Philippines teeters on brink of
total war By Simon Roughneen
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
have launched a new military campaign against
radical Muslim insurgents in its southern regions,
an offensive nominally aimed at finishing off the
hobbled 300-member Abu Sayyaf terror group, but
one that also threatens to widen the conflict with
two ceasefire groups, the Moro National Liberation
Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF).
Manila recently ramped up its
military deployment to the restive region, where
estimates of soldiers on the ground ranging widely
from
5,000-12,000. Army chief General Romeo Tolentino
recently announced that he had temporary moved
army headquarters from Manila to Zamboanga City on
the southern island of Mindanao while the campaign
is conducted. Fighting on the southern island of
Jolo this month saw 50 people - including 25 army
soldiers - killed in armed exchanges, and
thousands of civilians have since evacuated the
area.
Significantly, the MNLF has claimed
responsibility for certain recent attacks. The
Philippine military first launched Operation
Endgame against the radical group back in 2002,
but failed to live up to its billing without
foreign assistance. Since the attacks on the
United States on September 11, 2001, Washington
has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars'
worth of military assistance to the Philippine
Army specifically to combat the Abu Sayyaf, which
Manila claims is responsible for more than 400
civilian deaths since 2000, including the bombing
of a passenger ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that
killed 116 people.
The US has accused Abu
Sayyaf of having links to global terror group
al-Qaeda and Indonesia-based radical group Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI) - but until now has remained mum on
the MNLF while negotiations with Manila were
ongoing. Nonetheless, the new assault on the MNLF,
which stands accused of harboring Abu Sayyaf and
JI operatives, would appear to jibe with broad US
counter-terrorism objectives in the region. In an
effort to win Filipino hearts and minds, the US
Agency for International Development has pumped
more than US$230 million in development and
humanitarian assistance into Mindanao since 2002.
While American soldiers are prohibited
from engaging in military operations, an unknown
number of American military advisers provide
tactical and operational advice. With that
support, the Philippine Army has scored some
important military successes against the rebel
group over the past 18 months, including the
apparent killing last September of the group's
leader Khadafy Janjalani and, in January, of his
apparent successor Abu Sulaiman (Jainal Antel Sali
Jr).
The Abu Sayyaf has reportedly been
flushed out of territories it used to control and
by some assessments is fighting a rag-tag
hit-and-run campaign hobbled by a broken command
chain and leadership crisis. Philippine President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said this year that the
conflict with the Abu Sayyaf had reached a "mortal
turning point" in the government's favor. This
month, she said the new assault is aimed at
"terrorist cells", without naming Abu Sayyaf by
name.
Notably, the army's new offensive
comes at a time that the US- and Australia-backed
Detachment 88 counter-terrorism unit in Indonesia
has turned the screws on JI, including the June
arrest of two of its alleged leaders. As Indonesia
tightens its grip, some security analysts
speculate that JI operatives have fled to the
southern Philippines in remote jungle areas
controlled by the Abu Sayyaf.
Army Chief
of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon said on Monday
that troops identified senior JI members and 2002
Bali bombing suspects Dulmatin and Umar Patek with
the Abu Sayyaf during recent armed engagements in
the town of Indanan, Sulu province. The accuracy
of such reports cannot be independently verified,
but the claims put the army's national security
and the United States' global counter-terrorism
interests in lockstep.
Breaking the
peace At the same time, the risk is that
the army's expanding assault could spark a wider
destabilizing conflict. The MILF, which signed a
ceasefire with Manila in 1996 and is active in the
Basilan Island area, has in recent years allowed
the army passage through territories it controls
to pursue the Abu Sayyaf. However, the MILF and
the army clashed violently on July 10, when a
handful of rebels and 14 army regulars were killed
in an armed exchange.
MILF said government
troops violated a standing truce agreement when
they passed through an MILF-controlled area on
Basilan in search of a kidnapped Italian priest.
The army claims 10 of the killed soldiers were
posthumously mutilated or beheaded, a practice
associated with the more radical Abu Sayyaf.
Military officials have repeatedly alleged that
the MILF has in certain instances provided
sanctuary to Abu Sayyaf insurgents - charges the
MILF's leadership has denied.
Those
hostilities and recriminations have since cooled,
but the potential for confrontation remains high
as long as the MILF and army are in close
proximity. Formal peace talks between the two
sides have stalled since last September, but are
scheduled to reopen this month. A new deal between
Manila and the MILF could formalize army access to
the territories it controls, allowing the
government a more stable footing to launch its
assault against Abu Sayyaf.
Meanwhile, the
MNLF, from which the Abu Sayyaf split in 1991, is
a less radical outfit. The government struck a
peace deal with the group back in 1976, but it now
appears that the MNLF is back in the military's
sights. The MNLF is still the dominant force in
the region's so-called Autonomous Region of Muslim
Mindinao, but a final peace in the impoverished
area has not been accomplished because the deal
fell short of guaranteeing the ethnic Moro the
ancestral homeland they sought.
Certain
MNLF factions, it now appears, consider that past
deal null and void, as certain elements have
publicly admitted to involvement in recent
fighting involving the army and Abu Sayyaf. Former
MNLF leader Nur Misuari recently lost a
gubernatorial-election bid in Sulu province to the
US-aid-propped incumbent Ben Loong. MNLF elements
still linked to Misuari have often been fingered
by the army for having links to Abu Sayyaf, and
some analysts speculate that his electoral loss
may have put them on a more aggressive footing.
A similar analysis could apply to Manila's
suddenly more aggressive war posture. Arroyo's
government lost significant electoral support to
the opposition at recent mid-term elections,
continuing the roller-coaster nature of her
scandal-plagued tenure. Former presidents Fidel
Ramos and Corazon Aquino have both recently
criticized Arroyo's government, with influential
Catholic bishops lending support to the public
denouncements against her. Some Manila-based
political analysts believe a new, high-profile
military campaign could, apart from fighting
terrorism, serve the purpose of deflecting
national attention from the Arroyo government's
political woes. The move could backfire badly,
however. Arroyo has not established firm control
over the AFP, witnessed by the series of foiled
coup attempts against her now-six-year-old
administration.
To ease tensions, she has
given the military carte blanche to deal with
perceived threats to national security, resulting
in the so-far-successful campaign against the Abu
Sayyaf, but also apparently responsible for the
extraordinary number of unexplained extrajudicial
killings of left-leaning social activists. The
government has unconvincingly attributed the
killings to the world's longest ongoing Maoist
insurgency, led by the communist New People's Army
(NPA) - itself designated a terrorist group by
both the US and the European Union.
At the
same time, a recently enacted counter-terrorism
law has given the government controversial
wide-ranging powers to deal with what it deems
internal security threats, including armed
insurgent groups. That legislation will, among
other things, provide new impetus and legal
protection to the army as it launches its new
armed campaign against the Abu Sayyaf and perhaps
other groups.
While Philippine guns will
be trained heavily on restive southern
territories, the NPA has already said the new
legislation is grounds for launching undefined
"tactical offensives" against the government. With
troops on the move and rebel groups crying foul,
expect more violence and perhaps a widened
conflict across the Philippine archipelago in the
months ahead.
Simon Roughneen
reports from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia
and East Timor, with his journalistic work
regularly appearing in the Irish Times, Village
Magazine and ISN Security Watch.
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