Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Vol. VI, No. 27      August 13 - 19, 2006      Quezon City, Philippines

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ANALYSIS

Macapagal-Arroyo’s ‘Silent War’ Vs the Left
Merging Executive Policy and Military Strategy

First of three parts

In the long-drawn war against the Marxist guerrillas where force takes the lead, the country’s security forces have had a reproachable record in human rights threatening even legitimate political dissent, the peaceful advocacy of radical reform and, now, the use of the legislature to push for patriotic and progressive legislation.

BY BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat

“We have been in this game for decades. Perhaps it is high time to put into play an end-game strategy that will terminate this lingering problem.”

Thus reads a briefing paper on Operation Plan Bantay Laya (or Oplan Freedom Watch – OBL), a strategic plan of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that was implemented beginning 2002. Shortly thereafter, OBL, originally designed against the Abu Sayyaf – a kidnap-for-ransom group that acquired a U.S. spin as a “terrorist” – was extended as a strategy against the No. 1 “state enemy” – the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed component, the New People’s Army (NPA).

Echoing this “end-game strategy” against the underground Left – which has waged an armed struggle since 1969 – Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz vowed in 2005 to crush the country’s major “national security threat” in six to 10 years. Early this year, Macapagal-Arroyo’s Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security (COC-IS) adjusted OBL as the “Enhanced National Internal Security Plan.” Government had earlier suspended unilaterally the Joint Agreement on Security and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), an 11-year-old accord signed jointly by the peace panels of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). Denounced by the NDFP as in violation of the terms of the internationally-recognized accord itself, the act stripped NDFP personnel, consultants and staffs of security and immunity guarantees thus making them vulnerable to military and police attacks.

In the campaign against the armed Left, OBL or the internal security plan was to be carried out in priority regions combining combat, intelligence and civil-military operations. But reports say the Oplan also stresses the “neutralization” of communists’ “sectoral front organizations” to make it effective. By experience and as understood by rights watchdogs and militant groups, to “neutralize” translates into physical elimination.

Neither the presumptive President of the Republic, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, nor her defense department has denied the existence of the AFP’s top secret military strategy against the armed Left. In fact a few weeks ago, as commander in chief, Macapagal-Arroyo directed the AFP to finish off the Leftist “insurgency” in two years instead of six or 10, and earmarked an additional P1 billion to boost the counter-insurgency military offensives. She had earlier mobilized the Philippine National Police (PNP) for counter-insurgency operations making this campaign a joint military-police program.

As in past regimes, the military approach to fighting the armed revolutionary movement has once again underlined giving the AFP, police, paramilitary and other security forces – including anti-communist vigilantes – the upper hand in the fight against the armed Left. In the long-drawn war against the Marxist guerrillas where force takes the lead, the country’s security forces have had a reproachable record in human rights threatening even legitimate political dissent, the peaceful advocacy of radical reform and, now, the use of the legislature to push for patriotic and progressive legislation. This is based consistently on the findings of the UN Committee on Human Rights, Amnesty International, other reputable international and Philippines rights watchdogs and lawyers groups, the World Council of Churches and other church organizations, the country’s own Committee on Human Rights (CHR) and even human rights investigations by the Congress itself.

List of atrocities

Macapagal-Arroyo, however, can no longer evade responsibility for the politically-motivated killings that have claimed the lives of, to date, 725 persons many of them identified with cause-oriented organizations and progressive political parties. The victims have included regional and provincial leaders of these organizations, rights volunteers, church leaders, lawyers, physicians, students, journalists as well as farmers, workers, women and children. In recent months, several rights watchdogs and fact-finding groups have fingered the presumptive president’s security forces as the probable perpetrators in the reported killings that became a pattern after Macapagal-Arroyo took power in 2001.

Seen recently as proof of the presumptive president’s role in the political killings was when she publicly commended in her July 24 state-of-the-nation address (Sona) Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan for his anti-insurgency record. Tagged as the “butcher” of many activists and several times promoted by the president herself, Palparan has been most aggressive in the AFP’s anti-insurgency drive particularly in “neutralizing” the underground Left’s alleged legal political infrastructure. Sixty percent of reported killings and abductions during the past year occurred in Central Luzon – Palparan’s present assignment. The presidential praise heaped on Palparan sent a signal for the military to stay on course insofar as the “neutralization” of alleged leftist front organizations is concerned. Thus in just three weeks, the number of summary executions and abductions victimizing activists, organizers and party-list leaders has increased.

Records show that the political assassinations or extra-judicial executions of suspected “enemies of the state” have escalated alongside other military-police operations such as forced mass evacuations, hamletting or herding of whole communities into military garrisons and the militarization of villages that has undermined civilian rule. This escalation became noticeable especially since Macapagal-Arroyo launched her own “war on terror” late 2001 in exchange for continued U.S. support for her regime and increase in U.S. armed presence in the country.

Deepening U.S.-Philippine military cooperation paved the way for reconfiguring the “war on terror” into an all-out war against the Left. Labeling the CPP-NPA and its suspected “front organizations” as “terrorist” became a strategy to give the Macapagal-Arroyo regime a new “ideological” bent to project the Left – and its alleged “front organizations” – as the country’s main problem and thus diffuse public criticism on the president’s constitutional legitimacy, corruption and other issues. The further aim is to vilify the Left as a “criminal” organization without any ideological and political cause making it subject to the use of full force by the state.

At the presidential level, this is the policy pursued by Macapagal-Arroyo’s COC-IS and the AFP’s current doctrines of anti-insurgency-terrorism as well as the OBL. An AFP document dated 2004, “Military Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” lumps the NPA with the ASG as a “terrorist group” justifying the use of “force on terror” by government’s internal security forces, namely, the AFP, paramilitary and the Philippine National Police (PNP). Force is used against the enemy’s “predetermined targets” such as its “critical vulnerabilities” and “support systems.” The AFP’s anti-insurgency-terrorism doctrine is at the heart of its strategy that commands implementation by all internal security forces through military and police operations.

Psywar, black prop and media

The reconstructed “war on terror” or internal security plan, has been waged through a combination of psywar, black propaganda and, for such purposes, the use of the trimedia, along with the drawing up what rights watchdogs describe as a virtual “orders of battle” (OBs or hit lists). For propaganda, top AFP high and regional commands have organized press briefings as well as town assemblies where at least two major power point presentations with printed versions were shown: “Knowing the Enemy” and the “Trinity of War.” These two controversial presentations include a long list of legitimate mass organizations, NGOs including Church and media institutions, many – but not all – of them known to be active critics of government and advocates of social and political reform. They were named as having links with the underground Left. What drew public outrage was that not only these psywar paraphernalia were fabricated and put legitimate organizations under negative public perception but also placed them and the lives of their leaders and members in physical harm. The hit lists – if true – practically put the law in mockery and make the military the prosecutor, judge and executioner all rolled into one.

Documentation by rights watchdogs and fact-finding missions shows a pattern in the political murders and forced disappearances since 2001: Many of the victims had been named in military hit lists or had received warnings and physical threats (sometimes through text messages) from military authorities; many were ambushed by motorcycle-riding, hooded gunmen, still others were shot in front of their own families. Victims of abduction were found to have been brought to military camps only to disappear afterwards; vehicles used for the killings and abductions were seen either near or inside military headquarters. Reports also show that many victims were targeted not as NPA suspects but as leaders or members of legitimate cause-oriented organizations. Many eyewitnesses have told investigators, including the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and police, that soldiers or military agents were involved.

Newspaper accounts also say that the killings – and the style and circumstances in which these are executed - have spread in many regions citing in particular the case of communist-hunter Palparan whose every assignment – from Mindoro/Southern Tagalog, to Samar-Leyte and now Central Luzon - has been said to leave a trail of blood. Given the spread of the killings and the circumstances and style by which these cases are executed, it is not difficult to believe that these incidents could not have happened – or continue to happen – without orders from some high command or without the authority given, or at least the knowledge of, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The AFP in particular follows a hierarchy and operations in the field are always in pursuance of orders from above. Orders cannot be questioned and these are executed not only because of the hierarchy but also because to refuse them would violate the soldier’s oath. There have also been reports that at in least in one province in northern Philippines, several death squads and hit men had been deployed by some top police officials. Bulatlat

 

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