ANALYSIS
U.S. Congress Should Probe into Military Aid to Arroyo Gov’t
Just as members of
the U.S. Congress are now conducting a review of Bush’s war policy in
Iraq, it may well be timely to include a review of the U.S. armed
intervention in the Philippines where the support for the Philippine
military operations has promoted gross and systematic violations of
human rights.
BY BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat
The Philippine
press is being taken for a ride by the PR handlers of both the Arroyo
and U.S. governments. For the past several days, there has been media
hype about the so-called exploits of the Philippine military in southern
Mindanao regarding the “neutralization” of Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG)
leaders Jainal Antel Sali (a.k.a. Abu Sulaiman) and chieftain Khadafy
Janjalani.
Subsequently,
President Gloria M. Arroyo’s defense officials played up U.S. military
assistance in terms of intelligence, surveillance and training that led
to the successful operations. However, they tried to downplay other
reports that it was a million-dollar bounty that led to the killing of
Sulaiman.
The military
operations also led to the unannounced visits in southern Philippines of
FBI and CIA agents apparently to follow up leads regarding the reported
presence of members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Jolo one of whom,
Dulmatin, a suspected Indonesian “bomber,” was reportedly wounded in a
clash with Filipino soldiers last week. JI has links with Osama bin
Laden’s Al Qaida, according to U.S. intelligence.
Providing some clue
to the air of mystery in this buildup is the visit in the country of
U.S. President Bush’s confidante, Karen Hughes, undersecretary for
public diplomacy and public affairs. Hughes’ job is to sell U.S. foreign
policy abroad specifically Bush’s “war on terrorism” and blunt any
negative publicity that may jeopardize the war efforts in Iraq. Her
well-publicized mission last week came at a time when her own president
is facing resistance in the U.S. Congress over his plan to deploy 21,000
more troops to Iraq, which is presently under occupation by 300,000
American forces aside from thousands other troops sent by U.S. coalition
partners.
Bush’s ambiguous
military plan in Iraq led to the defeat of the Republican Party in the
U.S. November elections and the new Democratic majority in both houses
of the U.S. Congress has pledged to review the Iraq war strategy. A
number of key Democrats have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Since the March
2003 invasion of Iraq, more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been lost.
To the American public, however, more devastating has been the death of
more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers amid no tangible signs of victory. Bush’s
job approval rating, which peaked at 90 percent in the wake of 9/11, has
slipped to 30 percent with 66 percent of Americans opposed to sending
more troops.
Jan. 27 march
On Jan. 27, tens of
thousands of Americans from 30 states led by the United for Peace and
Justice (UFPJ) along with anti-war U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq
will march to Washington, DC against the war on terrorism. The march is
being organized to put pressure on the Democrat-dominated Congress to
end the war that, many Americans now believe, began with lies and is
both illegal and immoral. They will ask Congress to “Bring All the
Troops Home Now!”
Hughes is expected
to drumbeat in America the U.S.-assisted Philippine military “feats”
against the ASG in an effort to dampen Bush’s negative rating attributed
to the Iraq quagmire. The Philippine “success story” will be used to
secure decisive votes in the U.S. Congress that would endorse Bush’s
proposal to send additional troops to Iraq and, if that fails, to use it
just the same to justify the increase of troops with or without the
votes of the Congress.
The Abu Sayyaf,
however, should be treated as an entirely different case. More deserving
of congressional scrutiny is how U.S. military aid is being used to
commit war crimes in the Philippines.
The ASG was founded
by remnants of the Islamist mujahadeen, bankrolled and manipulated by
the CIA, the Pakistani intelligence ISI, and elements of Saudi Arabia’s
wealthy elite during the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Philippine Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. called Abu Sayyaf a “CIA
monster.” John Cooley, author of Unholy Wars, says the Abu Sayyaf was
the last of the seven Afghan guerrilla groups to be organized late in
the war in Afghanistan in 1986 or three years before the Soviets
withdrew.
Since the early 1990s, the ASG which by then had gone back to Mindanao,
has been involved chiefly in criminal operations while maintaining
liaisons with both military and local officials. Just as the U.S. has
inflated the al-Qaeda, the U.S. and Philippine officials are playing up
the Abu Sayyaf "monster" and its alleged connection to al-Qaeda to
justify a bigger U.S. military assistance program and bigger operations
in the Asia Pacific region.
Months before 9/11,
the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had boasted of having
“neutralized” the ASG, reduced to an insignificant few. Just the same,
Mrs. Arroyo’s support for Bush’s “war against terrorism” led to the
proclamation of the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia as the
war’s “second front” thus paving the way for the entry into the country
of thousands of U.S. forces in the guise of war exercises and training
support for the Philippine military actions against the ASG.
U.S.-assisted military operations against the ASG have resulted in the
killing of scores of Muslim civilians, massacres, several incidents of
torture and the displacement of tens of thousands of communities. All
these could constitute, under international law, war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
Center of
military partnership
The center of this
close Arroyo-Bush military partnership, however, is the total war
against the armed Left which, reports say, has included the
“neutralization” of its “vulnerable” infrastructure of support – alleged
to be communist “front organizations.” The internal security plan,
Operation Plan Bantay Laya, now on its second phase, has led to the
political assassination of 824 activists and the enforced disappearance
of more than a hundred other individuals. The Arroyo administration’s
counter-insurgency campaign has been boosted by increased U.S. military
aid, amounting to some $300 million, special operations trainings and
other types of support.
Just as members of
the U.S. Congress are now conducting a review of Bush’s war policy in
Iraq, it may well be timely to include a review of the U.S. armed
intervention in the Philippines where the support for the Philippine
military operations has promoted gross and systematic violations of
human rights. The U.S. Congress can start its inquiry by reviewing the
recent report of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Citing
the U.S. State Department’s 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices, the GAO confirmed that elements of the Philippine
government’s security forces “were responsible for arbitrary, unlawful
and, in some cases, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture,
and arbitrary arrest and detention.” The Bush administration may be
asked to answer for violating U.S. laws that restrict the provision of
military aid to foreign governments whose security forces are found to
have committed gross violations of human rights.
Various lawyers
groups in the U.S. have earlier called on the U.S. Congress to conduct
an investigation of the alleged use of military funds from Washington by
its local counterpart for political repression in the Philippines. In
June last year, the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional
Rights and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, also
called for a probe into “the use of U.S. funding for Philippine military
operations against the legal Left that are being conducted under the
guise of the war on terror.”
Similar calls were
also issued by Church institutions and human rights watchdogs based in
the U.S. Bulatlat
A DNA test by the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that a
body dug up in Patikul, Sulu last December was that of Janjalani,
who was reportedly killed in an encounter with Philippine Marines in
September last year.
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