Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Aguilar: More extra-judicial killings and black operations to come By George Aguilar Rational Animal
LAST week, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presided over a regional peace assembly in Tagbilaran City where she instructed the Armed Forces of the Philippines to crush the communist insurgency, the Moro rebellion and "sheer terrorism" by 2010.
She said that the AFP "must evolve a strategy of rapid conclusion to address rebellion, with the National Security Council providing policy direction," manifesting the government's hard-line stance for winning a so called peace. In effect the president gave the AFP and the other security agencies another three year deadline that they cannot meet.
The AFP has proven by sheer incompetence that they cannot even beat the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) whom they described as a "rag tag terrorist group" numbering some 200 combatants in Basilan and Jolo. They said that the ASG was a spent force, that they have defeated the ASG time and time again.
The Philippine government has been saying for many years now and yet the AFP is currently engaged in a shooting war with the same. Not only is the AFP at war with a group that they claim they've already beaten, but they've also lost one battle after another against a rag tag group with only two hundred or so combatants according to their very own reports.
The AFP has put in thousands of troops, including Special Forces, into this war with the Abu Sayyaf and yet they can't seem to neutralize a few hundred bandits? That's because their not fighting just a few hundred combatants in Mindanao. The AFP is actually dealing with guerillas that have local support even from the MILF, the MNLF, the JI, and other groups from abroad. Unless they are willing to accept this then they will end up with more and more casualties with very little to show at the end of the fighting.
They are being misled by idiots in Manila as to the real nature and scope of this war. They are fighting the wrong kind of war and making "friends" with the wrong kind of people. If the MILF who massacred the marines in Basilan and the MNLF who massacred more troops in Jolo are friends then who needs enemies?
The government can't even effect a total gun ban in Mindanao because MILF and MNLF fighters are reported to be going all over the place with their guns by their side. They don't want to put in place the gun ban on MILF and MNLF territories because they are hoping for peace but by giving the above mentioned groups' safe havens then they are just allowing the same to prepare for more war in the future. What's to stop the Lumads and the Christians from arming themselves and carving their own territories in Mindanao if the government allows the MILF and the MNLF to keep their own?
The ASG can gun and run and hide from pursuing government troops by hiding in MILF safe havens. Didn't Maria Reza of ABS-CBN report that the MILF harbored international terrorists Gulmatin and Omar Patik in a similar safe haven in central Mindanao just recently?
Now the AFP has been given another three years to destroy the CPP-NPA who has been around longer than the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf. The NPA has more than ten thousand red fighters in more than one hundred guerilla fronts nationwide. These NPA's are locally supported by 5 to 8 percent of all barangays that the government has reported to be under the NPA's control. Threatening and killing the supporters has only succeeded in revealing who the real monster is.
Because the government is pressuring the AFP to defeat all armed rebellions by 2010 the later will resort to more "disappearances", kidnapping, executions, and torture despite and in the midst of growing international protest. Malacanang's hard line stand against insurgency will result into more human rights violations and this will be the cause of GMA's eventual downfall.
The only way to defeat insurgency is community based development and not the kind of development that favor only the local elites and foreign investors. The only way to win peace is through peace. The people already know this. The government also knows this but they can't do otherwise because of "pressures" from abroad.
