Analysis
NPA: U.S. Forces Next Target?

As the U.S. military fields thousands of troops for the new war exercises in the Philippines this month, reports from Pentagon say that its special forces will engage I actual fighting. Like last year, U.S. soldiers are expected to engage the Abu Sayyaf in combat but their lethal weapons may also be aimed at the more determined and ideologically-driven New People’s Army in Mindanao and other provinces.

BY BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat.com

While its war machines aimed at Iraq are stalled in their tracks at the United Nations, European Union, NATO, the Arab League of Nations and, lately, the 111-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the U.S. government’s military plans are running smoothly elsewhere. U.S. forces and covert operations are keeping the guns of aggression blazing in Afghanistan, Colombia, Venezuela and other areas as American naval fleets are repositioning in the Korean Peninsula for a possible shot at Pyongyang. Thousands of U.S. troops and special forces are deployed in more than 140 countries in the guise of conducting joint war exercises and anti-terrorism.

This year, thanks to the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, U.S. armed interventionism in the Philippines will deepen and the prospects of escalating war exercises into actual combat missions against the Marxist New People’s Army (NPA) have increased. The pretext is to support the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) operations against the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a holdup-for-ransom band that traces its roots to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) covert training of mujaheedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. But the eventual target is the stronger, ideologically-driven NPA, tagged by the U.S. state department as a “terrorist group” and the Philippines’ top security threat.

In the new military blueprint concurred to by Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes during a meeting with his superior, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in Pentagon last year the U.S. military will hold at least 17 war exercises this year. In the joint U.S.-Philippine defense program, “exercises” will be conducted for five years without prejudice to renewal. Operation Balance Piston is already ongoing in Luzon in northern Philippines while 2,000 U.S. troops including contingents of Green Berets will begin Balikatan 03-1 exercises in Sulu in the south to replicate last year’s training mission in Basilan, traditional lair of the Abu Sayyaf.

Despite assurances by Philippine defense officials that the Americans will not engage the enemy in armed combat which would violate not only the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings but also the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), U.S. forces did engage in firefights with the ASG, wounding even a suspected bandit in Basilan July last year, according to an international fact-finding mission. Considering the tight screen imposed on foreign and local journalists covering the war exercises, there is no ruling out other operations that could indicate armed engagements by the U.S. forces, even if such acts would always be justified as “defensive.”

‘Not an exercise’

Debunking denials by Malacañang – and evasiveness by Reyes himself – a top Pentagon official was quoted by CNN as saying last Thursday: “This will be a no-holds-barred effort. This is not an exercise.” Proof that U.S. military missions in Mindanao are expected to deepen is the arrival of missile-mounted U.S. Navy warships, more helicopters, Harrier aircraft and landing craft off the coast of Sulu – war equipment not seen in last year’s exercises.

But another top U.S. general, emerging from a talk with Macapagal-Arroyo recently, confirmed that new military operations by the U.S. in the Philippines will be fielded not only against the ASG but “other terror groups.” In Congress, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee Marcos revealed that a U.S. defense official had confirmed plans to use America’s forward presence in the region for operations against “Islamic fundamentalist groups.”

The latest deployment of American forces and covert operatives followed months of planning and coordination between U.S. President George W. Bush, Rumsfeld, Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander-in-chief of Pacific Command (CINCPAC), and top Philippine officials including Macapagal-Arroyo and Reyes, a report from Washington said. A senior Pentagon official also said: “Over time, that assistance takes different shapes and forms. The Philippines have invited us to expand our role with them.”

Last year at the culmination of Balikatan war exercises, an AFP official boasted that with the increased capability of the military in destroying the Abu Sayyaf, subsequent war exercises and U.S. forces could be shifted toward fighting the NPA. Filipino troops who received training from U.S. special forces have since been dumped in known NPA lairs in Luzon and other provinces.

Assessment teams

Reports also indicate that secret assessment teams have been in the country to determine the scale of U.S. military operation. Confirming their presence in a press statement last week, Communist Party spokesperson, Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal said that some U.S.military officials have been “clandestinely doing the rounds of AFP camps in the NPA’s guerrilla fronts apparently in preparation for a more direct involvement of U.S. troops in counter-guerrilla operations.”

Rosal revealed that a U.S. military official, Army Maj. Jeffrey D. Antonio, was spotted alongside soldiers of the 203^rd, 901^st and 902^nd brigades of the Philippine Army during inspection tours of AFP operations in Bicol.

“The U.S. and its puppet government in the Philippines are more and more moving toward the full deployment of American troops for direct combat operations in the Philippines,” the CPP spokesperson said.

Macapagal-Arroyo’s close cooperation with the Bush administration in expanding U.S. armed intervention in the Philippines had been guaranteed as early as mid-2000. As a vice president then, she assured visiting Adm. Dennis Blair, then chief of the Pacific Command, of her support for the command’s grand design to curb “terrorism” and “insurgency” in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia.

She reiterated the same assurances when she met Bush in Washington in Nov. 2001. The two presidents agreed to step up military operations against the NPA, tag its alleged leaders including Jose Maria Sison as “terrorists,” and contrive plans to scuttle peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF) so as to give the AFP the upper hand in launching more intense counter-insurgency operations.

The Nov. 2001 talks signaled the intensification of AFP’s counter-insurgency warfare which included the fielding of battalions of forces in many provinces and the assassination of alleged NPA sympathizers and mass leaders including 29 Bayan Muna activists.

Military solution

All the national security strategy and military doctrines of the Bush administration leave no ground for confronting so-called security threats through political and economic means except through military force. America, Bush officials have said, can fight several wars in as many war theaters – including the Philippines - at the same time and it is able to do this because of its undisputed military power throughout the world.

This a la Rambo and superhawk arrogance plays well into the hands of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration which has imbibed the militarist solution of Reyes and his ilk in the defense establishment. The defense department and AFP have long played the role of America’s surrogate army in the region for decades, and is one reason why until today the Philippines has earned the notoriety in Asia and in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which is now meeting in Kuala Lumpur as America’s puppet. Reyes and his generals now believed that, like their American mentors, they can fight the NPA, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and remnants of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) while conducting mopping-up operations against the ASG all rolled into one.

Banking on its self-proclaimed popularity in the Philippines in the light of its war against terrorism, the U.S. military is gearing for a full-scale war against the NPA. Pentagon wants to believe that by downgrading NPA strength, if not completely annihilating it, will boost prospects in using the country for a greater power projection in the region and in fighting other armed groups particularly Islamic movements that are opposed to American superpower hegemony. Bulatlat.com

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