EDITORIAL - War games

This has got to be the strangest military exercise ever between the Philippines and the United States. The "Balikatan" war games won’t seem almost real; in fact the battles will be for real. And the shooting won’t be between Filipino and American troops, but between the joint forces of the two countries and the Abu Sayyaf.

Aware of constitutional provisions, government officials have taken pains to emphasize that the Americans won’t be involved in combat operations. They can, however, fire back at the Abu Sayyaf terrorists in self-defense. They will also assist Philippine troops in rescuing the three remaining hostages of the Abu Sayyaf: Filipina nurse Deborah Yap and American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham. The Americans will be using their own aircraft, weapons and high-tech surveillance equipment to flush out the guerrillas from the jungles of Basilan. The war games, which rarely lasted more than a month, can now stretch to six months or even a year, defense officials said.

As of yesterday, the government’s spin was that the war games would constitute "on-the-job training" for the forces of the two countries. Whatever hair-splitting is resorted to by the government to explain the US presence in Basilan, Filipinos get the message: American troops are being deployed to help fight the Abu Sayyaf. And if you don’t hear too many Filipinos protesting, it’s because the Armed Forces of the Philippines has failed to do its job.

For too long the people have waited. The Abu Sayyaf’s first major operation – the raid of Ipil town in Zamboanga del Sur – was staged in 1995. Since then the group, which has been linked to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network, has staged many more raids, torched churches, kidnapped priests and nuns, raped, pillaged, and massacred Christians. In 2000 they made $20 million from their first sensational kidnapping caper. Six years and three presidents since the Ipil raid, the government is still promising to crush and annihilate the terrorists.

Some Filipinos chortle when the government links the Abu Sayyaf to Osama bin Laden. But there are also Filipinos who feel relieved that those links, whether real or imagined, have brought the Americans to Basilan. The hope is that if they can flush out the Taliban from the caves of Afghanistan, perhaps they can finally flush out Abu Sabaya and his gang. Filipinos don’t want foreign troops performing actual military operations in Philippine soil. But we also can’t help urging the Americans to go get ’em. How we wish we were shouting these words of encouragement only to our own troops.