U.S. military presence in the Philippines today relies heavily on covert U.S. military involvement through U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOFs), service intelligence organizations, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other covert U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) playing a central role. Other agencies include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Peace Corps, which specialize in the “hearts-and-minds approach” using so-called humanitarian or non-lethal aid. Covert action includes unconventional warfare, intelligence operations and psychological operations (psy-ops) in target areas such as remote communities suspected of being “controlled or influenced by insurgents”. Their activities provide the fundamental elements in supporting local counterinsurgency operations.

Under the VFA, “U.S. civilian personnel directed by the U.S. Department of Defense” are also given special rights and privileges like their uniformed U.S. military counterparts. Their range of activities include economic, civic, military, diplomatic and political action, all aimed at achieving the political/psychological (psy-ops) objective to undercut a movement’s support base and destroy its credibility and influence to provide support for U.S. objectives. Humanitarian or civic action missions, in the form of medical/dental (MEDCAP) teams purportedly to meet human needs, are meant to penetrate local political infrastructures and achieve the objectives of psychological operations. This is what U.S. manuals on counterinsurgency say about these “non-lethal tools” for counterinsurgency and about the purposes of these activities (US Army, 1975).

This is also why U.S. intelligence operatives and counterinsurgency specialists under the coverage of the VFA now are seen freely roaming the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Quezon City and other AFP camps. They provide critical battlefield intelligence and communications/logistical support for large and small-unit local counterinsurgency operations.

Let us review the real role of the “humanitarian missions” of the U.S. Department of Defense. During the Philippine-American War, General Arthur McArthur (General Douglas McArthur’s father who served in the U.S. Army during its “pacification” of the Philippines) made the following frank statement before the 57th Congress of the United States:

“One of my purposes was to improve roads for strategic purposes entirely. I got $1 million gold for the purpose. Whatever incidental advantage arose to the community was, of course, in consequence of the military necessity. My view was to make passable roads during all seasons, so that by assembling troops at central points and connecting the outpost by wire, we could rapidly move from the rendezvous to the extremities, and thereby avoid the necessity of scattering into so many posts.”

United States Marines and Special Operations Forces are actually doing battlefield intelligence and psy-ops as they conduct infrastructure, civic action and “humanitarian missions” with USAID personnel in many parts of the country today, using the VFA as a cover. Meanwhile, the Philippines’ VFA Commission, which was ostensibly created to oversee the implementation of VFA provisions, including monitoring violations, has only become the principal apologist for the onerous agreement, while consistently covering up even the most brazen violations of the agreement by U.S. military forces.

Resistance to VFA

The people of Mindanao, especially in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, are waging a continuous campaign to stop U.S. military intervention—both covert and overt—in the internal conflict, which has only complicated the situation in the second largest island of the Philippines. Lately, the people of Bicol region have scored a tactical victory in the struggle against the restoration of U.S. military forces by forcing the rollback of 6,000 U.S. troops and forcing them to send instead a so-called 100-member U.S. military “humanitarian mission” in the Balikatan exercises. BAN Balikatan (Bikol Against Balikatan) and the SUMABA KA (Speak Out!) or Sorsogon United Movement for Peace Against Balikatan have successfully forced the retreat of BK ’09 into a defensive position. A people’s caravan that traveled in all of Bicolandia’s provinces highlighted a strong people’s resistance to the VFA which is being used as a camouflage to U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency and the restoration of de facto basing rights in the country.

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