Siege

In the holiest of weeks, we now seem to be a city under siege.

To the last man, the police has suspended all leaves. A heightened alert status will be maintained over the next few days. All movement and all luggage are closely scrutinized.

The metropolis has never seen security this tight. Police visibility is at its highest. All the churches are under tight guard. Even that sad hill at Guagua, Pampanga where, each year, in a truly curious tradition, men have themselves nailed to crosses to emulate Christ is fully secured by the police.

Call it paranoia. But the security forces are taking no chances.

The threat might be minimal, after all. But we are all under the grip of a theory: that the Abu Sayyaf - Jemaah Islamiya combine will launch attacks during the most devout days of Christendom to retaliate for the deaths of their colleagues in last week’s failed prison uprising.

I am not quite sure how the police arrives at its estimate of the threat.

We are told that there are about 50 terrorists on the loose in the national capital region. They are under orders to wreak havoc, plant bombs and produce misery.

I can understand the part about retaliation.

Nearly the entire first rank of the Abu Sayyaf group was exterminated in the police assault on the Camp Bagong Diwa prison building where a wild jailbreak attempt was launched. Mounting terrorist attacks will not restore strength to the decimated Abu Sayyaf roster. But it is part of human nature to seek revenge after pain has been inflicted.

With over a hundred of the bandit group’s members safely in police custody and with their main camp in Sulu overrun by the Army, it is doubtful the terrorists still have the organizational capacity to launch attacks in the unfamiliar terrain of the metropolitan area.

But I am in no position to challenge the police estimate of the threat. It is their job to be paranoid. They will bear the brunt of public outrage if anything adverse happens.

It is their duty to take every precaution to ensure the public safety. Vague and unseemly the threat may be, they must at least convince the public they have been vigilant to the utmost even if, realistically, it is difficult to make absolute guarantees against determined terrorists.

The comprehensive demonstration of police security efforts should be consoling. Deep inside, however, all of us know how difficult it is to stop an invisible and treacherous enemy.

We have seen how determined jihadists defied the most advanced security forces to attack New York and Madrid. We have seen how, despite the awesome power of US military presence in Iraq, militants have managed to mount bombing attacks nearly daily across that occupied country.

It is a greater challenge to fully secure a crowded and chaotic metropolis like ours. It is an area scarred by many terrorist attacks the past few years: against our trains, our ferry ships and our buses.

Those who continue resisting the enactment of an effective anti-terror law are in a serious state of denial. The longer such a law is delayed, the more vulnerable our people are.

We are in a condition of war.

It is war in its 21st century form: one with absolutely no demarcations between combatants and civilians, between the front and the rear lines, between military and civilian. It is war with no civilized ground rules and no political boundaries. The enemy precisely targets what is most vulnerable.

We have to avail of every provision to wage this war effectively. We must be equipped not only with security institutions reoriented to the requirements of this new form of confrontation but also with the legal instruments that will remove vulnerabilities that the enemy exploits.

Nothing could be more important than the safety of our peaceable public. No cost could be too great to ensure that. From time to time, it might be necessary for our security forces to do things that might seem extreme. Some allowance will have to be granted for that, in much the same way that in prior conditions of war in its traditional sense, we have allowed some leeway for our defense to be effective.

The condition of war that we must deal with does not fall under the classical notion of a civil conflict. This is an uncivil war. There is no point of neutrality in this engagement. There are no national boundaries that interfere with its conduct.

Much as we might want this week to be solemn, prayerful or at least restful, the enemy affords us no such luxury.

The rituals we normally conduct during this time will be conducted under a comprehensive security cover. Our churches are themselves the subject of threat. The places where people congregate have become also the sites of possible terror strikes.

We have no choice. We pray under siege the next few days.

We face an enemy that does not respect our need for solemnity during these days. It is an enemy that in fact sees the need for solemnity as a tactical opportunity to strike us.

And as if the threat from the jihadists is not enough, the communists have compounded our security concerns. On March 29, the New People’s Army celebrates the sad day this band of brigands was founded. By some perverse tradition, they celebrate this day by attacking our security installations.

By all means, we must go on with our usual rituals this time of the year – whether they be the rituals of prayer or of leisure.

But let us go through these rituals with an alert eye out for those honor neither prayer nor leisure but see them as vulnerable moments.