Kissing in private, not in public? What a way to wage a war

The trouble with having 200 journalists – about 150 of them foreign would-be war cor-respondents crowding into Zamboanga and Basilan – seeking accreditation from the Armed Forces and Department of Defense to cover the anticipated "war" on the Abu Sayyaf, is that the way things are going, news and media persons may soon outnumber the Abus in number and pugnacity.

How can our Armed Forces men and their American "trainors" (back-up troops?) tramp through the underbrush and penetrate the jungle with appropriate stealth and efficiency when they have so many journalists underfoot?

First, so many foreign journalists within easy arm’s reach – particularly of the higher-price-fetching Caucasian ("blue seal") variety – will be very much of a temptation to the Abus, and their pals, the Pentagon Gang and their parent-outfit, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), to acquire more hostages. As the publicity and international angst generated by the kidnapping by an Islamic terrorist group in Pakistan of The Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl has already demonstrated, abducting a "white" newspaperman has even greater propaganda value than that of continuing to hold captive an American missionary couple, Martin and Gracia Burnham. And, probably, the Abus or the MILF, or any "Lost Command" would be able to require a bigger ransom than the $2-million reputedly being demanded for the release of the Burnhams.

But the worst danger of all is that 100 or 150 foreign correspondents bumming around the place, frustrated at not being able to find a "war" (only legal nitpicking and a few Leftist mini-demonstrations), will feel pressured to justify their existence here by desperately knocking together lurid stories larded with local color to mollify their editors and meet the inexorable daily deadline.

One amusing piece produced by Associated Press and which appeared yesterday in The STAR said that "US troops have been told not to kiss in public or discuss religion in Mindanao . . ."

The guidelines, said AP, were included in a seminar held on "cultural sensitivities." The dispatch quoted Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman as revealing the briefing on how to comport themselves "in a manner that will not become a source of tension and irritation for the public" was attended by 30 American soldiers and officers "at the military’s heavily-secured Southern Command headquarters" in Zamboanga. Big deal. I like that bit about "heavily-secured headquarters . . ." You’d think that the Philippine military was more concerned about keeping the Americans safe and secure than in hunting down the Abu Sayyaf.

As for kissing in public, what the heck. Everybody knows that Americans do such thing on a daily basis (they’ve seen all those Hollywood movies a zillion times in the cinemas and on cable TV. You know, those flicks in which a guy meets a gal in a bar, or at some party, or on the beach and within minutes they’re naked in bed making out like nobody’s business).

Pinoys, whether Christian, Muslim or Lumad, have by now grown familiar with this quaint American form of social intercourse. Sus, some Filipinos even kiss in public, too. Must be that awful US and, let’s face it, European influence which has been fast corrupting us moralistic, sexually well-behaved, and upright Asians.

The only recent motion pictures I recall where there was no sex involved, only people shooting each other to pieces, were Black Hawk Down and Behind Enemy Lines. The US combat pilot hero of the latter celluloid epic was too busy running for his life to entertain any fool notions of kissing anything but the ground to escape flying lead and other lethal ordnance.

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There’s another hilarious "think" piece which appeared yesterday in the good, gray New York Times (my journalistic alma mater), written by Nicholas D. Kristof and datelined Camp Cabunbata, Philippines.

It was simultaneously published on the editorial page of the NYT’s sister-publication the International Herald Tribune yesterday, under the headline, "The Philippine Front of the Terror War Looks Like a Con Game."

Perhaps Kristof is right. Perhaps sending US special forces and other troops to Mindanao on the supposed mission of fighting terrorists is just another scam designed to screw the long-suffering American taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars. (Poor Uncle Sucker, he’s easy prey on this mendacious world for everybody with his hand out, as Kristof would put it. Why those greedy parasites, seems to be the NYT correspondent’s implications, are just trying to depict those scruffy Abus as Islamic terrorists when they’re nothing but a bunch of kidnapping bandits! And he’s even got a Filipino captain to quote as the source of this conclusion.) Makes US President Georgie Bush and our President GMA look like a conniving pair of "con men" (sorry about being gender-insensitive, but "con-persons" doesn’t seem to ring right).

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In any event, here’s what Mr. Kristof wrote: "The steamy, sullen jungle of Basilan is becoming the next front in America’s war on terror, and everybody is getting ready for the 660 US troops who are beginning to arrive in the area."

"Muslim fighters are sending their wives away, out of respect for American military prowess. Philippine soldiers are angling for new laser targeting gear, out of respect for American technology. And bars are busy recruiting teen-age girls as ‘entertainers’ out of respect for American libido.

"But we’ve been had. This new deployment of troops isn’t really about fighting international terrorism, as the Bush administration insists – and perhaps believes, which may be worse."

"Anyone who comes here to the jungles of Basilan, home to the Abu Sayyaf movement that the United States is supposed to destroy, discovers pretty quickly that the Abu Sayyaf isn’t a militant Islamic terror group. It’s simply a gang of about 60 brutal thugs.

" ‘It is clear that they’re ordinary criminals, unlike the Taliban, who fought for a cause,’ said Captain Harold Cabunoc, commander of the Philippine forces at Basilan’s Camp Cabunbata, where about a dozen US Special Operations troops will soon be based (most of the US troops will stay on safer ground off Basilan). ‘These guys just kidnap for money. They’re just common criminals.’

"In the early 1990s, Abu Sayyaf had aims of carving out an Islamic state in the south of this mostly Roman Catholic country. But Abu Sayyaf soon degenerated into another of the gangs that have made kidnapping one of the Philippines’ leading service industries.

"The Abu Sayyaf has been asking for $2 million ransom in exchange for a Kansas missionary couple, Martin and Gracia Burnham. There are signs that the United States could be celebrating their release very soon."

Now I must admit that I’m very much intrigued by the last sentence above, pronounced by Kristof with the certainty of the initiated. Does this mean that somebody has come up with the demanded ransom payment? We’ll know soon enough. But a caveat. The Abus have, in the past, proven unpredictable. Let’s not join Kristof and the United States in celebrating – not just yet.

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Continues the NYT journalist in terms less flattering to GMA;

"In short, Abu Sayyaf has perfected the art of extorting money from foreigners. And now President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo seems to be learning the art as well. She seized upon the opportunity created by Sept. 11 to portray Abu Sayyaf as international terrorists, accepted an offer by President George W. Bush to eradicate them, and promptly won $100 million in fresh military aid.

"I have a grudging admiration for Mrs. Arroyo’s shrewdness. Perhaps if New York City wants to get the assistance that the Bush administration promised after Sept. 11, it should demand help crushing ‘international terrorists.’ If the Philippines can get $100 million because of a gang of 60 crooks, think how much New York City is entitled to!

"When I asked Mrs. Arroyo whether Abu Sayyaf really counted as a terrorist group, she acknowledged that in recent years there had been no proven links to Al-Qaeda. ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re connected with Al Qaeda,’ she added, asserting that Abu Sayyaf kidnappers were terrorists because they instilled terror."

I think it’s unfair of Kristof, in his sharp-edged sarcastic piece, to speak so harshly and sneeringly of GMA. Why, that sanamagan is virtually calling her an extortionist!

When she was the third or fourth person to ring up Mr. Bush in the immediate aftermath of the Twin Tower and Pentagon tragedies to express her condolences and assure the US of Philippine support in the fight against terrorism, I don’t believe (do you?) she had any thought of ringing up the cash register in mind. It was a spontaneous gesture, anybody but the most cynical would concede.

Kristof didn’t do his homework, as my old editors in the New York Times, Abe Rosenthal and Seymour Topping, and even Joe Lelyveld, used to insist, because, as everybody remembers, the NYT was supposed to be "the newspaper of record", immortalizing for the historical record "all the news that’s fit to print." (In contrast to the popular tabloid in which I had done my "cadetship" on a Joseph Medill Patterson award, the New York Daily News, where Queen Elizabeth II was often referred to as "Liz", and the motto appeared to be, "All the news that fits, we print".)

The truth is that the US State Department and the US government in an advisory compiled before Sept. 11 had already classified the Abu Sayyaf (in a list of 30 or so others) as a "terroristic" group. In those days, being a terrorist wasn’t regarded as quite as villainous as it has become since the shocks of the terrible Tuesday in September, when America was caught napping by a bunch of Arab terrorists it had previously underestimated. (This writer was in San Francisco on Sept. 11, then flew on to New York City four days later when the airports were reopened, to visit Ground Zero. The information about the "advisory" appeared, if I remember right, in the NYT itself, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post.)

After all, the Americans thought that the danger had diminished when the unsuccessful Feb. 23, 1993 World Trade Center "bomber", Ramzi Yousef, was caught in Pakistan, tried in the US and sentenced by US Judge Kevin Duffy to 240 years in prison on February 12, 1997. (Yousef is now in a Colorado prison, in solitary confinement and denied any visitors except his attorneys.)

Before he was sentenced, if you’ll recall, Yousef had declared in court: "Yes, I’m a terrorist and I’m proud of it!"

And here are Judge Duffy’s words in sentencing Yousef. The judge asserted: "Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction . . ." Duffy condemned the "sneak attacks which sought to kill and maim totally innocent people."

Who would have believed, in that dramatic moment, that the same network of terrorists would hit the World Trade Center again – this time with stultifying and shocking results?

Here are Judge Duffy’s final words in sentencing Yousef: "When you arrived in this country you immediately recruited a group to your evil plans. When you went to the Philippines you brought still others into your adoration of evil. Starting from nothing, you have shown you an quickly put together those whom you believe are necessary to carry out your nefarious plans. Obviously, you converted them from Allah to evil."

Duffy uttered those words in 1997, when not even GMA’s immediate successor, Joseph Estrada, had become President.

Who in the Philippines did Yousef train when he was in Basilan, before he flew on to Manila to organize more cells in the network of terrorist "sleepers" he mobilized here even as he hatched his so-called Bojinka Plot?

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Don’t take my word for it. More than one book and several magazine articles have been written about Yousef’s activities in the Philippines. But here’s the London-based investigative journalist Simon Reeve’s bestseller, The New Jackals, published by the Northeastern University Press, Boston, in 1999 – long before GMA became President a year ago.

Incidentally, the subtitle of the book was: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism.

Reeve had written on pages 71 to 73 that "a group of militant Saudi businessmen visited Pakistan in the middle of 1994 and had meetings with associates of Yousef and bin Laden . . . The relationship between Yousef and bin Laden’s organization slowly blossomed. Pakistani intelligence sources believe bin Laden’s senior officers asked Yousef to travel to the Philippines – a country he had visited before the World Trade Center bombing – to help Abu Sayyaf, a vicious local Muslim terrorist group already patronized by bin Laden and known to Yousef. Yousef bade farewell to his wife and friends and flew from Pakistan to Malaysia, then travelled by boat to the city of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, and took a ferry for the 90-minute crossing to Abu Sayyaf’s secret base on the small island of Basilan in the Sulu Sea, 550 miles south of Manila."

Continued Reeve: "Osama bin Laden believed that an armed insurrection in the south by Abu Sayyaf and thousands of Islamic militants could lead to the creation of a separate independent Muslims state, and through his lieutenants he was funding Abu Sayyaf and encouraging the group’s expansion . . . Bin Laden asked Yousef to train men from the Abu Sayyaf in the use of sophisticated high explosives. He spent several weeks on Basilan, travelling into the remote, hilly interior of the island to witness small-arms training, and taught his extraordinary bomb-making skills to more than 20 Abu Sayyaf terrorists in safehouses in and around Isabela, the provincial capital."

A more recent book, post-Sept. 11, Peter L. Bergen’s HOLY WAR, INC. or Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (The Free Press, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore, 2001) describes Ramzi Yousef ("whose family are Baluch, Pakistanis," but was "brought up in Kuwait") as a "one-man global jihad. Bergen, the CNN’s terrorism analyst, said Yousef’s "terrorism career took him to Afghanistan, New York, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan."

Went on Bergen: "Yousef’s terrorist plots against the West culminated in plans for blowing up a dozen or so American passenger jets, assassinating Pope John Paul II, and crashing a plane into CIA headquarters in Virginia. The plots were discovered when Filipino police found their outlines on his laptap computer in his Manila apartment in 1994 and subsequently interrogated one of Yousef’s co-conspirators, who supplied the details of the plan the terrorist code-named Bojinka."

When Yousef was finally captured in Pakistan in 1995, Bergen recalls – a chilling anecdote – FBI agents flew him back to New York. "The helicopter that would take Yousef to his American jail cell in Manhattan flew past the World Trade Center, and one of the agents commented that the towers were still standing. ‘They wouldn’t be if I had enough money and explosives,’ came the reply."

If at first you don’t succeed, as the old adage goes, try, try again.

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Methinks Kristof owes President GMA an apology. She wasn’t the one who pinned that "terrorist" tag on the Abu Sayyaf – that label was laid on them long before her own presidency. As for the other "thousands" envisioned to raise the banner of Islamic revolt by old Osama? Why, there are the so-called 10,000 guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the allies – as I’ve been saying for years – of those scruffy Abus.

But what the heck. Don’t apologize or backpedal, Mr. Kristof. We can live without it. Sure, like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, the newly-liberated Afghanistan under the admirable interim leader Hamid Karzai (but will he last?) we Filipinos may indeed be screwing the long-suffering US taxpayers.

It’s not a good sign, however, when a Superpower is regarded as so unpopular and so gullible that it has to buy "friends."