Nagging questions on Mindanao fighting - Gotcha

Something just doesn't wash about battles between soldiers and Muslim secessionists in Maguindanao and Lanao. Defense Secretary Orly Mercado says government only wants to drive away mulcters from two checkpoints of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front along Narciso Ramos Highway. If so, why did Malacanang have to resort to military operation?

Government could have used other ways to shame MILF into lifting the checkpoints. For one, it could have sent agents to film how avowed religious fighters were extorting money from Muslims and Christians alike who were just passing through on buses or hauling wares to market. It could then have shown the film to MILF leaders, with a note that it would send copies to the Organization of the Islamic Conference if the mulcting didn't stop.

The ploy could have worked; the government, at least, could have tried. But, no, it launched tactical offensives against MILF checkpoints with tanks and fighter-bombers, a tack that escalated into counterattacks and bombings in Cotabato, General Santos, Butuan and Davao cities.

Mercado's old pal, one-time Maguindanao congressman Michael Mastura, offers an explanation. He says Mercado's boss, Joseph Estrada, needed to divert public attention from his many failures and unite the country against a common foe. The stooge just happened to be the MILF. Mastura says Ferdinand Marcos had played the same trick under martial law to distract public attention from his economic plunder. The stooge then was the Moro National Liberation Front, from which the MILF broke away later. Mastura reminds the public that Marcos' operatives are now Estrada's advisers.

Mastura's motive theory may be far-fetched. Still, his observations make one wonder what really is going on. While skirting the extortion angle, Mastura points out that the checkpoints had been there since last year. Government peace negotiators had recognized the MILF's biggest and main Camp Abubakar as a sanctuary. Twelve kilometers of Narciso Ramos Highway happen to slice through the 10,000-hectare camp, actually an unfortified settlement that straddles eight towns in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao provinces. The MILF set up the checkpoints more as a show of force at the start than as an extortionate toll gate.

Mastura asks not only why government opted for military might after all these months, but also why it did so when it was rushing troops to Basilan and Sulu to encircle Abu Sayyaf kidnappers.

Another Mercado pal from the days of peace talks with the MNLF, Fr. Eliseo Mercado of Cotabato's Notre Dame University, poses a parallel question. Fr. Mercado recalls that government and MILF negotiators had met for 10 hours in Cotabato last April 27 to iron out kinks and whip up the agenda for resumption of peace talks. Though bushed, panelists from both sides were in high spirits when they shook hands by midnight over the rushed but perfected paperwork. So why, Fr. Mercado asks, did his namesake order soldiers to attack MILF checkpoints six hours later?

It's too bad that soldiers are being blamed for the Abu Sayyaf's killing of six hostages in Basilan. Those soldiers were only following orders to overrun the terrorists' Camp Abdurajak and, in the process, try to free 29 hostages. They risked life and limb in a mission for civilians they didn't even know.

If anyone is to blame for the killings, it's the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers. They first beheaded two teachers for the "crime" of having served in the Army during their youth. Then, while trying to breach the soldiers' lines with the 27 remaining hostages, they tied the hands of two men and two women, including a priest, and shot them in the nape.

Malacañang was caught flat-footed by the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers. It didn't know how to deal with terrorism by religious fanatics. First, it sent the Basilan congressman to negotiate, but the guy quit after quarreling with the provincial governor. Malacanang then formed a Basilan crisis committee led by the governor and a Catholic archbishop. At the same time, it sent actor Robin Padilla, a recent Muslim convert, as go-between. In the end, it dispatched troops.

Malacañang never sent any professional negotiator, of which there are many in civilian and military positions. (Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Jojo Binay and Cordillera PNP chief Gen. Cris Maralit are just two of them.) They'd been trained by U.S. and European experts in the '80s to deal with hostage crises. They would have known better than the most elite Army unit how to talk the terrorists out of their caves.

Malaysia is reaping the whirlwind of its bad neighborliness. It had offered sanctuary in Sabah for decades to Mindanao bandits. It routinely stopped Philippine Navy ships from pursuing pirates who crossed the sea border from Tawi-Tawi to Sabah. It refused to turn over a former militia leader, Rizal Alih, who had killed a general in Zamboanga then fled to Sabah. It even funded and trained the MNLF in the '70s -- its way of getting even with RP because Marcos had once plotted to grab Sabah with Jabidah commandos.

Now, former secessionists-turned-bandits have kidnapped tourists from a Sabah resort island, and Malaysia is blaming RP for it instead of its flawed security. It is even egging RP shamelessly to give in to ransom demands, something it surely wouldn't do had the bandits chosen to hold out in Sabah instead of Sulu.

YOUR COMPUTER. Parents and critics are pressing a unit of prestigious publisher Simon & Schuster to reconsider releasing an Internet game, "Panty Raider," in which players find models and strip them down to their underwear to satisfy space aliens threatening to destroy Earth.

OUR WORLD. Three huge chunks of a US space rocket have crashed out of orbit onto South African soil in recent days, prompting a flurry of worries that more debris could be on the way.

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