doctor's album

ISABELA, Basilan - He might as well be the librarian of the Abu Sayyaf. Dr Nilo Barandino has piles of albums on his desk, each one thick with photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents pertaining to the bandit-cum-terrorist group. He has reconstructed the history of the group in fastidious detail.

He points out a photograph of Abu Sayyaf founder Abdurajak Janjalani, or at least he says it's Janjalani. The face of the man in the photograph is unrecognizable for the bullet holes that disfigure it. He flips through pages of pictures of bodies without heads, or with their heads a few meters removed. It is his series on decapitation. "I've had to sew the heads back on some of these guys," he adds informatively.

His fingers rest on a page of numbers, a chart that he has tabulated himself. "It's not current," he apologizes. The chart shows Abu Sayyaf activity for the 10-year period 1992-2001. The totals read: victims, 452; kidnapped, 183; killed in action, 183; beheaded, 50 - "actually, it's 76 if you add military personnel," Barandino offers pedantically. It's a tally made all the more sinister for its understatement, for its power to multiply the impact of the images by tens, by hundreds.

Barandino began studying the Abu Sayyaf in order to better carry out his revenge. He and his family were kidnapped by the group on November 28, 1992. The doctor, his wife, Cristina, their eight children and a nephew were on their way to the family farm when their van was ambushed. The motive, ostensibly, was money, but Barandino hints that the mayor at the time, whose displeasure he had incurred for refusing to sell him his farm, had contracted the kidnapping. Thirteen days later, on December 10, Barandino's captors released him and three of his children - but not before raping his wife in front of him. The doctor mortgaged his farm to raise the P2.5 million (US$45,500) ransom demanded by the Abu Sayyaf. On December 20, after nearly a month in captivity, the rest of his family was freed.

Barandino spent the next four years hunting his captors. The doctor set aside tunic and stethoscope to sport instead a gun and hand grenade, both ready at his holster.

It is hard to imagine this 63-year-old doctor, bald and corpulent, with glazed eyes that can't seem to focus and a perpetual look of mild irritation on his face, as a vigilante - even 10 years ago he still would have been old - although it helps when he pulls out his guns, one in his desk and one in his holster. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to carry his grenade anymore.

He tells the story of how he laid in wait for one of his captors for hours, he says, in the brush outside the man's jungle hut. When evening fell, he rapped softly on the door of the hut. He took the man who came out at knife point and directed him to call out his companion still inside the hut. The other man came out, and Barandino took him at gunpoint. He then took both men to a nearby military base, where, Barandino says, they were beaten nearly to death and kept in a box for days.

Whether this is true or not, the facts remain: of the 24 men involved in Barandino's kidnapping,16 have been killed and three are in jail. In 1994, Barandino tried to kill one of the men now in jail. The doctor also admits affiliation with a local paramilitary group committed to exterminating "terrorists".

Despite the results, however, revenge may not have brought him peace. Barandino's son was killed on the doctor's birthday, shot in the head at a market by an Abu Sayyaf initiate - a young man ordered to kill at random as part of his recruitment, a kind of terrorist hazing.

So the doctor's vendetta continues, and his albums fatten with collected intelligence on the group. But his library is not open to just anyone. He has refused access to the Philippine military. "I don't trust them," he says plainly. He has refused the US Central Intelligence Agency for the same reason. He did, however, grant access to emissaries from the US Special Forces who came to the island as part of a series of joint US-Philippine military exercises dubbed "Balikatan" (Filipino for shoulder-to-shoulder). It may be that he sympathized with the Balikatan operation's goal - extirpation of the Abu menace on Basilan - or simply that he appreciated the soldiers' efforts at refurbishing his hospital.

For a copy of his files, Barandino was awarded a lifetime membership in the Green Berets. He pulls out the certificate from his album. "Look," he says, for the first time almost excited. "I can be anywhere in the world and the US Embassy will recognize this. Anywhere!" But despite his momentary enthusiasm, it is clear that Barandino is more interested in revenge than vacation, and it seems more likely that he will remain on the island filling his albums with photographs, not of far-off places but of dead and decapitated people, more entries for his revenge to reckon.

Chapter 2
Survivor Island

ISABELA - Almost all the children kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf suffer various degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder. Their symptoms include colds, moodiness, abrupt crying spells and flashbacks of their time in captivity. The most disturbing symptom, usually manifested in the youngest children, is the wish to return to their captors, even to choose their kidnappers over their own parents.

Deddette Suacito of the Nagdilaab Foundation, a peace and development organization specializing in trauma healing for kidnap victims, finds such desires not entirely uncommon for kidnapped children. After months in captivity, with their kidnappers feeding them, playing with them, and protecting them from the dangers of the jungle, the kids grow attached to and even begin to identify with their captors.

Sorting through the tangled darkness of an experience in captivity is an arduous process. One wall of the Nagdilaab office, papered with the drawings of kidnap victims, mostly children, illustrates just how hard it can be.

There is a drawing by a young boy of huts on fire and a yard littered with corpses - stick figures with x's for eyes - done entirely in red crayon. "This is when the military raided the camp where this boy was being held," Suacito explains. Another drawing, one that chills immediately, is of a decapitated man. It is entitled "My Father". Another drawing was created by the widow of an Abu Sayyaf bandit. It shows a woman, alone in a boat, sailing into the jaws of an enormous fish. "She feels isolated," Suacito says, "because she cannot mourn in public."

The adult survivors have their artifact too - a bullet-riddled jeep. And like the kids' drawings, it also reveals a tension between wanting to remember and wanting to forget.

The jeep, the very same one that was ambushed by the Abu Sayyaf in 1999, sits outside the Nagdilaab office, announcing itself as a "Memorial for Peace". Five of its six passengers, church workers from San Vicente parish, were executed. Stone tablets on either side of the jeep recount the massacre and dedicate the memorial to the victims of the Abu Sayyaf. Every year the survivors gather here to remember their slain friends.

It seems, from the way Suacito talks, that all of Basilan is mourning someone, and that the whole island is afraid of the Abu Sayyaf. Fear of the group is such, she says, that the Abu Sayyaf has become something of a Basilan franchise. Nefarious individuals - extortionists and kidnappers - carry out their own illicit activities in its name, even though they have absolutely no affiliation with the group.

Suacito claims that even hard up soldiers moonlight as the bandits to make a buck. Of course, like everyone else on the island, she fears the Philippine military almost as much as she does the terrorist group and believes, as an article of faith, that their relationship is not as adversarial as it should be. "There are so many guns on this island," Suacito fumes. "Where do the terrorists get them? The military!"

Indeed, gun-smuggling is one allegation the military has yet to convincingly shake. Another is its outright collusion with the bandits. On this matter, Father Cirilio Nacorda's testimony is well-known. In June 2001, after an 18-hour gunfight had left the Abu Sayyaf trapped inside a hospital compound in Lamitan, Father Nacorda claims to have witnessed soldiers inexplicably abandon their posts. In the hour following the military's disappearance, 40 Abu Sayyaf bandits, with their 28 hostages in tow, walked single file out of the hospital and into the jungle. Although a Congressional investigation later found only incompetence to blame, the residents of Basilan have not been so forgiving.

Suacito floats the idea, a popular one locally, that the military originally created the Abu Sayyaf to fight the Moro National Liberation Front, a more legitimate Muslim insurgency. Clearly, she views the Abu Sayyaf and the military as two heads on the same hydra, two aspects of the same terror. "The military will not bring peace," she says, "not when they use paramilitaries to go outside the law and attack Muslim communities." And yet she would not have them withdraw, for that would mean abandoning Basilan to the terrorists. They must remain, if only to keep the balance of terror.

So when American soldiers first arrived in 2002, Suacito regarded them as warily as she did the Philippine military. The Basilan deployment was part of the Balikatan joint exercises between the US and the Philippine militaries expressly designed to train Filipino soldiers in combating the Abu Sayyaf. Balikatan was advertised as having a humanitarian component as well.

People were, at best, cautiously optimistic, and if they stayed away from the anti-Balikatan protests that greeted the American soldiers, they did so as a matter of principle. "There was an anti-Balikatan parade with big personalities from Congress," recalls Suacito. "But no one came. Why should we? When we were being victimized, where was Congress?"

Slowly, as roads were paved and rivers dredged, as schoolhouses were repaired and hospitals refurbished, as medicines were distributed and medical care freely dispensed, the soldiers proved their worth and won the people's trust. "Even former protesters started writing for the Balikatan to come back to their municipality," Suacito remembers with a smile. Best of all, she says, the kidnappings stopped. "Now it is quiet; we can begin to plan."

Chapter 3
Friends with benefits

ZAMBOANGA CITY - "When the Balikatan arrived, the girls went all out trying to win themselves American husbands," says Liza, a former secretary at Edward Andrew Air Force Base. Rolling her eyes she adds, "I said what's the big deal?"

Perhaps it was her nonchalance that won her a fiance, a boy so thoroughly smitten with her that, since his return to the United States months ago, he has phoned her every single day to plan their reunion. "He even asks my permission to go out with his friends," she coos. "I say why not? Of course, I trust you."

When American soldiers arrived in Zamboanga in 2002 as part of the Balikatan joint US-Philippine military exercises, they were prohibited from consorting with Filipino civilians. Liza and her fiance could only meet in secret, and even now they must be circumspect about their wedding plans. "They were told not to trust us," says Liza, "to consider us terrorists."

But while wariness might have been internal policy for the American contingent, its public face was solidly one of solicitude and good will. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Abati, for one, appeared terribly well-intentioned. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force that was part of Operation Bayanihan, Balikatan's successor in 2003. Bayanihan continued Balikatan's avowed mission: to enhance the Philippine military's ability to combat terrorism, particularly in the form of the Abu Sayyaf, and to assist local humanitarian efforts.

"Here is our hand. I offer it to all of you. I only ask that you take it and extend yours," Abati said, addressing a press conference called to announce the partnering of civic groups with the Philippine and US militaries for humanitarian missions. His earnestness was as genuine as his rhetoric was overdone.

For Filipino edification, Abati cited Depression-era United States as "a time when people came together and pooled resources", and he offered a string of platitudes for inspiration. On democracy: "Great democracies are built on great people." On what America has to offer: "Not handouts but helping hands." On success: "Ultimate success rests on each one of us." On goodness: "As we recognize the feeling of goodness when we help, we will continue to help."

Abati believes in America as a salutary idea. He believes that America can really help the Philippines, not just by training its troops and building its hospitals, but by its good example. His words mask conceit with humility. "We want to inspire your passion," Abati told an audience of Rotarians and Boy Scouts, "a passion so hot it will burn away terrorism".

And yet no one in the room so much as cringed (except for at least one American). No one decried Abati's sentiments as simplistic or offensive. In fact, he was not only applauded but affirmed. One man came forward to attest that Abati's words "uplifted me as a young leader". Another credited the American soldiers with "helping [people] realize a sense of responsibility". Yet another, clearly inspired by the lieutenant's words, declared, "I too wish to feel noble".

Three days later, on September 28, 2003, Abati's contingent, together with Filipino soldiers and a host of local civic organizations, conducted a health fair at the Don Gregorio Evangelista elementary school in the Muslim town of Santa Catalina. By that time, the task force had already conducted about 20 such medical missions in Zamboanga, mostly in Muslim areas. It had served nearly 20,000 people - and that does not include the handful of environmental missions it had undertaken, doing work such as repairing bridges and digging wells.

These medical missions became events of some renown in Zamboanga. Hundreds of people crowded outside the school gates hours before the health fair in Santa Catalina was scheduled to start. When it did, it ran as orderly as operations at a US Embassy.

People were given tickets as they entered depending on their ailment and were directed to specific classrooms for treatment. Expectant mothers went to one classroom; mothers with ailing infants to another. The crowd seemed to represent all manner of sickness, from the routine to the grotesque. Some came to have their eyes checked; others to get teeth pulled; some boys even came to be circumcised. Others sought medicine simply to manage afflictions such as goiters, bowleggedness and disfigurement.

And yet the mood was festive. A group of fifth-grade girls dolled up in lipstick and rouge practiced their "Sex Bomb" dance number. One soldier presumed to show the girls how to twirl a baton, and they indulged her. Another soldier bought the girls Cokes to get them to stop making fun of his double-chin. An American chaplain took it upon himself to round up a number of Muslim children and teach them Protestant hymns. They sang: "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?"

But though the American soldiers appeared comfortable, they had hardly let their guard down. A pair of soldiers manned machine-guns turreted on the cabs of two pick-up trucks at one end of the schoolyard. They were in a position to sweep the yard with gunfire if so ordered. More soldiers, similarly armed, patrolled the upper floors of the school building. Their work seemed joyless compared with that of their comrades below, but it had been deemed necessary work.

The Americans were guarded in another way as well. Lieutenant Colonel Donna Scott, the division's media officer and the Sex Bomb cheerleaders' self-appointed baton-twirling instructor, was all business when it came to dealing with the press.

When a student reporter approached Scott with pen and pad and asked her, "Will you say why Americans come here?" she smiled broadly at the official press, excused herself, and led the girl away, perhaps to answer her question unofficially.

While Scott sees these missions the way Abati does, "as a catalyst for more sustainable civic action", local civic groups outside the congratulatory air of the earlier press conference attested to needing medicine more than inspiration. "With Balikatan we have more resources", said Jesus Ngo, president of Rotary Club 2C West. "Otherwise the spirit is there. We've done this before but it doesn't compare." Ngo was careful not to diminish a particle of the Americans' sense of noblesse oblige. "They can fancy their role however they wish; what matters is that they indeed help, and this help is appreciated."

To make the point, Manuel Banue, a Santa Catalina councilor, waved his hand toward the orderly queues of people filing in and out of classrooms to receive medicine or treatment: "The Americans make it bigger," he said.

PART 2: The nostalgic garden

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