The new counterinsurgency

The new commander-in-chief has spoken: counterinsurgency continues, but this time with respect for human rights.

It’s the right thing to say. How this will be implemented remains to be seen.

In the new Aquino administration, we probably won’t see another Jovito Palparan standing up to be recognized for a job well done at the joint session of Congress during a president’s State of the Nation Address.

But I have asked a number of military officers who personally frown on extrajudicial methods of defending the republic, and even they hesitate to fully condemn the counterinsurgency tactics attributed to officers like Palparan.

All that those officers would tell me was that in asymmetrical warfare, certain segments of the military still saw the need to employ unconventional methods of neutralizing threats.

Fighting such threats has always been tricky in democratic societies. If the enemy is not bound by conventions on human rights, how can government forces respond effectively? The choices become harder when comrades have been tricked into an ambush, massacred and mutilated by a brutal enemy. In retaliation, the temptation to extract an eye for an eye, or worse, can be irresistible.

In the heat of such battles, the order of a well-meaning commander-in-chief becomes no more than a best-efforts pledge.

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Left-leaning groups say there shouldn’t even be a counterinsurgency campaign since the communist party is no longer an outlawed organization.

There are military officers who will agree. They believe the threat posed by the New People’s Army is more a problem of law enforcement and no longer fueled by ideology, and operations against the NPA should be turned over to the Philippine National Police.  

These military officers also believe social injustice and economic want rather than ideology continue to serve as the biggest recruitment tools of insurgents. Make a dent in easing if not solving these problems and groups such as the NPA become irrelevant. 

These problems, of course, won’t go away or even be eased overnight, despite the good intentions and the best-laid plans of the only son of Ninoy and Cory Aquino.

So for now the Armed Forces of the Philippines will continue battling a group that has degenerated into banditry, extorting “revolutionary taxes” and bombing the farms, buses and communication towers of those who refuse to pay.

The NPA also continues to raid military and police outposts and kidnap or kill cops and soldiers.

Like Islamic secessionists, the terrorist cell Jemaah Islamiyah and the bandit group Abu Sayyaf, NPA members wage their battle without being bound by international treaties on human rights and the conduct of conventional warfare.     

These groups plant landmines. They use children for their operations, not just as lookouts or messengers but also as armed militants. A drive through secessionist-held areas in Mindanao will show you boys toting rifles that sometimes look bigger than them.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in alliance with the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, has perpetrated some of the worst atrocities against government forces and civilians alike, with decapitation its preferred coup de grace on enemies.

A report prepared by United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston after a fact-finding visit here, which slammed the AFP for being “in denial” about extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, also condemned human rights violations committed by the NPA.

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In the first two weeks of the new Aquino administration, three left-wing activists have been murdered. More were killed in the days leading up to his inaugural.

Those killed were organizers in their groups, and suspicions have been voiced openly about the possible involvement of government forces.

Yesterday military officers denied involvement in the latest deadly attacks, stressing that they would not resort to extrajudicial killings even if AFP members continued to be targeted by the NPA.

A theory posed by government forces is that there is an ongoing purge within communist ranks – something that has in fact happened in previous years – and left-wing militants are killing each other. Investigators are also announcing theories about possible motives in the murders that have nothing to do with the victims’ activist work. We won’t know this for sure, of course, until the killers are caught.

One speculation is that there are forces out to embarrass the new commander-in-chief, by targeting activist leaders especially in these early days of the administration when changes in command can distract the military and police from their work.

The only way to find out is to bring the perpetrators to justice. If military officers are behind some of the attacks, President Aquino will have to send a strong message that he means business when he demands respect for human rights from the troops.

It will be one of the toughest tests of his leadership.

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MISSING HIS WANG-WANG: It’s not just the big-shot VIPs who feel the world owes them a living. Near noon last Monday at the stoplight leading to Kabihasnan along Ninoy Aquino Avenue in Parañaque, a man on a motorcycle who must have been a cop, traffic aide or barangay official rapped loudly on a car window and told the driver, who wasn’t even speeding, that he had given the bike rider a scare. When the car driver protested, the bike rider snarled, “Gusto mo bang abalahin kita (Do you want me to bother you)?”

The bike rider, in a purple shirt, might have felt safer even if other vehicles didn’t part for him if he and his passenger, a girl in a school uniform, wore helmets as required by law, and if he didn’t drive his small bike along the fast, inner lane. The driver of the bike, with license plate 9164 NP, finally drove away and dropped off the girl at the nearby public school in Kabihasnan. He must be missing his wang-wang.