Extraction

 Yes, there are Filipinos in Sudan. Several hundred of them. The Filipino Diaspora has taken our nationals to every corner of the globe – including poor countries with failed states.

Secretary Toots Ople is now in Egypt to figure a safe way to extract Filipinos wanting to escape the civil war. Although she is an extremely resourceful person, Toots has a daunting mission.

We do not have military forces in the region that might assist in an evacuation, unlike the US which has military bases nearby. We do not have a ready fleet of buses to collect our citizens for the long land journey to Egypt’s southern border or for a 24-hour trip to Port Sudan. At any rate, we do not have ships to pick them up from that port.

Toots Ople has only her wits and her charm to undertake the extraction of our nationals. She will likely try and negotiate with other nations with more ample resources to hitch rides for stranded Filipinos. With overland routes contested by heavily armed units, the effort will still be perilous.

Even if we manage to bring Filipinos across the border into Egypt, we do not have ready facilities to care for them. Many other nations with nationals trapped in Sudan are desperately trying to extract them as well. We will be competing with them for access and assets.

A 72-hour ceasefire was supposedly brokered by the US to enable civilians to relocate to safer ground. Without an international force on the ground to enforce the ceasefire, it is likely to be broken in random and isolated places. It still remains a window open for all countries engaged in efforts to extract their nationals.

We can only wish Toots Ople the best as she begins this daunting mission. Her health issues notwithstanding, she is still the best person for the job.

The situation in Sudan will likely deteriorate further before a functioning state is restored. Both the regular Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have ample supplies to carry on fighting indeterminately.

The RSF is reportedly receiving supplies from Russia by way of the notorious Wagner mercenary group that has bases in Libya. This injects big power rivalry into the already complex factors driving the civil war.

With the SAF and the RSF locked in intense combat, some analysts fear the rebellion in the Darfur region could regurgitate. Sudan spent many years and much resources putting down the rebellion in the ethnically distinct Darfur. The RSF was precisely organized to do the dirty work suppressing that rebellion. The grievances that drove that rebellion remain.

The likelihood is that Sudan could descend into many years of civil war, with ethnic minorities fighting for more advantages. There are no factors favoring consolidation of a functioning state.

Short of a massive international intervention force, there is nothing that could decisively stop the fighting. Neighboring states are still deciding whether what we have in Sudan is an “Arab problem” or an “African problem.”

At the moment, no nation wants to invest the vast resources that will be needed to put Sudan together again. The only other nation with a strategic interest in building influence in Sudan is Russia. But that nation is locked in a doomed invasion of Ukraine that could pose an existential threat to the Putin regime.

A backwater country is sliding into chaos while those who could do something about it have more urgent problems on their hands. For Manila, the only task at hand is to rescue our nationals from a failed state.

_Coronation

Now it is official: President Bongbong Marcos will be visiting Washington DC next week with a meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden.

Traditionally, a visit to Washington DC is something akin to a coronation for a newly elected Filipino president. Only former president Rodrigo Duterte had such adamant disinterest in visiting the White House. At any rate, he paid no call on the US leader and survived his term nonetheless – with flying colors in terms of trust and approval ratings.

Unavoidably, Bongbong’s White House visit is burdened with historical memory. His father renegotiated the US bases treaty, shortening it from 99 to 25 years. During the Edsa Uprising, Washington called on the elder Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly,” sending in its military assets to evacuate the former president and his family from Malacañang Palace.

All that is historical memory, of course. This time, Bongbong is going to Washington with high approval ratings American politicians could only dream of having. Specifically, his job approval rating is more than double Biden’s.

He is going to Washington as a valued ally. The geopolitical configuration in the Western Pacific elevated our strategic importance for the US. We are an indispensable link in the island chain crucial to discouraging whatever aggressive designs Beijing might nurture.

Manila not only reaffirmed our commitment to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), we consented to additional sites for use by the US military under the terms of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). This enhances our role in the region’s defense strategy.

The Marcos administration’s approval of additional EDCA sites endears him to the Washington establishment. It has raised his profile as a player in the Indo-Pacific theater. Marcos himself highlighted this Tuesday by making an appearance at the Balikatan war games.

Manila maintains that Marcos’ working visit involves a wide constellation of concerns – although defense issues surely enjoy primacy.