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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