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The Philippines' sanctuaries of terror
Kit Collier is a consultant to the International Crisis Group and
Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. Malcolm Cook is program director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.
by Kit Collier and Malcolm Cook
The presence of insurgent or terrorist sanctuaries in non-belligerent countries is one of the most intractable, explosive issues in international relations. It was a central fact of the Vietnam War, brought about the destruction of Lebanon, and continues to plague the coalition in Iraq. It is also key to the present war on terror in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam differed from Korea and Malaya, where containment and counterinsurgency prevailed, because the communists could outflank allied forces in South Vietnam by using “neutral” territory in Cambodia and Laos. Like the PLO presence in Lebanon until 1982, this strategy plunged hapless host countries into civil war and provoked invasions by stronger powers, in turn spurring more extremist movements – the Khmer Rouge, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.
Like previous host countries, the Philippines is a weak state, at peace with its neighbors and the West. But, since 1994, its lawless southern islands have replaced Afghanistan as the main training ground and refuge for Southeast Asian jihadists. Most are Indonesians belonging to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Mujahidin Kompak, and other Darul Islam factions.
Graduates of Mindanao’s terror camps, for example, now rival in number the older generation of Southeast Asian Afghan alumni that forged ties with al-Qaeda. Veterans of the Mindanao camps took part in almost every JI-linked bombing since 2000, including the attack that killed hundreds in Bali in 2002. New cohorts will pose a danger for years to come.
The terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, galvanised American interest in the southern Philippines. Mere weeks after the planes hit, Pentagon planners negotiated a return of American troops to Mindanao for the first time since the colonial era. Indeed, Mindanao was the second front in the war on terror until Iraq came to dominate US threat perceptions. Australian Premier John Howard has likewise openly mulled pre-emptive military strikes on terrorist sanctuaries in the region.
Mindanao is not Cambodia or Lebanon, but the essential dilemma is the same. How does one separate the terrorist parasite from its unwilling host, without doing fatal violence to the patient?
In the Philippines, the diagnosis is complicated by the fact that terrorists are embedded in a volatile Muslim insurgency with which the West has no quarrel. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is Southeast Asia’s strongest separatist group. It enjoys popular support, expresses legitimate grievances, and peace talks are underway. Like the Palestinians, however, the MILF is riven by factions, and its leaders cannot, or will not, exclude terrorists from areas that they control.
In part, this reflects political hedging by the MILF in the face of Manila’s incapacity to make meaningful concessions. President Gloria Arroyo’s government is on the ropes, with a state of emergency declared in February, following an abortive coup attempt and months of instability arising from allegations of fraud in the 2004 elections. The allegations involve the armed forces’ manipulation of the Mindanao vote – underscoring how state failure in the south, a politicised military, and paralysis in the capital reinforce each other in a downward spiral.
State failure in the southern Philippines now places the entire region at risk. After a rough passage to democracy, a traditionally strong Indonesian state is reasserting itself, forcing jihadists out, and across Mindanao’s porous frontiers. Despite concerns over conflict in southern Thailand, there are no secessionist enclaves beyond government control, and no indications of foreign terrorist involvement.
Only in the Philippines do state failure, chronic insurgency, and proliferating ties between local and foreign terrorists come together in a lethal cocktail. Combined with a restive military and an impotent administration, the country has become Southeast Asia’s weakest link in the war on terror.
So what is to be done? American forces are probing the sanctuaries in the guise of training exercises, and they are backing targeted air strikes. But they must tread lightly, lest they be drawn into a shooting war, which would catalyse new alliances among local and foreign militants. A conventional military approach failed in Cambodia and Lebanon. It would fail in Mindanao, too.
Instead, surgical military strikes based on an expanded intelligence effort should complement the peace process, prying extremists away from the MILF mainstream. A crucial, if embryonic, mechanism in this campaign is the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group, established by the Philippine government and MILF negotiators to facilitate cooperation against “lawless elements” in MILF territory. The Group’s mandate should be widened, and resources should be provided to allow it to tackle terrorism explicitly.
In return for MILF cooperation, the US, Australia, and other interested countries must pick up political slack and build the government’s capacity to deliver a sustainable peace agreement for Mindanao. Prompt, substantial infusions of post-conflict aid will be indispensable ingredients for peace.
But so will security reforms. The Filipino armed forces must be better equipped to close down any remaining terrorist sanctuaries – and keep them closed. However, this will remain a futile mission until the armed forces are professionalised and depoliticised through reorientation to external defense, border security, and special operations. Only then will they lose their vested interest in an insurgency that has no end.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.www.project-syndicate.org
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More from another planetoid
MEIRING MYSTERY
Angela Ryan “It is always interresting to read what our neighbours are reading. Sometimes it seems like another planet.”
The Meiring Mystery: “Affront to Philippine sovereignty”
Oh for heaven’s sakes. Oberst Meiring’s just another goosestepping Queensland National Party candidate. Or the like.
These buggers do what they please, no matter what planet they’re on, Angela. Let’s not weird out on it.
But has zany DeAnne Kelly & Co given Meiring the thumb’s up?
DeAnne’s quite supportive of the mining industry blowing things up, as they’re giving her a bulging clutch bag of rural rorts and rackets at the moment, by sending of half her electorate in chunks on a slow boat to China.
China’s feudal overlords want to burn it to help with global warming.
For details see Coalition half-budget for details of how the Boyz’ve scooped the guts out of revenue, too, then given some to some voters but most of the rest to mates, then gawped like drunken retarded inbred drooling hillbillies on a spree while a HALF TRILLION DOLLAR current account deficit skyrocketed into Australia’s darkening sky.
Pissing it up against the wall while DeAnne doles it out millions to National Party mates. The bagmen who gave Saddam $290 million to spend on weapons for killing Australian soldiers.
Presumably DeAnne has left Howard’s puny Debt Truck, windscreen smashed and tyres down, slewed at a drunken angle on the verge near Airlie Beach, just by the Unter den Linden am See (next to the jetty).
Now just wait for DeAnne and J Winston Howard’s Monster Raving Loony Reichstag fire. DeAnne, too, likes playing with matches.
And now he’s shot through to get instructions from our Commander-in-Chief, Disneyworld’s™ Mr Ronald Dumbf**k.
On another planet, apparently Mars.
And crazy George likes Mars. He wants to go there.
It can’t be too k’n soon.
Mindane news from another planet
It is always interesting to read what our neighbours are reading. Sometimes it seems like another planet.
Cheers.
Meanwhile... in the real world...
A timorous Alexander Downer aged seven seems set to run up the White Flag when he meets Indonesian Foreign Minister Wiriyuda next week.
And Poohbear won’t say a peep about South Sulawesi gangsters or JI in W Papua.
But he’ll make a lot of promises. For Hunny.
We push back Papuan refugees to the mangle of Freeport mine’s security forces, or we might have to start paying somebody kickbacks.
Serious Hunny. Bigger than Saddam’s AWB bagmen could have dreamt of while they gave blowjobs to handguns at the Palestine.
What about a nice seat on our Reserve Bank board for Rio Tinto?
All that, and de-excising the Australian mainland from Possession Island, too.
Just as well those missing blokes up on Murray wasn’t mistook for anything in the way of illegal uncitizenoids by people with guns and Amada’s agenda on email.
Anything could have happened.
And Eddie McGuire and Sol couldn’t have flew in with wads of gooey Nine™ and Telstra™ cash.
But at least they’ve been spared Koch and the other pushy TV lamebrains.
Not that they will. These people aren’t... you know, WHITE.
And there’s no where to park the k’n McWINNEBAGOS™ (Yank for big stupid campervans full of mirrors – get used to the word, it’s everywhere, like the nasty rissole patties on a bun chain™, or the nasty salty fried chook merchants™ poisoning our kids with their poop, or the non-stop flow across the Pacific of fillums and TV from the Hollywood McVomitorium).
Back to The Three Wise Men in a Boat (loosely based on true story by my cousin, Jerome K Jerome, now out of copyright, not to mention a dog which chews up the camera and drops it in the drink, but luckily not the mobile).
It must be the first time in Australian history that it’s paid to be black.
But imagine if a trio of white blokes had been drifting about for three weeks in the narrow but treacherous seas joining the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and separating FNQ and both Papuas.
Then washed up on a cay and survived on clams and squid. Amid the storm-flecked foam (arrrr, arrrrr, etc).
And got saved by a shrewd mobile phone strategy.
Harry M Miller would have been on a chopper to Mer, or waded ashore like Douglas MacArthur erasing his flight from Bataan.
And quite possibly, if a recording network crew were there to capture it for a fee, mistakenly clad in arse-grass, the better to hide a nest of fat contracts.
But not chewing on raw clam and squid, not to camera or in any shape or form.
Unless Doyle’s was in on it, for a quid. See, you CAN get fat on that kinda diet.
tax deductable think tanks to cover the terrorist stuff ups
Well, for a different perspective to what one reads from corporate funded think tank stooges one can try the Mindanao news about the US citizen who blew himself up with his own preassembled incendiary device in a hotel, poor old Michael Meir, who was whisked out of the hospital by the US FBI faaaaaster than the local Mayor could say "that pissed me off" and don't miss the fact he had a club card on him identifying himself as a member of the separation group. How convenient. I wonder where you get Al Qaeda cards and if they have Fly-buy points.
Add that to the claim by the mutaneering Philipino military that there were terrorist events staged to gain more US military money and I wonder why no exactiing journalistic investigations are following. Think tanks are just that - to tell us what to think. What is important is to note which payers pay for what propaganda message.
And they are tax deductable.
The Right to Intervene?
Hello John Pratt. The author Noam Chomsky answers your question clearly (although he will have to forgive me for paraphrasing him here).
We, the forces of light, claim the right to intervene on foot of our inherent goodness. It is our lack of sin that delivers us the certainty to identify where, when and how to use our might against those opposing us; as in opposing us they oppose the light.
We are on the side of the angels. Our motives are correct by definition. We judge our actions to be balanced and fair and, even if our imperfect world leads us to a margin of error, based upon lofty ideals and values that warrant universal embrace.
Where resistance results it stems from ignorance of the truth. Time (beneath our boots) will educate those so unfortunate as to misunderstand our enlightened motives. The light of our virtue will swell to fill the entire world. The people liberated by its radiance will join us in the community of nations, their past sins forgotten, their future sins not sins at all.
As Dick Cheney has stated, inventing a word, we intervene because it’s ‘doable’.
Another coaliton of the killing?
Here we go again, what gives the US or Australia the right to intervene?
Kit Collier and Malcolm Cook have highlighted US intervention in yet another conflict.
Pentagon planners negotiated a return of American troops to Mindanao for the first time since the colonial era. Indeed, Mindanao was the second front in the war on terror until Iraq came to dominate US threat perceptions. Australian Premier John Howard has likewise openly mulled pre-emptive military strikes on terrorist sanctuaries in the region.
Time of Oman reports here
Are war crimes being committed there? Are crimes against humanity being perpetrated in the island? Is ethnic cleansing being undertaken against the resident Moro population?” the lone senator from Mindanao said at the 1st Asian Conference of Journalists on the International Criminal Court, at Rembrandt Hotel in Quezon City. Pimentel said the public did not know whether these incidents were happening in Sulu because the people have no access to the regular courts to which they can lodge complaints in case they suffer human rights abuses and other atrocities.
Another coalition of the killing.
This is a civil war, if international action is to be take it should be through the United Nations not a coalition of Christian Nations.