Terrorists

We don’t know how many innocent lives were saved over the last few days as government tracker teams identified and then smashed an Abu Sayyaf bombing team in the Manila area.

We can only speculate. That is the nature of the war against terror: busting one terror cell does not mean averting the deployment of another. The effort at neutralizing terrorist threats must be insistent, consistent and untiring.

What we do know is that about 80 pounds of explosives were captured in a series of raids in Cubao and Novaliches. Four notorious Abu Sayyaf personalities were taken into custody. Of these four, one was identified as responsible for beheading an American hostage, another identified as responsible for a blast in Zamboanga that killed an American soldier and yet another claims responsibility for bombing Superferry 14 last month.

That band seems to represent the cream of what is left of the decimated bandit group suspected as having links with the Jemaah Islamiyah.

The captured explosives, along with timing devices and detonators, are a chilling sight. They could have been used for what the President describes as a "Madrid-level" attack.

It is not difficult to imagine the human tragedy that might have happened if this terrorist band was not busted. We do not even have to import images from Madrid. In what we now refer to as the "Rizal Day bombing" of 2000, one target was a crowded LRT coach. That was a tragic sight.

The authorities are hesitant to provide greater detail about the plans of this particular Abu Sayyaf bombing mission. Perhaps those details are still being extracted from the suspects who are now under tactical interrogation.

But we are told, in general terms, that the group intended to hit our trains and our malls.

Our trains and our malls, as we know, are places where ordinary people are unnaturally packed together. An attack on malls or trains would obviously be intended to take the maximum human toll.

Acts of terror are always perverse acts. I am not sure if it is possible to make gradations in the heartlessness of terrorists, to say that an attack on a less crowded place is a bit more forgivable than an attack on a crowded train or mall.

Nor, I believe, is it possible to make a moral distinction between the bombing of the LRT in December 2000 that killed and injured scores of innocents and, say, the NPA attack on the Ormoc power plant that killed two policemen and three unarmed employees of the Napocor.

Acts of terror are morally reprehensible in any form and at whatever level of human toll.

In the exploratory negotiations between government representatives and the CPP-NPA leadership in Oslo that started yesterday, the communists fussed over the terrorist tag attached to them. I find this puzzling. On the one hand, they exhort their fanatical followers on the ground to mount attacks, extort "permit to campaign" fees under the pain of violence and take hostages. On the other hand, they plead they are not terrorists.

They should try and explain that to the bereaved families of the three Napocor employees killed in the Ormoc attack. They should try and explain that to all of us who were nearly thrown into darkness and deeper poverty had the communist guerrillas succeeded in torching the Ormoc plant.

I do find it strange that those now challenging President Gloria in the electoral campaign have maintained a strange silence about the terrorist threat that faces our people. If they agree with the effort, fairness should dictate that they say so and celebrate with the rest of us the great achievement of cracking a terrorist cell that was well set to attack the metropolis.

If a bomb went off at a mall or on a train, I don’t suppose the shrapnel would make a distinction between a K4 and a KNP voter. Terrorism threatens us all.

So why is no one else talking about terrorism in this lackluster campaign?

The closest someone else came to addressing this issue was when someone from the FPJ camp, I do not recall now exactly who, criticized our nation’s participation in the global anti-terror coalition saying we could be inviting a terrorist attack.

This point of view is flawed to the core. Even before September 11 happened in New York and March 11 happened in Madrid, we had the Abu Sayyaf. Both this group and the MILF were playing footsies with the Jemaah Islamiyah, which is linked to the al-Qaeda.

Before September 11 happened, Manila was bombed on December 30, 2000. Years before that, Al Qaeda trained pilots here. They had bombers blowing themselves up in an Ermita apartment. They planned to seize a score of planes out of Manila before they even thought of attacking New York.

Let’s not hide our faces in the sand. We are a frontline state – not because we chose to be one but because the terrorists chose us to be one.

There is only one way we have to deal with this: form the closest alliances with others similarly threatened by the terrorist scourge, exercise untiring vigilance in suppressing domestic sources of terrorist threats and give the bad guys no quarters.

And that is exactly what this government is doing.

Terrorism should be at the top of the national agenda – not by choice but by necessity.

We did not choose to be a target. The country is a target because we are vulnerable, because we have insane rebellions here that provide sanctuaries for terrorism to breed and because the security effort has, until recently, been restrained.

All the others who want to be President of the Republic must try and assure us that the war against terror will be unceasing into the future. They must tell us what they intend to do about this war and try to convince us they will do better that what the current leadership has done.

Any waffling in the national effort to combat terrorism will, whether we like it or not, become an open invitation for every insane terrorist group to come in and play, to enter and wreak havoc on the lives of our people.

Set aside all the inane mudslinging that has been going on in this campaign. Let us show singular determination in stamping out the scourge of terror in our land.