The Philippines: Counter-Insurgency Vs. Counter-Terrorism in Mindanao

The 2006 “Quadrennial Defense Review” calls for “a more culturally aware, linguistically capable force”, able to “operate clandestinely” and “sustain a persistent but low visibility presence”.120 But civic action and information operations on Jolo, of which the centrepiece is the Rewards for Justice Program, have not shown great sophistication.121

The suspected new ASG leader Yasir Igasan is a case in point. On 9 June 2007, U.S. Special Forces distributed booklets during civic operations in Samak, Talipao, bearing images of seventeen wanted terrorists. Alongside a photograph of Umar Patek was another labelled “Ali Igasan a.k.a. Abdulla Tuan Ya Yasir Igasan”. The picture was actually of Ustadz Yahiya Sarahadil “Tuan Yang” Abdullah, an innocent and well-regarded religious scholar. Not only is Tuan Yang, at 45, a decade older than the wanted man, Tuan Ya, but he also has a fair complexion and aquiline features, while Igasan is said to be dark, rotund and pockmarked.122

Errors of this kind reflect a paucity of accurate intelligence. Despite the quadrennial review’s call for a polyglot force and “long-term assignments in key strategic regions”, Americans on Jolo speak no Tausug and are quickly rotated out. Over-reliance on “heritage speakers” of (Christian) Philippine languages, mainly Tagalog, means greater rapport is established with the AFP than with local residents, and valuable informal intelligence-gathering opportunities are lost.123 Tuan Yang, the misidentified suspect, expressed a view heard repeatedly by Crisis Group on Jolo: “We used to admire the Americans….Now people are looking at them differently because they always accompany the Filipino troops”.124 Popular suspicions of U.S. involvement in the Ipil incident underscore this risk.

Civic action creates other problems. About 50 medical civic action programs were conducted on Jolo in 2006, usually following road repair to facilitate access and gather intelligence. Nineteen school construction and renovation projects, ten wells, five community centres and five water distribution centres were also undertaken during the year.125 Despite widespread appreciation for the short-term benefits of the U.S. presence, residents question its top-down, militarised approach and apparent favouritism. Villages with powerful local patrons receive multiple visits, while others are bypassed. Healthy villagers flock to the programs expecting “dole-outs”, such as free paracetamol, while fundamental public health needs go unmet. “We are not involved in identifying areas for treatment”, Jolo health professionals remarked, “but the politicians love it”.126

The lack of community consultation in planning civic action, and its non-participatory approach, deprive it of sustainable long-term impact – which is not even good counter-insurgency. Bureaucratic and force protection issues that also handicapped Balikatan 02-1 are partly to blame – an aversion to dealing directly with the population and to the slightest risk of U.S. casualties in a “non-combat” situation.127 These deeply rooted tendencies in the U.S. way of war are accentuated by the indirect approach, which eschews overtly political involvement in the affairs of a sovereign partner. Manila, eager to depoliticise Muslim resistance, embraces a counter-insurgency model based on military and socio-economic initiatives alone. But counter-terrorism’s missing prong is irreducibly political.

BRINGING POLITICS BACK IN
As U.S. investment in military and economic aid grows, political commitment to the peace process has diminished. The sudden resignation of the Philippines government’s peace panel head, Silvestre Afable, on 15 June 2007, coincided with the expiration of AHJAG’s mandate (21 June) as well as the end of a four-year U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) presence in the country (30 June). All three developments flowed from Washington’s and Manila’s neglect of the political dimension of Muslim insurgency. In Manila, conservatives are ascendant, as the Arroyo administration fights scandal after scandal. The government’s perils ultimately derive from state failure in the south, which is driving a cycle of destabilisation between centre and periphery.

The high water mark in the MILF talks came on 7 February 2006, when both sides endorsed 29 “consensus points” on ancestral domain at the panels’ tenth exploratory meeting; formal agreement on this last agenda item was anticipated the next month and a comprehensive peace pact by year’s end.128 But on 24 February, an abortive coup in Manila triggered a week-long state of emergency. The administration, under growing conservative influence since the “Hello Garci” scandal prompted mass resignation of the cabinet’s reform faction,129 bunkered down.