Balikatan ‘Sequel’
U.S. Mulls Sending Troops 
vs Abu Sayyaf in Sulu

DAVAO CITY  -- The United States is seriously considering a “request” from the Philippine government to send about 400 U.S. troops to Sulu to go after the Abu Sayyaf, a report by a major US paper said.

By Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com

U.S. Marines from Okinawa arriving in the Philippines for the recent Balikatan war exercises.

DAVAO CITY  -- The United States is seriously considering a “request” from the Philippine government to send about 400 U.S. troops to Sulu to go after the Abu Sayyaf, a report by a major US paper said.

The New York Times, citing sources in Washington, reported on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2002, that the US and the Philippines “may soon start a new military training operation against Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines that would involve 300 to 400 American troops, including many on jungle combat patrols in a risky hunt for a resurgent guerrilla force.”

The new military exercise could begin “as soon as January” and would require the deployment of US troops scheduled for training in Luzon to Sulu, which the paper described as a “combat zone.” The new exercise, according to US officials interviewed by the paper, would involve US Special Forces, the Army and the Marines.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Times said, has ordered the US Pacific Command and the Joint Staff “to draw up plans” for the “sequel.”

The “sequel” reflects, according to the Times, “Pentagon's growing concern that militant Islamic networks pose an increasing threat to Americans and American interests in Southeast Asia.”

It also implied that the new exercise is an admission by the US side that the Balikatan exercises in Mindanao early this year was a failure. More than 1,000 US servicemen, 160 of them from the Special Forces, were sent to Basilan and the Zamboanga area in February this year to help eliminate the Abu Sayyaf. But the mission merely moved the bandits to Sulu, where they have been reportedly engaged in criminal activities. Over the past weeks, the government announced a series of arrests of Abu Sayyaf members, including the group’s alleged top bomber.

“But now the Pentagon is weighing whether to conduct some of that training on or near Jolo. That would make the exercises akin to combat operations and put American trainers that might accompany their Philippine soldiers on patrols at much greater risk,” the paper said.
 
Under the plans being discussed, it added, “150 to 175 additional American troops, mainly Special Forces soldiers, would join the American forces already in the southern Philippines in the first training mission.”

Intelligence work

Some 275 US troops from the first Balikatan have remained in Mindanao. Philippine officials said that the remaining troops are there supposedly to help implement civic projects but, according to the Times, they remained “to help share intelligence information with Philippine forces and coordinate a long-term security assistance and counterterrorism program that is scheduled to begin in January on the northern island of Luzon. The paper earlier reported that spy drones such as an Orion P3 continued to fly over southern Philippines. The planes were based in Japan, at the Kadena US Air Base.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines asked the US “to extend the Basilan model to Jolo,” the paper quoted an unidentified senior US military official. "While we've neutralized Basilan as an operating area for them, their leadership has pretty much relocated to Jolo."

Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio, the director for the Philippine side of the Basilan exercises, said that Filipino officials broached the idea of a Jolo operations to a representative of the US Pacific Command “but it fell on deaf ears so it was dropped.” Teodosio said the suggestion was made “while everybody was euphoric with the success” of the Basilan exercises. “We were excited so naturally there was talk about replicating it in Jolo. We felt that the success in Basilan should be replicated in Jolo,” he said.

National Security Adviser Roilo Golez refused to comment on the Times story. He said, though, that the “sequel” on Sulu had been discussed after the “success” of the Basilan exercises but the discussion “wasn’t serious.”

The US side is also concerned that the Abu Sayyaf is re-establishing old links with Al Qaeda through Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group recently blamed for plots against Western targets in Southeast Asia as well as the Bali bombings in October.

"We're watching the connections very closely to determine whether they are institutional, personal or what,” a Pentagon official said. “I don't think we have anything definitive. Is this just family connections helping each other out or a conscious, directed effort to combine and use each other's efforts?"

Golez, however, said that the military has not monitored any new links by the Abu Sayyaf with any Al Qaeda-linked group such as JI. “The Abu Sayyaf has been crippled. It doesn’t have the capacity to link up with other terrorist groups. But we are not taking anything for granted,” Golez said. Bulatlat.com

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