Shadowy Groups and Bloody Deceits
of the War of Terrorism

Filipinos have every reason to turn off the White House antiterrorist soundbites, expose Bush and Gloria’s bloody deceits, get commonly reacquainted with their deep-seated patriotic impulses, and urge fellow world citizens to junk this ugly Bush-Macapagal-Arroyo war here in the Philippines along with their common repudiation of Bush’s impending nuclear-laced war in Iraq.

By Joel Garduce 
Written for the Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS)

Talk of ugly war is thickening by the day, and not only because of developments exposing the Bush administration’s being hell-bent on unilateral war against the Iraqi people. A recent unexpected turn of events at the local war front is causing the heightened war jitters as well.

I’m referring to the recent published statements of a relatively new group that emerged in Mindanao. Calling itself the “true-blooded Al-harakatul Al-Islamiya”-- which is the original name of the Abu Sayyaf--- the new group vowed a “new war against the government.” Its self-declared spokesman, Hamsiraji Sali, himself an Abu Sayyaf leader from Basilan, said in a phone interview with journalists that his group is a “new breed of terrorists” that will aim to “sabotage any peace talks entered into by any Muslim group or organization with the Philippine government” and while he claims they “won't stage kidnappings or beheadings for the meantime,” they nevertheless will “sabotage the economy by destroying all electric posts, towers and lines.” Sali’s pronouncements came amid blasts of major power pylons across Mindanao by unidentified armed men that adversely affected the power situation in the southern island, albeit tentatively.

Eid Kabalu, spokesperson of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), promptly called Sali’s Al-harakatul Al-Islamiya as a creation of the military to “maintain status quo” in Mindanao. To muddle these MILF assertions, southern command chief Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya doubted the capacity of Al-harakatul Al-Islamiya in launching the attacks it claims to be doing and stuck to pointing to the MILF as the one responsible for the recent assaults.

Mindanao events impeccably timed

These conflicting statements nonetheless, the emergence of this new self-proclaimed terrorist group could not have been better timed, as they were broadcast amid growing public opposition to the new Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) joint military operations between U.S. and Philippine troops.

The emergence of Al-harakatul Al-Islamiya tends to bolster the perception of a growing local network of terrorism revolving around the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. And these perceptions of growing terrorism will surely be used to the hilt by both the Bush and Macapagal-Arroyo governments to press the case for continuing and even escalating Balikatan operations, which claim as their target the Abu Sayyaf terrorists.

There are big problems with this tack, though.

First off, these new Balikatan operations, which has as its highlight the invasion here of at least 1,700 U.S. troops, have come under fire from a wide spectrum of Filipinos for allowing these foreign troops a combat role, something that flagrantly violates the 1987 Philippine constitution banning foreign military troops and facilities.

White House anti-terrorist bombast a bloody deceit

Which brings us to the second big problem about these Balikatan operations. To claim that these ensuing combat operations by U.S. troops in Mindanao and elsewhere are against the terrorist Abu Sayyaf and its kind -- as the White House and U.S. military officials’ recent pronouncements say -- is to foist a bloody deceit on the Filipino people.

This is so because if the Bush administration was really serious in defeating the Abu Sayyaf, it definitely need not violently trample on the Philippine Constitution and waste hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayers’ money by sending thousands of American troops in Mindanao.

All Bush and his government need to do to really defeat the Abu Sayyaf here is just this: enforce the extradition agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines and send back here just one American, albeit one with documented ties to the Abu Sayyaf -- confirmed terrorist and CIA operative Michael Terrence Meiring.

There’s more to the Meiring affair than meets the eye

The Meiring affair was the biggest underreported act of terrorism here in 2002. Michael Meiring was caught last May with explosives in his possession at the Evergreen Hotel in Davao City. An inadvertent blast caused by these explosives of his severely damaged his hotel room and seriously injured him.

But before he could be interrogated by Davao City authorities, foreign agents who identified themselves as coming from the U.S. National Security Council and the Federal Bureau of Investigation preemptively cordoned Meiring from criminal inquiries and whisked him away to a U.S. medical facility, far from the prying public light. Such affronts to well-meaning police investigations rubbed even Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte the wrong way.

A few weeks after the explosion, a searing expose of Meiring’s ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the terrorist Abu Sayyaf was published in the Manila Times. Last September, Davao City Prosecutor Raul Bendico announced the city’s findings on the Evergreen Hotel blast and proclaimed Meiring a “terrorist.”

Concealing a hideous web of terrorism

Given this American terrorist’s exposed ties to the local Abu Sayyaf extremists, proceeding with Meiring’s prosecution here and revealing his entire terrorist network, including all the abettors of the Abu Sayyaf gang -- in and out of the Philippine and U.S. governments, in both high and low levels---are far more productive in busting this gangster terrorism than sending thousands of young Americans to die here in an illegal war with dubious purposes.

Ten months after the Meiring affair though, the Bush administration refuses until now to extradite Meiring, thanks to supportive inaction by President Gloria Arroyo and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes on the matter.

There can then be no other conclusion for Filipinos to draw from such grave complacency with terrorism: Bush and his regime -- aided by Macapagal-Arroyo’s government -- is fiercely hiding Meiring’s ties, and his CIA’s active ongoing ties, to the Abu Sayyaf terrorists (who, after all, are led by veterans of the US-backed war in Afghanistan in the 1980’s who were funded, trained and indoctrinated by the CIA, just like Osama bin Laden and many of his cohorts under al Qaeda). In effect, they are thus preserving unharmed a covert, hideous web of terrorism and its ongoing designs here.

Given this backdrop, the emergence of new shadowy groups as the Abu Sayyaf-affiliated Al-harakatul Al-Islamiya and recent “destabilization” incidents in Mindanao take on a darker significance. Is the Bush government, through the CIA and the entire U.S. illegal covert-action apparatus that includes parts of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, now putting into place a “strategy of stabilization through destabilization” here in the Philippines as a conveniently manufactured pretext for a major U.S. armed intervention and occupation here?

Until Meiring’s prosecution here and his full, no-holds-barred story reveal otherwise, the conclusions and questions posed here will have to stick. And Filipinos have every reason to turn off the White House antiterrorist soundbites, expose Bush and Gloria’s bloody deceits, get commonly reacquainted with their deep-seated patriotic impulses, and urge fellow world citizens to junk this ugly Bush-Macapagal-Arroyo war here in the Philippines along with their common repudiation of Bush’s impending nuclear-laced war in Iraq. Bulatlat.com

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