After U.S. bases were evicted from the Philippines in 1991, the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and the so-called Global War and Terror created an opportunity for the U.S. to establish new “lily pad” bases and resume military activities in the Philippines. Filipino activists and scholars have warned that the Visiting Forces Agreement that allows U.S. troops to be in the Philippines as trainers and advisers would open the door for U.S. troops to surreptitiously engage in actual combat operations. These fears appear to be coming true.
The New York Times reports that the U.S. recently deployed 600 more troops to Mindanao:
United States troops have been carrying out military missions and development projects here since 2002. Having already provided $1.6 billion in military and economic aid to the Philippines since then, much of it geared to Mindanao, the United States recently renewed the deployment of an elite, 600-soldier counterinsurgency force that operates in Mindanao alongside Philippine armed forces.
In September, two U.S. soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Filipino Marines. Politicians said that the incident proves that U.S. troops were going beyond their role as trainers to engage in actual combat operations alongside Filipino troops. The bombing sparked renewed calls for scrapping the Visiting Forces Agreement.
While most of the recent U.S. military activity in the Philippines has focused on hunting the Abu Sayyaf group and countering the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Mindanao, a National Democratic Front spokesperson reported troubling news that U.S. troops were also engaged in military operations against the New People’s Army, the revolutionary guerrilla army.
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In Philippines Strife, Uprooting Is a Constant
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: November 22, 2009
DATU PIANG, Philippines — For most refugees here, the long-running conflict between the Philippine government and Muslim separatists on the island of Mindanao has become such a part of their lives’ rhythms that they have lost track of how often fighting has displaced them.
What is certain is that this evacuation’s duration, well over a year, has been the longest by far.
“In the past, we were evacuated for a few days, or 15 days, or two months at most,” said Danny Abas, 30, a rice farmer who has been staying since August 2008 at a refugee camp on the grounds of this town’s main elementary school.
Along with his parents and four children — his wife was working temporarily as a maid in Oman — Mr. Abas lives under the school library building in a crawl space covered with plastic sheets and crammed with cooking utensils.
“We want to go back,” he said. “We want to work.”
Although peace talks are under way, it is unclear when the 300,000 refugees like Mr. Abas will be able to go home.
Most fled their villages in August 2008 after the breakdown of a peace agreement between the government and the secessionist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, led to widespread fighting in Mindanao, the southern island that is home to most Philippine Muslims. Both sides are respecting a cease-fire that has been in place since July.
But no progress has been made on the problems that doomed the last agreement and that are at the root of the current rebellion, which has lasted four decades.
United States troops have been carrying out military missions and development projects here since 2002. Having already provided $1.6 billion in military and economic aid to the Philippines since then, much of it geared to Mindanao, the United States recently renewed the deployment of an elite, 600-soldier counterinsurgency force that operates in Mindanao alongside Philippine armed forces.
The conflict between the government and the Moro front has further complicated the activities of the American forces, whose mission is to root out Abu Sayyaf, an Islamist group with ties to Al Qaeda.
Despite improvements in security, portions of Mindanao remain tense under the threat of random violence. In Cotabato, the closest city to Datu Piang, a series of bombs, some planted outside two Roman Catholic churches, killed a dozen bystanders in July. Kidnapping for ransom remains a lucrative enough business that a large banner in the center of the city read: “Stop Kidnapping.”
At its peak, the fighting forced about 750,000 Muslims and Christians to flee their homes.
The number of refugees later stabilized at 300,000, with about 60 percent staying in camps and 40 percent with relatives, according to the World Food Program of the United Nations, which has been distributing food to camps in Mindanao.
The fighting was not as widespread or intense as in previous phases of the conflict. But it still made refugee repatriation impossible and complicated relief efforts.
“There was a lot of movement among people trying to go back home and finding out it wasn’t secure enough, then fleeing again, maybe to a different place,” said Stephen Anderson, the World Food Program’s director in the Philippines.
In what is sometimes described as the world’s oldest separatist movement, Muslims here, called Moro, have been fighting for autonomy since Spain colonized the Philippines five centuries ago and brought Roman Catholicism with it. They later fought against the United States, which replaced Spain as the colonial power, and the Philippine government, which urged Christians to settle in Mindanao after World War II.
“We don’t believe we are Filipinos — that’s the essential problem,” said Kim Bagundang, 33, the leader of the Liguasan Youth Association, a private organization that helps refugees and is named after the vast, fertile marsh that surrounds this town. “The struggle of the Moro people has been going on for 500 years now. So this problem can’t be solved in our time.”
Last year, the government addressed the key issue of the separatists by recognizing the “ancestral domain” of Muslim areas in Mindanao, a status that would have given more power to already semiautonomous regions. But after protests by Catholics here, the Supreme Court declared the agreement unconstitutional.
The Moro front has insisted that “ancestral domain” be included in any agreement, making constitutional change a prerequisite to a final agreement.
In an interview in Cotabato, Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the front, said the recognition of “ancestral domain” was the only way to protect Mindanao Muslims, who are now outnumbered because of past Christian settlement. “We have become a minority already in our own homeland,” he said.
Mr. Kabalu added that the areas around Datu Piang were now safe for the refugees to return home — an assessment not shared by those in the camps.
At the elementary school here, Pampai Karon, 45, said none of the 300 families from her village, just outside Datu Piang, felt safe enough to return.
“We want assurances from both sides that it’s safe to go back,” said Ms. Karon, whom the camp had selected as its spokeswoman.
Baichan Butuan, 40, a woman living with her family under the school principal’s office, said she hoped both sides would resume negotiations soon. The family had dug a narrow channel in the ground to prevent rainwater from reaching their sleeping area. But the stench from the stagnant water overpowered the cooking fumes drifting in from a nearby open fire.
“We’re fed up with our situation here,” she said.
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http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl?author=ndfm;date=091102;lang=eng
US troops engaged in counter-guerrilla operations in Bukidnon
Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao
November 2, 2009
The National Democratic Front (NDF)-Mindanao has received more information regarding the actual participation of US soldiers in combat operations in Mindanao. This time, the operations are not just in Basilan and Sulu, but in other areas of the island as well. According to confirmed reports, US military personnel have been playing an active role in combat operations against the NPA in the hinterlands of Bukidnon.
Four separate incidents were initially cited. Around mid-February and in early July, US soldiers were seen participating in combat operations in Quezon, Bukidnon. These troops, together with a unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), engaged an NPA unit in a firefight and committed fascist acts against the residents in the area. In April and again in September, US troops were also sighted with AFP soldiers in Valencia and Malaybalay asking local residents for possible NPA locations and even intimidating civilians in the area.
Aside from these reports, the NDF-Mindanao has also received similar information from reliable sources in South Cotabato, Central Mindanao and the Davao provinces.
The increasing participation of US troops in combat operations in Moro areas have become even more common. Last September, at least two US soldiers were killed in an armed attack against a convoy of US troops in Indangan, Sulu. Earlier that month, US troops in a knee-jerk reaction to a nearby grenade explosion fired their guns indiscriminately at the port of Jolo, Sulu, damaging dock facilities and a nearby mosque. Back in 2002, a US Army serviceman, Sgt. Reggie Lane, embedded among troops of the 18th IB, shot Buyong-buyong Isnijal, a farmer in Basilan whom a combined team of US and Filipino soldiers raided his house.
These reports increasingly expose the lies behind the template pronouncements of US officials denying the actual involvement of its troops in combat operations in Mindanao. They provide further evidence that US troops belonging to the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF)-Philippines have been joining AFP units engaged in counterrevolutionary operations in the island.
Even as US and Philippine officials are quick to deny that US soldiers are engaged in combat operations, they do not deny that the US military has been actively involved in providing the AFP with combat and aerial intelligence as well as logistical support to AFP ground operations.
These incidents point clearly to increasing US military intervention and fascist atrocities in league with local puppet troops.
The NDF-Mindanao will continue to expose incidents of US military involvement in actual combat operations in the country, especially against the revolutionary forces and the people. Local commands of the New People’s Army in Bukidnon have been instructed to closely monitor the movements of US soldiers and their participation in counterrevolutionary and antipeople military activites.
The NDF-Mindanao supports the recent efforts by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chair of the senate committee on foreign affairs to review the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). We, however, believe that these efforts must not simply lead to amending some vague provisions of the agreement. Instead, the NDF-Mindanao echoes the call of patriotic Filipinos nationwide for the abrogation of the VFA, the Military Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) and other one-sided military treaties.
It is these agreements that provide the framework for the US to permanently station its troops in the Philippines, engage in outright military intervention and wage war against the national democratic revolutionary movement in the country.
The NDF-Mindanao calls on the Filipino people to wage an allout, renewed, aggressive and sustained campaign against continuing US military intervention in the country.
We also urge the American people to demand the pullout of American troops permanently stationed in the Philippines and the cessation of US military interventionism in the country. We call on our Filipino compatriots in the US and other countries to help heighten public awareness in their host countries and internationally about US military intervention in the Philippines. #
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