Marine Debacle

by Antonio C. Abaya
from Standard Today
August 21, 2009


There is no other word for it. It was a debacle.

A Marine unit suffered five fatalities while engaged in what has been described as ‘face-to-face combat’ with the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Basilan Island early morning of Wednesday, August 12.

While this unit was under attack, another unit, sent as reinforcement to it, ran into an ambush, this time from elements of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). This supporting unit suffered 18 dead, including two junior officers – recent graduates of the Philippine Military Academy – and 22 wounded.

The AFP claims that the Abu Sayyaf suffered between 30 to 40 dead, but counted only 21 bodies on the field. The AFP also claims that the Marines captured an Abu Sayyaf camp where bombs were manufactured for terrorism purposes.

The most anomalous aspect of this debacle is that in sending the reinforcements to the beleaguered unit, the AFP had to ask permission from the MILF to allow the reinforcing units to pass through territory controlled by the MILF. Presumably the MILF gave its permission, but nevertheless ambushed the reinforcements anyway.

What self-respecting sovereign state in the world has to ask permission from a rebel organization for its military units to pass through territory controlled by the rebels? This is a de facto admission that that state’s sovereignty is unilaterally circumscribed by its own avowed enemies and its writ is not recognized in large swatches of its territory.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer of August 14, this was the biggest loss suffered by the Philippine military in a single encounter.

On August 9, 2007, the AFP suffered 26 dead in two separate gun battles with the Abu Sayyaf and “rogue elements” of the MILF in Sulu. So this week’s debacle in Basilan is actually a replay of the 2007 debacle. No doubt, it will not be the last.

The key element in this conundrum is that many families apparently have sons and brothers in both the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF organizations, so that the two rebel groups are de facto allies, or they are elements of the same separatist movement. The tendency to classify the Abu Sayyaf as merely bandits and the MILF as a political organization with a military wing, is no longer tenable.

President Arroyo’s subsequent directive to the military to “annihilate” the Abu Sayyaf is therefore meaningless if it does not include a directive to “annihilate” the MILF as well. But it cannot do anything to “annihilate” the MILF – assuming it has the military means to do so – because the Philippine government is technically conducting “peace talks” with it, even if those “peace talks” have not gotten anywhere.

And as Sen. Rodolfo Biazon – former Marine commandant and AFP Chief-of-Staff – has correctly pointed out, today’s directive to “annihilate” the Abu Sayyaf is merely an echo of earlier orders to “wipe them out,” and later to “pulverize them.”

But the Abu Sayyaf have not been wiped out, nor have they been pulverized, and they will certainly not be annihilated by 2010, as both President Arroyo and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro apparently hope to do so, for their own political agendas.

Not while the Abu Sayyaf’s political and family connections with the MILF are ignored both by the military and the government panel in the “peace talks.”

I agree with Sen. Biazon that the government should ”recalculate” its position on the “peace talks” with the MILF. “Are the peace talks between the government and the MILF still necessary? Are we still going to pursue the format followed in the past or should we recalculate our position.”

I have also agreed in the past with Sen. Biazon that Malaysia should no longer be a mediator in the “peace talks.” Malaysia has not forgotten and will never forget that President Marcos tried to organize an invasion force to wrest Sabah or North Borneo from Malaysia. It is only natural that Malaysia nurses a lingering payback mentality in which they would want to see the Bangsa Moro break away from the Philippine Republic. Whoever placed or accepted Malaysia as mediator in the “peace talks” was naïve and ignorant of international relations.

And as long as the AFP do not improve their battlefield tactics and acquire more appropriate equipment, they will also suffer more debacles in the future..

In my article of January 31, 2002 titled Abu Sayyaf: Why the AFP Failed, I wrote about the failure of the AFP, first under AFP Chief-of-Staff Gen. Angelo Reyes, then under Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, to defeat the Abu Sayyaf after the bandits kidnapped foreign tourists from the Malaysian resort of Sipadan in 2000 and brought them to Basilan, .and after the same bandits kidnapped more tourists in the Palawan resort of Dos Palmas in 2001 and brought them again to their lairs in Basilan.

In both instances, Gen./Sec. Angelo Reyes dispatched an invasion force of 6,000 troops, supported by naval gunboats, OV-10 Bronco light bombers, 105 mm howitzers, Simba APCs and helicopter gunships to flush out and pursue a group of kidnappers numbering less than 100.

I pointed to hostage situations in Irian Jaya (Indonesia), Ratchanburi (Thailand), Lima (Peru) and Entebbe (Uganda) in which hostages were freed by small (less than 200) groups of special forces or commandoes who quietly crept up to the hostage-takers and struck when and where they were least expected by their preys.

In the Basilan situation, there was no hostage situation, but the equipment and tactics used by the Indonesian special forces in Irian Jaya should be studied by the AFP.

In Irian Jaya, Melanesian separatists hostaged some 30 employees of the Freeport Mining Co. and hid them under the thick jungle canopy. The Indonesians sent an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with infra-red sensors cruising over the jungle. The body heat of the hostages and hostage-takers registered on the infra-red photographs, whereupon the Indonesians dropped several dozen sticks of paratroopers around the jungle hide-outs, neutralized the hostage-takers and liberated the hostages. The Indonesians did not send an invasion force of 6,000 troops noisily supported by tanks, artillery, light bombers, naval gunboats and helicopter gunships

The AFP should acquire UAVs with infra-red sensors to probe the territory in advance of their patrols, reinforcements and other deployments, to make sure no ambush force is waiting in the thick foliage.

UAVs are much cheaper than helicopters, observation planes or OV-10s. And because they are unmanned, if and when they are shot down by hostile fire, no human life is lost (at least not on the military side) and the coordinates of the hostile fire are automatically determined by GPS monitors and transmitted to helicopter gunships on standby.

UAVs can be designed and built by Philippine Air Force engineers. Only the avionics and the infra red detectors need be imported. Only after the leadership of rebel groups has been decimated with the help of UAVs should the government enter into ”peace talks” with them, assuming the social and economic causes of the discontent are addressed by a credible government. One must either negotiate from a position of strength, or not at all..

Another relatively inexpensive equipment that the AFP does not seem to have in its inventory is the magnetic metal detector, used to locate land mines. The AFP should have dozens of these metal detectors to flush out and detect hidden caches of weapons and ammunition whenever their field units capture a rebel camp or enter a village known to be infiltrated by rebels, whether separatist or Communist..

UAVs and metal detectors would go a long way towards undermining rebel groups and avoiding debacles such as tragically suffered last week by the Marines. Why hasn’t Gilbert Teodoro thought of these? *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com, . Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.