Yearender 
The Other War on Terror

With all the enthusiasm surrounding the entry of U.S. troops in the country this year for their anti-terror mission, many in the trimedia industry missed – or ignored – what came to be known among the masses as the “silent war.” The “silent war” against the Left and its alleged front organizations was as intense but more bloody than the war against the Abu Sayyaf.

By Bobby Tuazon 
Bulatlat.com

Activists and human rights groups call it the “silent war” – the other face of the second front unveiled by George W. Bush’s war on terror in the Philippines this year. TV cameras and photographers’ lenses caught the images of U.S. forces as they held war exercises jointly with their ill-equipped Filipino counterparts. They took shots of bare-chest Americans brushing their teeth beside a brook in the jungles of Basilan province. They crawled into Abu Sayyaf turfs forbidden for news coverage and risked their cameras being bashed. But they – or their editors - missed a lot of action happening elsewhere.

On Basilan island itself in southern Philippines – site of U.S. special operations – an 11-year old child was taken by Philippine Army soldiers and was later reported killed along with three other suspected Abu Sayyaf extremists. A woman prisoner being held along with hundreds of other suspected rebel sympathizers lost her unborn child. There were entire villages that had been deserted and you know that these came under attack too as evidenced by shacks riddled by bullets and huge craters dug up by air strikes.

Elsewhere, a young campus writer and human rights volunteer was mowed down without mercy by Army troopers and paramilitary men. Another band of paramilitary men summarily executed a Gabriela activist in front of her own children. A military operation proved fatal to a 90-year old farmer as he died from gunshot and stab wounds while soldiers ransacked his house. He was suspected as a New People’s Army (NPA) supporter. A Bayan Muna coordinator was abducted reportedly by military intelligence agents and held for seven days almost without food. He was left blindfolded at dawn inside a cemetery. A couple – both mass activists in their barrio – was taken forcibly by masked armed men, dragged outside their house and shot to death. Their 11-year old child saw everything.

Biggest collateral damage

Last week, the Canada-based BC Committee on Human Rights revealed: “The painful scenario of the human rights situation in the Philippines today only proves that the ‘war against terrorism’ being waged by President Arroyo’s strong republic is an ‘all-out war against the Filipino people.’” Human rights, “ the committee further said, “is the biggest collateral damage in the Arroyo government’s vicious war of terror.”

Also this December, a United Nations special rapporteur noted reports of human rights violations committed by government forces particularly against indigenous communities.

The Washington-based Human Rights Watch warned that Bush’s war on terror was making friendly governments that had declared support for the campaign, more repressive than ever against their own people.

The second front of Bush’s war on terror was opened in January this year with the arrival of hundreds of U.S. forces – including special operations men - in Mindanao that would later swell to 4,000. The opening of the second front was agreed upon by Presidents Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Bush in their Washington meeting November last year in which the latter pledged millions military and economic aid. The target: Abu Sayyaf which, Pentagon had insisted without much substantiation was linked to Al Qaeda – the main suspect in the Sept. 11, 2002 attacks on the United States.

The U.S. troops were supposed to train Philippine soldiers in anti-terrorism but some of them would later see action in combat zones in Basilan against the Abu Sayyaf.

In their August report, 68 foreign members of the International Solidarity Mission revealed that U.S. soldiers were directly involved in the raiding and shooting of an unarmed civilian in his home in Basilan. U.S. military support operations, they added, displaced and violated the rights of Moro people and other Filipinos including women and children.

Anti-NPA campaign

Also forged in Washington as a leading Philippine House member would confirm however was a pact for a U.S. support in the Macapagal-Arroyo’s campaign against the NPA. As it turned out, the war against the ASG became a pretext for launching a joint US-Arroyo war against the armed Left.

Thus, as limited “war exercises” were being held in southern Philippines, large-scale and more intensive trainings were being conducted in other provinces near or inside the guerrilla zones of the NPA. By July, as mopping-up operations were taking place in Sulu against the ASG, more and more troops were being deployed in known NPA lairs. The bulk of Armed Forces deployment, which used to be concentrated in Muslim areas, had shifted to the NPA countryside: about 75 percent of the total number of government combat forces, latest reports show.

The military solution, called Oplan Gordian Knot, came at the front of a grand strategy hatched by the military faction of the Macapagal-Arroyo government that sought to once and for all put to a conclusion what defense and Washington officials called the Philippines’ main security threat. The strategy called for the demonization and isolation of the Left, a financial squeeze and legislative measures, among others.

The demonization and isolation of the Left was stepped up by the terrorist tag on the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its alleged front organizations and suspected leaders. In the United States, the state department came out with a new list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) that included the CPP and the NPA. The list signaled the start of a financial operation resulting in the freezing of the insignificant bank accounts of alleged CPP chair Jose Maria Sison and similar measures unleashed by the Canadian and Dutch governments as well as the European Union council.

At home, the anti-Red baiting took on a twist as the National Advancement for Democracy (NAD), the Discovery Philippines and other small anti-communist groups used radio broadcasts and street actions to denounce the Left as terrorist. It appeared that the black propaganda was well-funded as the streets of Metro Manila and other town centers were used to display posters calling Bayan Muna and other militant groups as terrorist and ASG supporters. Reports indicated that part of the funds came from a party-list group which has alleged links with the president’s husband, Mike Arroyo.

In Congress, meanwhile, the fixation for the war on terror gained a following as the number of anti-terrorism bills filed in both chambers rose to seven. The bills, condemned by groups of lawyers, human rights advocates and progressive legislators as unconstitutional and an attack against civil liberties, appeared patently directed against the Left.

Macapagal-Arroyo, in undisguised support for the bills, called workers on strike and demonstrators who obstructed traffic as terrorist. She also called those who opposed her war on terror as both communists and terrorist supporters. Such irresponsible pronouncements, her critics said however, were what made up her “strong republic.”

Militarist

The tough and militarist stance put up by the president herself was taken as a carte blanche by defense and military officials for waging a brutal anti-insurgency campaign. Serving as one of the laboratories for Gordian Knot was Oriental Mindoro where relentless operations were under the command of what activists called, the “Butcher of Mindoro” – Col. Jovito Palparan.

Mindoro Oriental, Palparan boasted recently, “is almost an insurgency-free province.” He had probably a reason to declare so: 28 Bayan Muna activists and organizers, mostly young, have been killed in the province; most of the killings took place this year.

All told, the second front of the war on terror exacted a heavy toll on the Left. Citing reports by the human rights alliance Karapatan, the BC Committee found that there were 19 cases of human rights violations every week where at least two persons were killed.

Based on 1,545 cases documented since Jan.2001 when Macapagal-Arroyo took over as president, 167 activists, mass leaders and suspected NPA sympathizers were killed; 851 suspected terrorists were also arrested without warrant of whom more than 100 were tortured.

Twenty-seven persons went missing. Eleven of them who surfaced later bore signs of severe physical and psychological torture.

Biggest victim

Probably the biggest victim of Macapagal-Arroyo’s war on terror was the government’s peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF). The peace talks that were being held in Oslo, Norway last year broke down when an NPA team assassinated Rodolfo Aguinaldo, governor-turned-congressman of Cagayan province. He was a top intelligence man of Marcos during martial accused of a litany of human rights violations.

Backdoor attempts to resume the talks took a back seat this year with the launching of the anti-terror war against the Left. And as the year drew to a close, both sides desisted from declaring a truce for the holidays. Peace advocates from various sides of the political spectrum remained hopeful that peace would be given a chance and the roots of war would be addressed by the government.

Meanwhile, more U.S. troops will reportedly be deployed in provinces outside Basilan  such as Sulu early 2003. Because the new forces were to go after remnants of the Abu Sayyaf, the new deployment was an admission that the first military mission against the bandit group was a failure. The fact remained, however, that the new forces are part of the U.S. strategy’s forward deployment in the Philippines and Southeast Asia where a strong and permanent military presence has been envisioned.

Ka Roger, CPP spokesperson, predicted over a week ago the launching of more tactical offensives by the NPA. He also warned American soldiers to refrain from intruding into any of the NPA’s 130 guerrilla fronts in the country otherwise they will be fair target. Bulatlat.com

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