After a battle, even armchair commandos are ‘smarter’ than the men who fought and bled there

After the firefight in Zamboanga del Norte which left two of the three hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf dead, with "only one" rescued, one local television commentator, safe enough in his natty business suit in an air-conditioned newsroom, remarked that the episode had been an "embarrassment" for our government and the military.

Come again?

Nobody should be embarrassed. We grieve for the victims – and let’s not forget the seven brave soldiers who were wounded, some seriously, in that sharp encounter – but let’s be realistic. Those who’ve never been in combat may be forgiven for their ignorance – but not for their propensity to leap to judgment . The awful truth is that when bullets are zinging, and even worse when there’s mortar or rocket fire, and there’s an ear-piercing racket like all hell’s breaking loose, soldiers under fire, while shooting back in return, don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not hostages, usually shoved up front as human shields, might be in "harm’s way". The poor grunt himself, with his own life on the line, is himself in harm’s way.

In a combat situation, with heavy automatic weapons hammering away, of course people die. Often enough, this includes non-combatants, like the hostages themselves.

Were Martin Burnham and nurse Ediborah Yap deliberately murdered by the Abu Sayyaf? (I dislike the term so widely used, "executed", since it somehow implies that the scurvy kidnappers had the right to kill their captives.) Or were they slain in the crossfire? How will we ever know? In the end, what does it matter? It’s painfully tragic that they died. But, sadly, that’s the way "war" is. There will always be casualties and fatalities.

* * *

From the moment word came of the bloody clash in Sirawi, Zamboanga del Norte, and the deaths of Burnham and Yap, everybody began expressing strong opinions about what had occurred. Even the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) anchor-woman in faraway London kept on asking their local correspondent on worldwide cable TV whether it wasn’t a Philippine Army rescue attempt "which went horribly wrong."

My daughter Rachelle, who lives in New Jersey, rang me up to report that some radio and TV commentators in her neck of the woods were remarking that Philippine President Macapagal-Arroyo hadn’t "done enough" to secure the safety of the Burnhams and Ediborah Yap. (Being a nurse herself, and her Cuban-American husband a former US paramedic and ambulance crewman, but he’s now a supervisor at the piers, Rachelle was unhappy too over the fate of nurse Yap).

I told her that the critics weren’t fair. The real problem was that, while talking tough, GMA didn’t, as commander-in-chief, insist that our troops punch in, no matter what happened. That’s why the hostage crisis had dragged on, humiliatingly, for just over a year.

Since December, Army, Scout Ranger, and Marine patrols in Basilan had spotted the Abus several times, but each time the rebels had the Burnhams with them, and the troops hesitated to open fire. What shavetail lieutenant, or even sergeant would risk putting his career and future at risk by killing or getting the Burnhams and Mrs. Yap killed in a firefight. Quite a number of times, in this corner, I urged the commander-in-chief and the generals to give their officers and men a categorical order to initiate an attack on the Abu Sayyaf as soon as they found them, and underscore that the "primary mission" was to get the Abus – not leave them free to kidnap, murder, torture, rape, and inflict destruction in helpless communities, even more.

Obviously, if belatedly, this order was finally given – last Friday. The outcome, unfortunately, was unhappy as far as two of the hostages were concerned, but, let me repeat, the mission (as some have been too quick to cavil), wasn’t "bungled". If anything was bungled, it was the failure of the attack-force to get Abu Sabaya or any of the leading Abu Sayyaf, and permitting them to disperse into hiding. Up to now, the four slain Abus haven’t even been identified.

Undeterred by this initial setback, the armed forces must press on. There are no longer, for the moment, any "human shields" to deter them and slow them down. It’s unfortunate that night fell too soon last Friday, and perhaps the darkness (which is their natural element) helped the rest of the 80-member band to get away – and fade into the jungle, or into disguise within Muslim communities along the way. As in Vietnam, what’s going on in Mindanao remains the "war of the flea" (as the ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, put it in his 13 essays on war).

When you’re stacked up against a canny guerrilla enemy – who knows the terrain, whether jungle, swamp, kota or kampong, and can "innocently" mingle into the local population – you’re clearly at a disadvantage. But push on, relentlessly, you must. Only by being more determined, more persistent (I hesitate to add, more cruel) than the guerrilla quarry can you win.

Abu Sabaya, incidentally, used to be a "houseboy", working for one of the prominent Moro families. Perhaps that’s the camouflage he has adopted, again, since last Friday. (But he’s a ransom-rich houseboy by now, I don’t doubt).

* * *

President Macapagal-Arroyo has been saying the right things. She telephoned the parents of Missionary Martin Burnham Friday to express her commiseration and condolences. Then she talked to US President George W. Bush.

From Bush himself, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, et cetera, the responses and comments have been supportive. The Americans, for their part, have been stating that they were in the loop, and had been consulted on the offensive, but no American had taken part in it. That’s P.R., of course. The war goes on.

Maybe it might be viewed as consuelo de bobo, but it’s reality. Most hostage situations in the world have ended up with some of the hostages being killed — no matter how sophisticated the operation.

One of the worst snafus occurred in West Germany at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A group of "Black September" terrorists (mainly Palestinians and other Arabs) infiltrated the "Olympic Village", killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage. The Germans rushed policemen and military men to head off the kidnappers and tried "negotiating" with them. The series of events led to a spectacular shoot-out at the Furstenfeldbruck military airfield, when the police opened fire just as the terrorists and their hostages were on the point of taking off in helicopters. The "rescue" attempt was so unsuccessful that a police officer was cut down in the first fusillade and the terrorists were able to blow up all their nine Israeli captives with hand grenades.

I flew to Munich to go over the Olympic stadium and village to study what had gone wrong. (I was more energetic and nosey as a journalist in those days.)

In any event, determined to avoid a repetition of what they considered a national humiliation, the Germans mobilized an entirely new anti-terrorist group, the now famous branch of the Bundesgrenzchutz (Federal Border Police), and called it Grenzchutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9). The GSG 9 distinguished itself in 1977 in Mogadishu, Somalia, when a team of this German anti-terrorist force punched into a hijacked Lufthansa airliner and rescued the 100 passenger-hostages, held by a terrorist group led by a man calling himself "Commander Mahmoud" (later identified as international terrorist Zohair Youssef Akache).

Mahmoud was cut down in the first exchange of gunfire, but managed to throw two hand-grenades at the passengers and assailing German police commandos, but almost miraculously the home-made grenades failed to go off! One of the women hijackers was slain, plus a secondman. The other terrorist, also a woman — Suhaila Sayeh — was wounded but didn’t die.

In another incident, at about the same time, however, the Germans failed to rescue another victim. On September 5, 1977, a prominent West German businessman, Hans-Martin Schleyer, was abducted by the "Red Army Faction", with the terrorists demanding the release of 11 convicted "comrades" held in German jails. Negotiations went on fruitlessly for weeks. Three days after the fantastic Mogadishu rescue, the corpse of the hapless Hans-Martin Schleyer was found stuffed in an abandoned car at Mulhouse, West Germany.

You win some, and you lose some.