This time the guy may be right when he calls what’s there ‘a dirty war’

You’d think the Chicago Mob was in town to see those photos of American soldiers in civilian garb holding their automatic weapons at ready, fingers on the trigger, while their companions were inside a Zamboanga bank withdrawing money.

What’s this? A Hollywood movie? For Pete’s sake, those beefy fellows were even wearing dark glasses – á la Men in Black or the Japanese Yakuza. The Yanks, of course, must have been reading all those stories about the Philippines being the Wild Wild East, and probably believe Zambo is Dodge City East. But they simply can’t be allowed to swagger off base in mufti (one even wore shorts) with their heavy artillery.

It would have been better – but marginally – if at least they were in uniform, so they wouldn’t have looked like a bunch of thugs. In future, they should be required to have a legitimate Philippine Army escort, with a Filipino officer of appropriate rank in command. After all, even if our Armed Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Diomedio P. Villanueva as RP-Co-Chairman, Admiral Dennis C. Blair (CINCPAC), as US Co-Chairman, and acting Ambassador Robert Fitts, US Chargé d’Affaires, have just signed the document entitled "Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) Related Balikatan Exercises for CY 02," and are officially calling it, "FREEDOM EAGLE, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)", this doesn’t mean that the Yanks have to fight global terrorists all the way to the bank.

Incidentally, when I saw yesterday’s document, I didn’t notice Tito’s signature or initial in the space earmarked: "APPROVED BY: TEOFISTO GUINGONA, Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs."

Whose initials were those of the official "approving" the February 14 document, then?

* * *

Gee whiz. Even before the joint exercises actually begin, with our military fighting the Abu Sayyaf, supported by US troops as "trainors", or whatever their real role, we’re already fighting each other over the question: "Who’s in charge here?"

Zamboanga City’s streets aren’t like the streets of Laredo, where the Texas Rangers could overrule (and outgun, even) the local Sheriff. Even Georgie Bush from Crawford, Texas, ought to realize the difference between our turf in Mindanao and his former bailiwick, the Lone Star state.

According to a joint statement also just issued by Vice President and DFA Secretary Guingona and US Asst. Secretary of State James Kelly, operations will be implemented "under the authority" of our AFP Chief of Staff, Gen. Villanueva. Yet, under Villanueva, the field commanders of the two countries "will retain command over their respective forces." Another SOP in the statement affirms that "in no instance will US forces operate independently during field training exercises."

If you ask me, there’s still too much ambivalence in the terminology of that joint statement. In the thick of action, will Filipino and American officers – in case of an ad hoc dispute over who’s calling the shots – be able to settle the matter with such words as: "Time out – let’s refer this to the AFP Chief, General Villanueva, and wait for him to make the decision."

This may not be Black Hawk Down, with waves of thousands of screaming Somalis coming after the Americans with RPG rockets and automatic weapons, but when the Abu Sayyaf – or their buddies from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front – are coming at you, mortar shells exploding and lead flying at you, that’s no time to have to haggle over the terms of command or terms of engagement.

Remember the old expression, "the quick and the dead"? If you’re not quick, you’re dead.

* * *

It’s still top-secret, and hasn’t been revealed yet, but one of our best fighting generals has been relieved of his post because from the start he hung tough on the issue, declaring quite firmly that he would never yield, in any situation, to any command issued by an American officer and, in fact, would insist that in a combat zone, American units should obey the commands of the highest-ranking Filipino officer in the vicinity.

The general concerned can, of course, correct me if I’m wrong about the issue on which he was jerked out of his unit. But I’m not wrong about the fact that one of our most-decorated officers, Maj. Gen. Glicerio Sua (PMA Class ’72), was some two weeks ago relieved of his command of the 1st Infantry Division in Mindanao. (There are three Infantry Divisions under Gen. Roy Cimatu’s Southern Command or Southcom: the 1st, the 4th, and the 6th.)

Why Maj. General Sua’s fate still hasn’t been made public mystifies me, but he had his Division taken away from him by a Board of Generals – six of them, I understand – after a stormy dispute within the Board itself. Perhaps the reason they still can’t announce the "change" is because they still haven’t found a new slot in which to place such a ranking three-star officer as a Major General (they may even have to promote him to Lieutenant-General!). Where would he go?

The pity of it is that General Sua is one of the officers we can least afford to lose now that the Basilan and Sulu campaigns against the Abus and, who knows, other rebel groups, are heating up. Sua’s almost non-stop combat experience makes him one of our best and brightest top officers (since his first assignment, as a 2nd Lieutenant, chasing New People’s Army rebels in Northern Luzon, then NPA cadres in Mindoro, next – still as a lieutenant – fighting the Bangsamoro rebels and "Blackshirts" in Mindanao, he’s never held a desk job).

In short, in his long and distinguished career, Sua has covered himself with glory – but not publicity. He was never one to trumpet his own exploits, or sweettalk the media and promote his self-aggrandizement.

He can’t get his Division back. He never will, since ranking generals – like the ones who deep-sixed Sua – will deny to the death and never admit their mistakes, just as some doctors bury theirs. But Sua ought to be given an equivalent or higher posting – still in Mindanao.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t even personally know the gentleman. His record is known, outside of the military, to very few, because he’s never sought recognition or public acclaim. But, if you’re conversant with the "wars" our boys fought in Mindanao over the years, Sua’s is one of the names that stands out. He spent most of his youth and middle age, almost incessantly, on Mindanao’s wild frontier, engaged in our Mindanao campaigns.

* * *

The New York Times correspondent Nicholas D. Kristof (a Pulitzer no less), who virtually called President GMA an "extortionist" like the Abus, has come out with another pungent article in NYT. This time, it’s headlined: "Don’t be Part of this Mess." (He means, naturally, the mess in Mindanao).

The kicker of his piece is even more to the point: "Basilan Out of Control." (IHT, Wednesday, Feb. 13).

He warns; "The United States is unwittingly about to join a ‘dirty war’ in Basilan, siding with murderers and torturers in a way that dishonors its larger purposes."

In his report datelined Isabela, Basilan, Kristof writes of "Elnie Angulo, a slim, shy, 25-year-old peasant (who) was walking along a jungle path when he was accosted by three terrorists here on the island of Basilan, the second front in America’s war on terrorism. What happened next can be deduced from the findings of the imam who washed Angulo’s body and the doctor who performed the autopsy."

"The body had seven broken ribs, three broken vertebrae, slice marks on both hands and cuts in the neck. In addition, Angulo’s tongue had been cut off and his genitals severed."

"This kind of terrorism against civilians is the reason George W. Bush is sending 660 troops to help destroy the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in Basilan. But there’s a problem: The men who tortured Angulo to death were not Abu Sayyaf. They were Philippine troops."

Kristof goes on to say: "There are several reasons for misgivings about the American military deployment here, and that is one." This is the point at which he cautions his country, the US, about getting sucked into a "dirty war."

"The White House surely did not realize what was going on in the jungle here," Kristof goes on to assert, "and it may be that even the Philippine government in Manila is unaware of the murders. It is true that the scale of the extrajudicial killings is modest – in the dozens – and the target, the Abu Sayyaf, is even more brutal. But interviews with officials and ordinary people alike leave no doubt that the anti-terror campaign that the United States is backing here in Basilan is itself based in part on terror."

You’ve got to hand it to Kristof. His style is riveting, and he may be bucking for another Pulitzer prize, who knows? Another paragraph discloses: "Local people whisper about the white ambulance used by the provincial government. Each time it stops at a house at night, they say, someone from the house will turn up shot to death in the morning. It is a death squad, operated by the authorities, using defectors from the Abu Sayyaf to identify suspects and then execute them."

"Aside from the death squad, run by the local authorities," Kristof declares, "the Philippine marines are also out of control on Basilan. It was the marines who, by their own account, captured and interrogated Angulo on Sept. 24."

More: "The marines claim he was an Abu Sayyaf member who resisted arrest and was then shot, but the postmortem shows no bullet wounds."

* * *

Well, this time Kristof is probably right. It’s a "dirty war." Those of us who covered Mindanao, off and on for the past few decades, know how dirty it often becomes on all sides. Torture, murder, the killing of innocents can never be justified. But, as "war is hell" and brings out the bestiality in men, mindless and, in fact, malicious violence is one of its horrible by-products.

By all means, I agree with Kristof on his conclusion that "to go ahead with joint military exercises on Basilan would add American firepower and troops to an operation that is brutally out of control."

Yet, can Kristof be so naive – and America so squeamish?

What do you think the US just did in Afghanistan? It helped crush the cruel Taliban, but its allies there were a collection of warlords and murderers (even mass-murdering generals, like Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum who had once fought for the pro-Soviet forces and the Russians and whose artillery once reduced much of Kabul to rubble).

They helped him recapture his fiefdom, Mazar-i-Sharif, and conduct the battle in which the uprising staged in the old fort by hundreds of Taliban prisoners was bloodily put down, with virtually every rebellious prisoner wiped out. That’s where the Americans suffered their first fatality, a Central Intelligence Agency operative who had been assisting in the interrogation of the prisoners before they killed him in the opening stage of the uprising.

Who were the chieftains and foot-soldiers of the "Northern Alliance" whom the US supported, with US Special Forces on the ground, CIA and other special operations personnel, B-52s blasting Taliban and al-Qaeda positions from thousands of feet above, cruise missiles and rockets? Sure, they were anti-Taliban mujahideen, but many of them were thugs, former brigands, poppy-growers and drug smugglers, torturers and cut-throats. (The Taliban were vicious, but those Northern Alliance heroes, like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazzaras, and the Pushtuns who ditched their ethnic brethren and joined the "winning side", habitually treated their foes and innocents who got in their way with the same tender, loving care the Philippine Marines, as Kristof found, bestowed on poor Angulo.

As for our marines, they’ve seen scores of their comrades tortured, eyes gouged out, genitals cut off, beheaded, over the years.

* * *

Every war brutalizes. When we were covering the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, another "dirty war" into which the Americans were sucked, while proclaiming the nobility of their cause, we’ve seen My Lai massacres by those do-gooding Americans, clean-cut American "grunts" – with the same exasperation perhaps – committing atrocities on unfortunate peasants and "suspected" Vietcong, while the CIA was inciting the Montagnards to plant poppies in between fighting the V.C., then drug-running to finance their operations (they later claimed). Yes, in those same mountains, the US Special Forces, the Green Berets, were operating, bravely enough, with the Hmongs, the Jarai and other mountain people whom they mobilized into effective anti-Communist fighting units. The US Special Forces men must have been blind not to have spotted, as well, the drug-running activities of the CIA’s Saigon Station – using "Air America" and the CAT as carriers. The opium and heroin, and "China White," found their way to America, as well as to the French "connection" run by the Corsicans from Vietnam and Cambodia to Marseilles.

We saw much of it ourselves. But don’t take my word for it. Just refer to Chapter 44, The CIA and the Drug Lords, in the book which came off the press just last year. The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento, who’s president of the Public Education Center, a "nonprofit national security news service", and Jack Andersen’s Washington Merry-go-round, the CNN’s Investigative unit, and was an adviser for 60 Minutes, Nightline and Prime Time Live.

The book published by Forum in 2001 is on every convenient library shelf.

Then there’s John K. Cooley’s book, Unholy Wars, (Pluto Press, London, Sterling, Virginia 1999, updated 2000) which reveals how the CIA ran opium, heroin, and guns in Afghanistan to "finance" the anti-Soviet mujahideen (and line their own pockets).

Perhaps our homegrown thugs, murderers and torturers ought to think twice about allying themselves with the United States.

Mr. Kristof, I think you’ve got a point there.