Left Flank

The US is really trying to deny involvement with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to hunt down a Moro Islamic LIberation Front (MILF) commander, Ameril Ombra Kato. Kato, and Abdullah Macapaar alias Commander Bravo, and Aleem Sulayman Pangalian, are Manila's latest obsession in Mindanao.

American advisers just happen to be in the right places, but never doing the right things. That is, until reporters produce photographs. This time, those photos show Americans with aerial drones.

Rebecca Thompson, US Embassy information officer, in a text message to the Inquirer said:

«All activities of temporarily deployed US forces respect sovereignty of RP and comply fully with the VFA. Again, US troops are not involved in actual combat operations.

«When requested by the AFP, US military provided aerial surveillance assistance to support AFP operations such as determining conditions of roads, terrain association, and general visibility of an area, such as for future civil-military projects.»

More ominous than Thompson's belief that anyone actually cares about her hairsplitting are the threats. The leftist National Union of People's Lawyers said Tuesday American soldiers who are involved in intelligence gathering are deemed combatants under international law and subject to attack by rebel groups they are spying on. «This makes US soldiers legitimate target by the MILF, New People's Army or other rebel groups,» said NUPL secretary general Neri Javier Colmenares.

I wonder if in Thompson's mind it matters what a dead American is called in these varying circumstances. I'm sure no one else would care but her.

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As geostrategy returns to the Caucasus, MLQ3 points out another geoeconomic hotspot where a power-grabbing leader is handing out IOUs to regional sharks, Indonesia and «Greater» Malaysia.

The Philippines, a protectorate under this American postwar vision includes extensive portions of present-day Indonesia (the Commonwealth government-in-exile had seriously proposed the union of the Philippines and Indonesia in 1943 and this caused great consternation with the Dutch, until the idea was quietly dropped; but it would resurrect two decades later with proposals for Maphilindo) while all of Borneo is apportioned to the British. Additional American protectorates are Taiwan (Formosa) and Hainan off the coast of China. The various islands comprising Guam, Nauru, etc. seem to be a gigantic federation that marks the American security perimeter in the Pacific.

this is all to point out the Americans like to think in terms of spheres of influence, and we like to think we sit comfortably -and importantly- in the American sphere. Thing is, from the time America decided on a Europe First policy in terms of prosecuting World War II, Asia has been the secondary front and Europe, the primary one. And whatever importance we had in American strategic thinking diminished to the point of barely existing, after the closing of the US Bases. I’ve mentioned in the past that even with the War on Terror, the United States has pretty much been content to leave Southeast Asia to its own devices, with Australia taking up the slack (strikingly reminiscent to the 1942 map assigning most of our part of the world to the British Commonwealth). A couple of years back, in a think tank conference on the region in Washington, the darling of American policymakers was the President of Indonesia and the Philippines mattered mainly in terms of the threat to regional security posed by the JI.

And, a shout-out to thenutbox for extracting me from the pit of Filipino politics for a stiff blast of crisp thinking.

That this «Greater Malaysian Federation» will make for «a large, extremely wealthy, country» is, I think, an understatement. I believe it would be a dominant regional power in this part of the world.

This regional power would control the sea lanes where oil exports from the Middle East to China, Northeast Asia and the United States pass through; as well as the potential oil and gas reserves of Sulu Sea and Liguasan Marsh. Should this regional power assertively claim more lands in Mindanao, the Philippines would be defenseless.

And this regional power, by the way, would be against the United States. Which is why I agree with Quezon when he said that among the priorities of the United States in the Mindanao conflict is containing Malaysia.

Of course, as I have said in my previous post, the Americans have their own designs in Mindanao too. But these designs stand in the way of Kuala Lumpur’s. This is why the Malaysians have consistently rejected the idea of the United States being part of the International Monitoring Team (IMT), which, in turn, is the reason why Washington had to resort to using the United States Institute of Peace to work in Mindanao and Sulu for its interests.

We are therefore seeing cunning maneuvers by the MILF, the Malaysians, and the Amercians at the expense of the Philippines’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.

What’s sad about this is that while the foreigners and the seccessionist are busy protecting their respective interests, the Philippines is selling out its own- just so the bitch can stay in power.

I guess as the American, it's up to me to fathom the game Washington is playing with Manila, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. I have NO faith the Bush administration can pull off whatever wicked stratagem it's cooking.

«The renewed fighting in North Cotabato goes to show that when the government bungles the peace negotiations, it is the citizens who suffer,» said Risa Hontiveros, a lawmaker and peace advocate.

For some reason RP House members pushing a resolution for a review and renegotiation of the MOA-AD and the Arroyo administration calling for a constituent assembly are blind to the consequences of their actions.

The rebels occupied the villages last week after the Supreme Court halted the signing of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) meant to pave the way for a political settlement to end the MILF’s 30-year struggle for an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the movement's leadership had not sanctioned the occupation of farms, and accused pro-government militiamen of starting the conflict.

«It was the militia that started the fighting...not the MILF,» he said on local radio.

«Addressing the concerns of the displaced remains our top priority,» said Philippine National Police spokesman Chief Superintendent Nicanor Bartolome.

MILF rebels began retreating back into the hills Tuesday after a prolonged military and police offensive involving helicopter gunships and artillery.

Bartolome said the rebels had planted booby traps in farms and villages as they retreated.

He said that government forces were alert against MILF attempts to occupy the highways in North Cotabato or to enter other areas left unprotected.

Bartolome said some of the evacuees had started to check their properties, but were not staying for fear the rebels would return.

The Economist also adds another consequence of failure.

If the peace process with the MILF now collapses, its co-operation against Abu Sayyaf may end. It is also possible that many of the MILF’s 12,000 fighters could abandon their ceasefire (some exchanged mortar rounds with troops this week). That said, for the MILF and all southern Muslims even an unsigned deal is a victory, since it amounts to acknowledgment by the national authorities of their right to greater self-government.

Elections for the existing regional body look likely to go ahead on August 11th in spite of all the uncertainties. Optimists might note that a peace agreement in Northern Ireland suffered years of setbacks before at last taking hold. But Mrs Arroyo failed to seek consensus among the broader public, Congress and indeed the armed forces before striking her audacious deal. Through this, and her remarkable knack of making people suspect her motives, she risks throwing away perhaps the best chance yet for ending the conflict.

Fortunately, the only good candidate in the elections won.

MLQ3 has another excellent post about «the perils of partition», following up yesterday's post about the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (BJE MOA on AD) (hereafter, MOA). I guess Manila should be relieved the South Ossetian crisis is monopolizing global press attention, because, with a fraction of the fireworks, the same issues are involved. Mindanao and the Caucasus both are home to distinct, squabbling ethnic groups, with long colorful historical memories of conquest and fleeting periods of authority. But, it's fascinating how the online debate (the product of a less urgent situation in RP) reveals how fractious the opposing parties and perspectives are, and how alliances of convenience between opponents is possible. There are also the lurking presences of the US and Big Oil. But, again because of the refreshing vitality of the online debate, the RP-MILF situation is not interpreted as a reversion to a Cold War realism, as is anything Russia does, but as its own messy contemporary creature.

MOA has touched some nationalist nerves, both conservative and separatist. Village Idiot Savant calls it a «big sellout»:

With all due respect to constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, the proposed Memorandum of Agreement is not, as he avers, a «mere piece of paper.» It is a document that potentially provides the terms of reference for all future government dealings with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Those terms, with dubious historical and social foundations, are lopsidedly in favor of the MILF. While ceding territorial rights and commitments with almost careless abandon, the government makes no corresponding demands of the MILF.

As written, it provides casus belli for the MILF should the government fail to meet its demands. Why else would the MILF negotiating panel, with playground petulance, insist that the document is a «done deal» regardless of the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court?

At the heart of it, the MOA is a territorial agreement. More than three quarters of the text pertains to boundary demarcations, resource rights, joint development, and profit sharing schemes. Its core can be summed up in the following introductory paragraph:

The Bangsamoro homeland and historic territory refer to the land mass as well as the maritime, terrestrial, fluvial and alluvial domains, and the aerial domain, the atmospheric space above it, embracing the Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan geographic region. However, delimitations are contained in the agreed Schedules (Categories).

Note the language: not «part of» but «embracing.» There are several ways in which a vague term like this can be interpreted, but in the broadest terms, it lays claim to the entirety of Mindanao.

On the other hand, rom has an «epiphany»:

The place was crawling with soldiers. Every fifteen minutes, a huge armored personnel carrier would come rumbling down Sinsuat Avenue, followed by trucks laden with soldiers in camouflage fatigues, all toting M-whatevers, looking all grim and distant. It was a faintly disturbing sight, every single time.

It was there that I experienced an epiphany. Watching the soldiers drive past, I suddenly realized that this latest secessionist spasm we’re undergoing is actually inevitable - the product of the fact that we are not a nation; a nation here defined as a form of self-defined cultural and social community.

Personally, I feel no strong kinship with the Muslims of the South, except in the most tenuous and strictly intellectual of terms. I am not a Muslim; I do not understand, much less accept many Islamic tenets - including the taboo against pork; and I have no ancestral roots in the South.

Come to that, neither do i feel kinship with the Ilocanos of the North, nor even the Visayans. About the only group I actually feel any cultural and social identity with is the Hiligaynon, and we’re mostly in Bacolod, Iloilo, and Guimaras. I’ve met Ilonggos from Cotabato, but even they feel sort of alien to me. And I don’t even feel Chinese.

And because we are not a nation (we’re a country, certainly, but that’s not the same thing), it is fairly difficult to sustain outrage at the possibility of the rise of the BJE. Intellectually, I rage against it for the sake of the concept of a sovereign country, but there is no personal affront. And when there is no outrage at the personal level, how long can you actually go ignoring the arguments in favor of the creation of a BJE.

I think readers know where my sympathies lie.

There are complementary perspectives about how to view the Arroyo administration's Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). It's both a shoddy piece of diplomacy, and a ill-disguised grab for power. Perhaps it's best the RP Supreme Court killed it.

Luis Teodoro takes aim at others beside the negotiating parties.

The bottom line is that the government, most specially Gloria Arroyo and Hermogenes Esperon, wanted an agreement ※ any agreement ※ signed, sealed and delivered ASAP, meaning before 2010.

Not in heaven’s name, but in that of the United States, the 800-pound gorilla in our midst. Since 2003 the US has been “expediting” the making of a peace agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF through its Institute for Peace. Supposedly an independent, nonpartisan institution, USIP was established and funded by the US Congress to prevent Mindanao’s turning into that horror of horrors, a terrorist haven ※ and not incidentally to open its vast resources to exploitation by various business groups including, and most especially, US multinationals.

In the meantime, those Filipinos who do want lasting peace in Mindanao, and who do recognize the Bangsamoro right to ancestral domain and autonomy, would have had to put their money where their mouths are by agreeing to Constitutional amendments via a constituent assembly.

Once begun, that process will create a parliamentary form of government under a federal system, under the terms of which Mrs. Arroyo and cohort can stay on beyond 2010. But it will not stop there, and will go on to repeal those provisions in the 1987 Constitution that protect the media and the country’s natural resources from foreign ownership, and even allow foreign professionals to practice in these shores.

Does this sound too devious and too convoluted a plot to be anything but the stuff of which Hollywood films are made? Not in a country where you have a former general as peace adviser it doesn’t.

Yet, the planned MOA has angered Mindanao Muslims and Christians, as well as Filipinos, and, unfortunately embarrassed RP when it was set to sign the deal in Kuala Lumpur.

When the Supreme Court stepped in and prevented the signing of the agreement, the Philippine, Malaysian, American, Japanese and Australian governments ended up red-faced in the company of the MILF (which neither recognizes nor has any loyalty to the Philippine Constitution). Opposite them are those against the deal because they believe it fundamentally subverts the existing provisions of the Philippine Constitution. Their voices reflect majority opinion in our country. They are waiting to see if the Supreme Court ends up deciding the case with dispatch merely to beat Malaysia’s announced Aug. 21 resumption of talks. The country is watching whether the Court will decide based on the real merits of the case, or on what the President wants. In a word: since no one, including the nations of the world, cares for our Constitution, then it remains for our Supreme Court to decide the matter with true integrity and the utmost fidelity to constitutional precepts. As Jose P. Laurel famously declared, “No one can love the Filipinos better than the Filipinos themselves.”

It's a small matter of one interpretation of constitutional principles, which just happens to be the majority opinion, opposing both a very unpopular president and her perceived hunger for political power, a region, and the US. I say, affirm the MOA, and deal with the aftermath later.