Junk VFA: Explaining and understanding why

Last Thursday I had a very interesting discussion with students in a forum at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City. It was about the need to terminate as soon as possible the 11-year-old RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and send away some 600 “visiting” American special forces troops who have overstayed for eight years now.

The discussion did not focus solely on the whys and wherefores of the VFA. It covered the correlations, or the intertwining, of the VFA with the deeper and expanded United States intervention in Philippine affairs, both military and civilian, and with the counterinsurgency program implemented by the government that entailed a train of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

This program began with Oplan Bantay Laya I (2002-2006) and is now on Oplan Bantay Laya II (2007-2010). It started in the same year that “joint military exercises” under the VFA were held for the first time in combat areas in Basilan and Zamboanga through “Balikatan”. One of the declared objectives was to help the Armed Forces of the Philippines eradicate the Abu Sayyaf. The exercises and US troop presence continue today, yet the Abu Sayyaf problem persists.

The Aquino government has extended the program until the end of December, and promised to have a replacement program in January 2011. From the information I have gleaned so far, the replacement will most probably involve more US intervention. This is because the four elements of the National Security Policy that is now being prepared, which includes the counterinsurgency plan, were culled from the 2009 US Government Counterinsurgency Guide. These elements are good governance, delivery of basic services, economic and sustainable development, and security sector reforms.

 Correlated to the VFA is the deeper direct involvement of US military advisers in the AFP’s “strategic planning, training, doctrine development, and logistics procurement,” under a Joint Defense Assessment (JDA) that began in 2000, a year after the VFA was ratified by the Philippine Senate (but not by the US Senate). The JDA output includes the RP Defense Reform Program and Capability Upgrade Program (CUP) that has had a P5-billion annual budget since 2003 and $427.2 million in US military aid for 2001-2011.

 Note that these AFP strategic programs are being carried out simultaneously with OBL. In fact, the CUP plan calls for a “transition from internal security (counterinsurgency) to external territorial defense” in 2012-2018, with the ostensible assumption that the so-called insurgency problem would have been solved by the time the transition begins. This eerily coincides with the failed target set by the Arroyo regime to strategically defeat the New People’s Army this year.

These are among the factors that weigh in for the call to terminate the VFA and remove the US troops from Philippine soil pronto. In the forum, I added the reasons cited by the separate joint resolutions filed in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The most salient point is the failure of the VFA to specify the period of stay of visiting forces, and to define the activities that they can engage in while on Philippine territory. This has opened the way to all forms of military activities of the US forces “short of establishing a permanent military base.”

 The Senate resolution quotes Col. David Maxwell, the first commander of the 600 US forces deployed in “forward operating bases” here, as saying in 2004:

 “[A] correct reading of the Philippine Constitution reveals that it prohibits only the stationing of foreign forces in the Philippines… [It] does not prohibit combat operations and provides an exception to this if there is a treaty in force and a treaty has been in force between the two countries since 1951.” Circumstantial evidence, documented in writing and photographs, have shown US troops engaging in combat operations along with RP troops. Did Maxwell intend to justify such combat operations, explicitly prohibited in the terms of reference of the Balikatan since 2002?

The House resolution cites the VFA provision on criminal jurisdiction that favors the US, as shown in the Daniel Smith rape case. This is deemed as “the biggest stumbling block to prosecution and punishment of erring US troops, which is an affront to the (Philippines’) sovereign power to enforce its laws within its territory.” It enumerates seven other incidents in this regard; the latest one was the death of Gregan Cardeno last February 2 inside the US troops’ barracks in Camp Ranao, Marawi City.  

 In the open forum, I noted certain impressions, doubts, fears and bafflement among my audience — whether their own, or reflective of the sentiments and views around them.

One is the view that Filipinos owe the US a lot — our freedom, among other unspecified boons. Others feared the impropriety of telling the Americans to leave; “terminating the VFA would be breaching good relations with the US”; “what if Filipinos become persona non grata to the US?”

Most striking was the point repeatedly raised: why did the RP negotiators and the Senate in 1999 agree to an unequal agreement? Why indeed?