October 23, 2002, AsiaTimes, HEY JOE: The Philippines' bumbling terror war, by Ted Lerner,

October 23, 2002, AsiaTimes, HEY JOE: The Philippines' bumbling terror war, by Ted Lerner, 

When a bomb blew up inside a provincial-bound bus late last week in the Metro Manila town of Quezon City, instantly killing two passengers and wounding 20 others, the mayor of Quezon City didn't waste any time fingering the culprits as suicide terrorists. How the mayor immediately knew this was anyone's guess. Local mayors in the Philippines aren't exactly trained in the complicated nuances of terrorism. But he claimed to know it was a suicide bomber because the angle of the dead man's body as it lay mangled and charred inside the smoldering wreckage indicated as such.

Manila police still have no idea who was behind the bus bombing, but the Quezon City mayor's quick analysis and bold pronouncement to the media surely highlight the state of things as regards the authorities in the Philippines when it comes to a peace-and-order situation that has gotten completely out of control. In a word it can best be described as absolutely "clueless".

One would be hard-pressed to find a more apt description. Three bombs have gone off in the southern city of Zamboanga in the past few weeks, with the death toll now at 10 Filipinos and one US special forces serviceman. Around the time of the Quezon City bus bombing, a grenade blew up in the financial district of Makati. Several days before that a bomb blew up in a bus station in the southern city of Kidapawan, killing eight and injuring scores. On top of these there have been numerous daily bomb scares in Manila and elsewhere as a result of pranksters or pedestrians noticing a box or bag left unattended.

In these days when everything bad is automatically attributed to Muslim terrorists, authorities in the Philippines always immediately finger two groups: the Abu Sayyaf bandit group, which operates on two islands in the southern Philippines and has been linked to al-Qaeda, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which also operates in the southern Philippines and, by some accounts, has also been linked to al-Qaeda. The MILF, however, claims to be a solely political organization with no violent intentions.

Surely the Quezon City mayor meant the Abu Sayyaf when he said "suicide bomber". Although perhaps the mayor forgot that the Abu Sayyaf has never engaged in suicide attacks. The Abu Sayyaf were originally thought to be behind the Kidapawan bombing. Indeed the Philippine military wasted no time in fingering the Abu Sayyaf in the Zamboanga bombings. The military brass claims the blasts in Zamboanga were the Abu Sayyaf's way of retaliating for the military's relentless assault against the group on Basilian and Sulu islands.

That the authorities are claiming the Abu Sayyaf has suddenly brought its murderous operations nationwide and now has the ability to strike in major urban centers almost defies logic. Back in June no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced before the world that the Abu Sayyaf menace had been completely wiped out. Crack Philippine military men, assisted by US technical capabilities, had supposedly killed one of the group's leaders, Abu Sabaya, in a brief battle at sea. Even though a body was never recovered, Arroyo said she had seen a movie of the incident supposedly filmed in its entirety by a US spy plane. The movie, she said, could not be shown to the public because of national-security concerns. Still, though, Sabaya was history, she said, and that took care of the Abu Sayyaf.

Arroyo went so far as to claim that the Philippine military, with the assistance of more than 600 US special forces, had been so successful in neutralizing the Abu Sayyaf that she was ordering troops away from Basilian to other parts of the Philippines to take on the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which incidentally had recently been labeled an international terrorist group by the United States.

Of course, only the completely gullible believed that the Abu Sayyaf problem had been solved. Untold millions of dollars in ransom money from kidnappings has led to infighting and the group has split in to several factions, each with its own agenda. Indeed, at about the time the authorities claimed Sabaya was killed, a bandit group abducted four Indonesian seamen. One escaped and three are still being held captive to this day. Another faction later abducted six Jehovah's Witnesses and beheaded the two male members. The four women are still being held hostage. Several days ago a Chinese trader in the southern islands of Tawi-Tawi was abducted by a still unknown group. Then, just last week, 11 marines were killed in an ambush in Sulu by a faction of the Abu Sayyaf.

But while the Abu Sayyaf is clearly alive and kicking in and around Sulu, it is surely a real stretch to proclaim that they are capable of striking major urban centers, especially Manila. Even taking into account its various factions, the group is said to consist of only a few hundred hardcore men. They have also been on the run for well over a year now. If the Abu Sayyaf is behind the spate of recent bombings and bomb scares in the Philippines, then surely it can only mean one thing: that the intelligence services of the Philippine military and government have suffered a complete and total meltdown.

It should be noted that before the days when every little incident was labeled a terrorist act, bombs and bomb scares were nothing new to the Philippines. Then most of the atrocities were always considered the result of a local issue, not something related to an international cause like al-Qaeda.

Now, though, with the catch phrase of the day being "international terrorism", the menace is seemingly everywhere one looks. Or at least where the authorities look. And it doesn't always look pretty, either.

Arroyo recently presented before the media a young man who she said was one of the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf. This was part of her high-profile, hands-on crime drive where she presents suspected criminals to the media and goes to the crime scene to oversee the operations of the police personally (see Crimebuster Arroyo hypes it up, August 29). As a bonus, she pointed out, this young man and his group were involved in the Kidapawan bus station bombing several weeks back.

But, as it turned out, the man she zealously presented as a leader of the Abu Sayyaf was actually a minor underling in the group, if he was in the group at all. The real wanted leader is still free in the southern Philippines.

As for the bus bombing, most of the clues have indicated the incident to be a clear case of local mob retaliation: the bus company refused to pay protection taxes to a group of Communist rebels.

Because terrorists are supposedly in every nook and cranny of the Philippines, the president recently floated an idea brought to her by several national and local officials to arm every single one of the village leaders in the country, whose numbers are in the tens of thousands. In the Philippines a local village is referred to as abarangay. The leaders and administrators of the barangay are considered minor local authority figures with few enforcement powers except to help settle disputes.

The idea is to arm these village officials because, since they are close to the action in every village, they can act as the eyes and ears of the national authorities and help to root out terrorists. But critics have howled that putting guns into the hands of men and women who have little or no training in using them is a recipe for disaster. Besides the dark specter of vigilantism cropping up, armed village leaders could easily use the terrorist label to extort money out of hapless residents, or to dispose of someone they have had a dispute with.

Whether this plan to arm village leaders will push through is not yet clear. Up to 20 percent of the ordinary policemen in the Philippines don't even own their own gun, so funding such a program would seem economically impossible.

Still, even the fact that Philippine leaders are considering such a plan shows how inept the government has become at keeping the peace in the country. It seems the Philippine government has completely lost control of the situation and has no clear idea on what to do to fix it.

Hiding behind the all-encompassing bogeyman of "terrorism" is hardly going to make criminality go away.

Ted Lerner is the author of the book Hey, Joe - A Slice of the City, an American in Manila, as well as an upcoming book of Asian travel stories, The Traveler and the Gate Checkers. He can be reached via e-mail at tedlheyjoe@yahoo.com

(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)