Philippines: US 'one casualty from wider conflict'

South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
March 28, 2002
Peter Kammerer, Foreign Editor

Fears were raised yesterday that American troops advising Filipino soldiers could be drawn into direct participation in a widening conflict with Muslim rebels.

Rolando Simbulan, one of two Filipinos among a 14-member team which observed the conflict zone on Basilan island, said American troops were already unconstitutionally taking part in military operations in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao.

A casualty among the 660 so-called United States "advisers", 160 of whom are in frontline positions alongside Philippine soldiers fighting Abu Sayyaf rebels, had the potential to widen the conflict, Dr Simbulan warned. There was also the danger the conflict could include 15,000 Moro Islamic Liberation Front Muslim insurgents also in the area. "How can they distinguish between the two?" he asked, a day after the team returned from a three-day visit to Basilan.

Dr Simbulan, who teaches at the University of the Philippines' political science faculty, said the Abu Sayyaf numbered between 60 and 80 fighters and was a spent force. It could no longer be considered a terrorist organisation as alleged, he said, and did not warrant the huge operation being waged against it, even though it held an American missionary couple and a Filipino nurse hostage.

He added the US' disastrous involvement in Vietnam started in similar circumstances. "The escalation of US involvement there began with a few advisers which later was to heighten when some US troops were killed during the conflict," he said.

Reports say another 1,200 US troops will be sent to the Philippines, ostensibly to further economic development on Mindanao. US troops are also building a jungle training camp on the island, 33km from Zamboanga city.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced yesterday that more joint anti-terrorist exercises between the two countries were likely this year.

Dr Simbulan's team comprised peace and human rights advocates from the Philippines, Japan, India, Australia, America, Britain, Finland and France.

In Manila yesterday, it alleged the Philippines was making warrantless arrests in Basilan, while the military was carrying out summary executions and prisoners were being tortured. There was no evidence of US military involvement in the abuses.

Dr Simbulan said 76 people, including two pregnant women, had been unlawfully imprisoned. All had been denied access to legal representation.

Most of the Philippines' four million Muslims live in Mindanao, the country's poorest region.

Muslim separatist groups have for centuries been a thorn in the side of the central Government, which has been fighting to subdue them. In the 1990s, Muslims from the Philippines were implicated in international terrorism rings, and the Abu Sayyaf has been linked with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, the Philippines has been viewed by many as the second phase, after Afghanistan, of Washington's war on terror.

Human rights groups claim the Philippines is using the war against terrorism to stifle the Muslim minority. Nationalist fervour is also being raised by fears that the US is angling towards a permanent presence in the country, just a decade after its bases were shut down by the Senate.

Dr Simbulan said the Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows US troops to train in the Philippines, is being violated.

"It's very obvious from our observation that what's happening in Basilan is not a military exercise," he said. "It's a joint military operation with a specific mission and live targets with the Abu Sayyaf and these military operations are on-going."

He said 160 of the US troops were in Basilan and these were distributed among the seven Philippine battalions - each of 500 soldiers - fighting the Abu Sayyaf.

He asked: "What else can you call that, except a joint military operation?"

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Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 | Ander Nieuws week 14