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No Sign of Exit for U.S. Special Forces

The recent report of the Texas-based Stratfor about the possible metamorphosis of the U.S. armed presence in Basilan into America's forward base in the region confirms local cause-oriented groups' fears that the U.S. soldiers are here to stay indefinitely and that their presence could fuel instability not only here but also in Southeast Asia.

By BOBBY TUAZON

BULATLAT.COM

In the weeks ahead, the U.S. military will be extending its "civic action" projects beyond Basilan to other parts of the Philippines. Balikatan 02-2, this year's second phase of joint military exercises between American and Filipino troops, just took off last week in Nueva Ecija and other parts of Central Luzon. More war games are scheduled later this year and in the years to come in what a senior analyst connected with the U.S. state department confirmed early this year as resembling a "permanent-temporary presence" of U.S. forces in the Philippines.

Joint military exercises resumed early this year after a brief lull since the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) was ratified by the Senate in May 1999. But the war games and special training activities took more momentum and a bigger scale in the aftermath of U.S. President George W. Bush's launching of "Operation Enduring Freedom."

In the Philippines, which is described as the second front of Bush's global war on terrorism, some 200 U.S. special forces arrived in Mindanao as early as October to blaze the trail for a deeper engagement on the island particularly in Basilan beginning February this year. What has happened, therefore, is that while there is greater intensity in the military exercises in other parts of the country the mission of U.S. special forces in Basilan - now numbering almost 1,000 - is appearing to be boundless.

An April 26 report by the Singapore Straits Times in fact reveals a proposal by Admiral Dennis Blair, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, to expand the mission of the American forces from just assisting Filipino soldiers in their rescue mission of an American missionary couple, to combat duties not only in Basilan but in other parts of Mindanao as well.

It is baffling to imagine why, despite the presence of some 14,000 Philippine troops in Basilan and beefed up by U.S. special forces since October - a period of seven months now - the Burnhams have not been rescued from their Abu Sayyaf captors. Even more puzzling is the report that the couple's release is being negotiated through ransom, with full knowledge of Washington which maintains a "no-ransom" policy with "terrorist kidnappers."

The answers lie beyond what the U.S. troops' spokesperson in the Philippines and the country's defense officials say. And these answers suggest that the war exercises and the increase in the deployment of U.S. special forces could foment instability in the country contrary to what their mission is supposed to achieve and could even drag the Philippines into an armed conflict in Southeast Asia.

A separate elite force

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOFs) or "Special Forces" now number 46,000 including Army Green Berets, Rangers, Special Operations Aviation, psychological operations and civil affairs units; Navy Sea-Air-Land Forces (SEALs) and special boat units; and Air Force special operations squadrons. Being an elite force, SOFs take their command direct from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) through the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

Under Section 167 of Title 10, U.S. Code which created the special operations command, SOF operations include, among others, direct action (small-scale strikes), unconventional or irregular warfare, civil affairs and psychological operations (psyops or influencing public opinion), foreign internal defense (organizing and training host country paramilitary forces), counterterrorism and humanitarian assistance. The section also authorizes the assistant secretary to assign SOFs for other special activities which the Code does not elaborate, however.

The magnitude of authority given to SOFs covers not only engaging in political and military operations to support the host government - but also in unconventional activities to support internal forces out to change a standing government, especially if its existence threatens instability in the region (read: unfriendly to the United States). This is one reason why, according to Douglas Valentine, SOFs act as adjuncts of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Valentine, whose book, The Phoenix Program, is described by Alfred W. McCoy as the "most definitive account of the CIA's most secret and deadly covert operation in the Vietnam war," says the U.S. Special Forces were modeled on the German SS and, like the SS, their "unconventional" mission is to wage war against guerrillas (partisans during the last war) and the civilian population which supports them.

One of the SOFs' special weapons is "civic action" which is generally thought to mean only road construction, repair of public facilities or medical mission. Because civic action is part of the SOFs' irregular warfare, it is per se a form of irregular warfare which is intended not as a show of benevolence to a captive audience but to "win the hearts and minds" of the population in support of the SOFs' covert operations.

A foremost authority in civic action, Gen. Ed Lansdale, who was a CIA official during the Magsaysay years, combined this program (rebel amnesty, token land reform, candy from soldiers and a "reformer" president) with ruthless military tactics and psychological warfare. He became an expert on this that he also saw action in Vietnam and other countries to help fight America's wars.

The U.S.-based Virtual Truth Commission says that civic action provided cover in Indonesia, as in the Philippines and Vietnam, for psywar.

Foreign military training

As in Basilan and other parts of the country, SOFs are regularly involved in training foreign militaries. Today, in the light of Bush's war on terrorism, some 100,000 foreign police and military forces from more than 150 countries are receiving training from U.S. forces within the United States and overseas, according to the 27-page report, "U.S. Foreign Military Training: Global Reach, Global Power." These training activities particularly in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Central Asia, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe, are being conducted not for nothing, however.

According to Kenneth Bacon, spokesman of the U.S. defense department, although the training of foreign troops "resemble security assistance activities funded through the foreign assistance program, the whole training program is not designed to train the forces of other countries. It's designed to train (U.S.) special forces in how forces of other countries operate."

In the global design of U.S. military strategy, SOFs are in the frontline of small and large American military for frequent and expanding overseas deployments in the form of "forward basing, forward deploying or pre-positioning assets." Based on the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, their missions include "show-of-force operations, interventions, limited strikes, no-fly zone enforcement, maritime sanctions enforcement, counterterrorism operations and others."

In the Pentagon's view, these operations, although designed to deter so-called sources of instability, are always with the end in view of "defending and protecting U.S. national interests...U.S. Armed Forces advance national security by applying military power as directed to help shape the international environment and respond to the full spectrum of crises." ("The National Military Strategy," 1997)

Bush and his defense officials have been explicit enough to say that the U.S. troop deployment in Mindanao is part of America's efforts to cripple the operations of "terrorist groups" not only in the Philippines but also in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia (the world's biggest Islamic country) and Malaysia (which has a significant Muslim population). Whether true or not, the recent report of the Texas-based Stratfor about the possible metamorphosis of the U.S. armed presence in Basilan into America's forward base in the region confirms local cause-oriented groups' fears that the U.S. soldiers are here to stay indefinitely and that their presence could fuel instability not only here but also in Southeast Asia.

Locally, the Communist Party of the Philippines which commands the New People's Army, has served notice that its forces will fight back if attacked by the U.S. troops. In Indonesia and Malaysia, there is as yet no absolute evidence showing that the separatist movements there are led or supported by terrorists whom the CIA and Pentagon say are linked to the al Qaida. These separatist movements, in the first place, are generations older than al Qaida, which traces its birth to CIA covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"Ultimately," the Stratfor report says, "U.S. operations in the southern Philippines are directed less at defeating the Abu Sayyaf and more at establishing a forward operation base in Southeast Asia - with an eye on Indonesia as a likely first target."

And the Arroyo administration may not even be aware that its friend Bush could be dragging the country into yet another proxy war in the region. Bulatlat.com

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