Netherworld

The President, no less, suggested publicly that money from illegal drugs are funding the war chests of some terrorist groups.

That is a staggering suggestion. It creates all sorts of nightmares and opens a host of unhealthy possibilities down the road.

We do not have details about the alleged link-up. But we know the President to be a very careful person and it is uncharacteristic for her to make unfounded claims merely for soundbite value.

It seems the vast intelligence machinery at the disposal of the President must have detected something. Whatever this may be, it would be inappropriate for the intelligence agencies to disclose their leads prematurely.

And so we are left only with what the President was willing to say on public record.

There are other things on public record, however.

A few days ago, the authorities discovered an explosives cache attributed to the MILF. In that singular cache were more C4 explosives than what was available in the entire inventory of our Armed Forces.

In a separate news report, the authorities have deduced that the MILF has drawn and very likely spent P6 billion for the purchase of powerful weaponry. The estimate was arrived at counting the bank wrappers for money withdrawn in bulk. The wrappers were found in an MILF safehouse captured by the military.

Among the items the MILF is said to be trying to acquire is a midget submarine. Such a vessel will, no doubt, be worth its cost because of its ability to run the Navy blockades and smuggle in arms – as well as, in all likelihood, smuggle out illegal substances.

With the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the recent effort of Libya to move to a more mainstream position, the secessionists in the Philippine south must be losing traditional sources of funding support. It is not easy to maintain a standing army, a large horde of men under arms. That requires immense logistics not only for the purchase of weaponry but also for keeping their camps supplied, covering their operational costs and paying out allowances to full-time guerrillas.

Hashim Salamat, leader of the MILF, recently renounced terrorism.

It was a renunciation, however, that was overshadowed by the discovery of that horrifying MILF explosives cache. It was overshadowed even more by the confessions of captured Indonesian fundamentalist operatives that they were responsible for the bloody Rizal Day bombing in December 2000 – and that they trained with the MILF.

That renunciation was obviously done for political effect. Government has set as one of its conditions for not labeling the MILF as terrorist organization a public renunciation of terrorism as a means to achieve ideological goals.

The MILF is apparently also under great pressure from Malaysia to renounce terrorism. Malaysia, in behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is hosting the pace negotiations between the MILF and the Philippine government.

When Hashim Salamat made that renunciation, the MILF as well as Kuala Lumpur, were requesting that the arrest order issued against the secessionist leaders be lifted. The timing of the renunciation was more than coincidental.

There is every indication that the MILF is running short of logistics. That, and the fact that the group has the capacity to run dirty things across the border, makes financial partnership with drug syndicates understandable if not wholly probable.

The NPA, too, is not above suspicion.

In its early days, the CPP-NPA protected illegal loggers in their guerrilla areas in exchange for dirty money. Leninism does not see any contradiction is using dirty money to advance what they might hold to be noble goals.

In the same way, large marijuana plantations were found in areas controlled by the communist guerrillas. Some of the breakaway factions of the local communist movements have, in several instances, played footsies with criminal organizations in exchange for hefty donations to the cause.

There are cases, too, when the NPA mounted criminal actions themselves in pursuit of financing goals. These actions included bank robberies, arson in aid of extortion and other unforgivable activities.

Lately, the CPP-NPA has been under great financial pressure.

When Washington tagged the CPP-NPA as a "foreign terrorist organization", countries engaged with the anti-terror alliances have put a tight watch on financial flows that might benefit this organization. Exiled CPP leader Jose Ma. Sison complained publicly about the diminution of personal comfort due to the restrictions on money flowing towards his group.

Last year, Sison went on and on about the depletion of his grocery money. His friends here at home even began a collection to keep the self-exiled communist leader comfortable.

One of the possible reasons advanced to explain the recent spate of NPA attacks was the anxiousness of the communist movement to maintain the credibility of its capacity for violence. That credibility is important to make their system of extortion work.

On their own, both the CPP and the MILF have wrought great damage to our society, our people’s livelihood and on the national economy. When they declared a "tactical alliance", this produced diversionary attacks by both groups to relieve military pressure on their partners in chaos.

If it is true that an unholy alliance has been formed between these two terror-prone groups and the drug syndicates, then the avenues for mischief multiplies in a staggering way. They can supplement the capacity of the syndicates for organized violence. They can offer sanctuaries – much like the MILF areas became sanctuaries for kidnap-for-ransom groups such as the Pentagon Gang.

If there is the slightest indication that this unholy alliance of the netherworld has begun forming, government must exert every effort to break it up at the soonest possible time to spare our society from the multifold evils such an alliance may bring to the peace of our communities.

Both the communists and the secessionists are in truly desperate straits. They are losing support from abroad and they are suffering from diminished credibility in their very own bases.

Desperation is the mother of unscrupulous alliances.