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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The Inquirer takes a moment to explain why good ideas rarely pass the hurdles of Filipino politics.

Let’s get this straight. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants the Senate she has undermined and the House of Representatives she takes for granted to convene as a constituent assembly, to amend the Constitution her negotiators in drafting the controversial Memorandum of Agreement on ancestral domain have violated, in order to bring peace to a land whose people her administration has ignored?

OK, this is a movie premise?

«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.

The three Filipino hostages held by Abu Sayyaf, Ces Drilon, Octavio Dinampo, and Jimmy Encarnacion were released. House Speaker Prospero Nograles managed to sound both paranoid and optimistic.

Nograles, for his part, said that aside from going on an armed offensive against the Abu Sayyaf, «the government and the political leaders in Mindanao should work hard to provide livelihood and improve the infrastructure in conflict areas.»

Nograles said it was no longer important whether ransom was indeed paid.

«Instead of debating about how and why Ces and her two fellow captives were released, we should thank the good Lord that they came back to us safely. All speculations at this point on the circumstances behind their release are immaterial,» Nograles said.

Nograles stressed the need to end kidnappings in Mindanao and to convince the international community that a greater part of southern Philippines did not have the same problem of banditry and extremism.

«Sulu and Basilan, which are mostly the center of Abu Sayyaf kidnappings, is not the entire Mindanao. We have so many areas in Mindanao which are peaceful, safe and beautiful,» Nograles said.

He said the latest kidnapping in Sulu «is another setback in the government's effort to make Mindanao the new frontier of investments.»

«We should stop the chicken and egg situation in Mindanao where we cannot have development because of the peace and order problem and we cannot have peace and order because of lack of development in the region,» Nograles said.

Senator Rodolfo Biazon argued that the government's policy of allowing press into areas where military operations are conducted should balance «...freedom of press and the people's right to know.

Contrary to hype, RP President Arroyo's Executive Secretary also argued that Abu Sayyaf is far from defeated. But, defeat will not happen, if this is the government's bizarre notion of «dictating terms». Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez: «I told him I would be willing to ask the Armed Forces and the police to allow him to meet me on a safe conduct pass but not to negotiate because we cannot negotiate with terrorists. I said we should be the one to dictate our terms so we have to test his real intentions.»

The three hostages should count themselves lucky they got out alive and intact before the government tried to «dictate» anything.

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As usual I come to these Filipino stories too late to do much more than jump up and down and point out provocative issues. But, the account of Ces Drilon's capture, and the civil liberties issue surrounding the embargo on the reporting of the incident right after, followed by Manila's breaking of that embargo, has the makings of a legal and political precedent and a very compelling, human story.

My own understanding is that is that it was the government station, NBN-4, and not the wire services that broke the story. It was the government that forced an end to the embargo by reporting the kidnapping of Ces Drilon and Co. on its Monday evening news program. Since news on a government station has an official nature to it, it's logical to assume that it was then that the wire services, which I understand had been unable to obtain a statement from ABS-CBN up to that point, could run with the story.

So let me say first of all that government appeals for «restraint» are pure, unadulterated bullshit. You have a rare instance where media exercised prudence (not altogether altruistically, as I'll explore in a bit) but government, always eager to appeal for «restraint,» jumped the gun… The reasons for this could range from malicious glee (no love lost either for the network or Drilon on the part of officialdom) to a general interest in beating the war drums in Mindanao to provide a distraction for economic issues and expand the President's political and military (one and the same) options.

Still, for a time, an embargo was asked for, and respected, while ABS-CBN tried to downplay the story. This explains the befuddlement experienced by bloggers...

With all respect to Ms. Drilon and Dr. Octavio Dinampo (and their quick, safe release), Filipino blogs keep me going like none other.

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