Analysis

Feeding the Poor with Bullets
GMA’s economic agenda and the terror campaign

Under pressure to stop the growing number of military-instigated killings, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is unperturbed and directs full-scale military operations which have targeted civilian leaders and activists all over the country. Her defense secretary harps that a new counter-insurgency strategy is needed to pave the way for the country’s economic renewal.

By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat

Armed Left – the main obstacle to the country’s economic renewal. 

This is the line being pursued by the Macapagal-Arroyo government as it steps up its “anti-terror” campaign against the New People’s Army (NPA). Unable to crush the NPA – recent reports show that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is actually suffering a heavy toll from the Red army – the government’s security forces are aiming their most vicious attacks against legal activists and personalities tagged by the AFP as the NPA’s “support system.”

No doubt the current policy is a reversal of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s earlier declaration to address the socio-economic roots of rebellion in the country and use the military solution as just a component. The policy places the AFP and other state security forces under this “economic agenda” and if, in the pursuit of this program government forces use brutal pre-emptive strikes against the NPA, its civilian mass base and other “support systems” so be it. After all, Macapagal-Arroyo has adopted the U.S. global “war on terror” lock, stock and barrel – all civilian casualties are a collateral damage.

In the long run, the NPA angle as the main obstacle to Macapagal-Arroyo’s 10-point economic agenda is being hyped to insulate the presidency from any attacks blaming her own disastrous economic policies such as the insistence on foreign debt payments, oil deregulation and others as the faultlines of the country’s current financial crisis. Didn’t she say last week while on a trip in Samar that the NPA is to blame for the downturn in that region’s tourism industry? Was there ever a tourism industry in Samar in the first place?

Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz who sees the NPA as the “greatest internal security threat” is now talking of a “revised strategy” that, he believes, should end the 36-year communist-led rebellion in six to 10 years. The AFP, he said last April, is now “updating and fine-tuning” the military campaign toward accomplishing the 6-10 year timetable.

Mindanao war

The new strategy, he said, includes using the AFP as the main counter-insurgency unit thus rectifying the current law that assigns the national police to address this internal security threat. He also thought it was wrong for the ousted Estrada presidency to earmark massive military resources to southern Mindanao in a bid to defeat the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. From a strategic point of view, he said, it is important to forge peace with the MILF – which is being bribed to accept a $30 million initial aid package by the USAID – in order to free two and a half Army divisions now deployed in the Moro South so they could concentrate on the NPA.

Defense officials estimate that the counter-insurgency program will need about P90 billion ($1.64 billion) in the next 12 years to buy military equipment and finance civic action projects like school infrastructures in areas influenced by the NPA, among others. “We need mobility,” AFP vice chief Rear Adm. Ariston delos Reyes said, “trucks, transport helicopters and transport ships – given the widely dispersed nature of insurgent forces.”

Cruz also lamented the fact that the Philippine Senate refused to renew the U.S.-Philippine bases pact saying that the U.S. military facilities’ pullout in 1992 deprived the government of millions of dollars in lease contracts and other military aid. Contradicting AFP reports that time, Cruz said it was during 1992-1995 that the ranks of the NPA swelled due to the absence of foreign military aid.

With the government suffering budget deficits, the counter-insurgency campaign and the AFP’s modernization program is expected to rely more on U.S. military aid which this year increased to $80 million from $65 million in 2004. Macapagal-Arroyo is also expected to ask for more military aid when she visits Washington for the third time in September and, to justify her new request, will submit to President Bush her military accomplishment report on the war against both the Abu Sayyaf and the NPA.

Chinese military aid

But the President is also hoping that China – the country’s “new big brother” so she says – will also increase its military assistance which at present stands at $1.2 million. The Beijing government is being convinced to do this – and hence support military operations against the NPA with which it had previous fraternal relations – through investment incentives in infrastructure construction, mining industry and other capital enterprises. The two countries have also agreed to conduct joint oil and marine resources exploration and development in the South China Sea.

Both Macapagal-Arroyo and her defense secretary believe that the current scale of the counter-insurgency campaign should be sustained, blaming the NPA for any civilian unrest arising from the military operations. “If you are able to solve the CPP-NPA threat,” Cruz said, “that will mean a dramatic increase in your economic growth” due to improved agricultural productivity and opening up NPA-influenced areas to tourism and foreign investment.

Lately, several divisions of troops, Marines and special forces have been deployed in Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, Bicol, Cagayan Valley, Eastern Visayas, Bohol, Cebu and in several provinces in Mindanao. Militarization has intensified in several mineral-rich provinces (such as Mindoro Island), agro-corporate plantation and other “development projects” areas which – despite local communities’ opposition – are being opened up for foreign multinational investment and exploitation. Mining-rich provinces occupying nearly half of the country’s landmass have been declared by Macapagal-Arroyo open for multinational investment believing that the move would earn huge government revenues and rescue her deficit-ridden government.

Question is, will Macapagal-Arroyo’s revised military strategy work and free her government from the thorn that is the NPA?

“War on terror”

The President’s counter-insurgency campaign which has, since late 2001, been re-engineered to fit into her “war on terror” policy is proving to be costly in so many ways. Since January this year, 39 activists, legislative coordinators, lawyers, human rights advocates and members of the clergy have been killed by, according to witnesses and rights watchdogs, AFP and other security forces. So many others have been abducted and have gone on missing to join the growing list of desaperecidos.

Including this year’s victims of Macapagal-Arroyo’s terror campaign, the number of people summarily executed since 2001 has reached 525. In all during the period, the human rights alliance Karapatan has documented 4,144 cases of human rights violations ranging from bombing and strafing of civilian populations, forcible evacuation, illegal arrest, torture and others.

That civilians – particularly their mass leaders and legitimate progressive mass organizations – are target of government’s punitive military operations is evidenced by the recent circulation of psyops paraphernalia including powerpoint CDs and books linking legitimate and high-profile organizations with the “communist terrorists.” These organizations including party-list groups have been demonized by Arroyo officials as “fronts’ of the underground Left.

Most of those summarily executed – local officials, lawyers and human rights volunteers among them - were on the AFP’s Order of Battle (OB) which makes anyone listed as a fair target of “neutralization.” Before they were given the final blow, they were personally threatened by military authorities with physical harm and were subjected to surveillance by soldiers and military agents. Some members of Congress are also on the military watchlist. Cruz, a lawyer by profession, appears to play his military strategy with a fascist mindset: “You’re guilty unless you prove yourself innocent.”

That the President as commander-in-chief is accountable for these crimes is also proven by the fact that instead of punishing the military perpetrators – against whom evidence is mounting – she rewards them with promotions in rank and the AFP with budget increases. Part of the AFP’s “internal security operations” – the assassination of NDFP leaders – is also reportedly discussed in Cabinet meetings.

Is counter-insurgency the weapon for economic renewal? The lessons of counter-insurgency operations particularly since the Marcos dictatorship show otherwise. Today, tens and thousands of civilians lose their livelihood and normal lives as they are forced to abandon their farms and residences during intense military operations. Before even Cruz’s revised strategy is over – assuming it will succeed – more lives including women and children would have been wasted, every barrio would have been turned upside down and the rural economic infrastructure left in ruins because of the military’s scorched-earth policy.

Before they destroy more lives, Macapagal-Arroyo and Cruz should rethink whether their military strategy against the Left will deliver the economic construction that it purports to aim or further fan the flames of rebellion. Bulatlat

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