Fire Hydrant of Freedom

FRONTLINE/World reporter Orlando de Guzman was born in the Philippines and grew up in a tribal community near the northern tip of the island of Luzon. He currently covers Southeast Asia for Public Radio International's The World.

FRONTLINE/World sent de Guzman to the southern Philippines to report on the growing insurgency there. His journey begins in the town of Jolo, part of a chain of small islands in the southern region of Mindanao. Jolo today is 98 percent Muslim, and, as elsewhere in Mindanao, has a long history of separatist movements fighting for autonomy from the central (and mostly Roman Catholic) government in Manila. In this diary, de Guzman writes about battles as spectacle, cell-phone text messages from guerrillas and life under fire.
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Early this year, amidst military preparations for a war in Iraq, the United States announced it was sending 3,000 soldiers to Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines. FRONTLINE/World correspondent Orlando de Guzman, a Filipino reporter from the north, journeyed to Mindanao, where Muslim rebels are fighting a guerrilla war against the Philippine government -- a war in which the United States may soon be embroiled.

De Guzman's first stop is the port town of Jolo, where the United States has just announced the commencement of joint exercises with the Philippine army. As he enters town, de Guzman is greeted by a sign that reads, "We will not let history repeat itself. Yankees back off." At a local radio station, tribal singers protest the turn of events, singing, "Americans do not follow the divine law. They will steal our independence."

Once a Spanish colony, the Philippines is 90 percent Catholic, but the southern region of Mindanao has a sizeable Muslim minority and has long resisted the government in Manila. During the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, U.S. troops fought the Muslim, or Moro, population and committed massacres that are remembered to this day as a central part of the region's collective memory.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, is by far the largest and best-armed Muslim rebel group in the Philippines. Tension between the MILF and the government has been escalating since February, and de Guzman is attempting to meet with the group directly. As he waits, he hears word of a battle being waged in a nearby village, so he heads there.

The area is thick with jungle vegetation reminiscent of images from the Vietnam War. In a strange scene, a crowd of villagers, mainly children, follows the Philippine army as a form of entertainment, cheering when they fire artillery shells. In the village itself, de Guzman finds that not the Philippine military but a civilian militia is in control. The captain tells him they're waiting for the national military to arrive, but does not seem confident. Even when the military does come to aid such villages, they seldom do more than keep the MILF at bay.

Not only are Muslim rebel groups keeping up the steady pressure of attacks on villages and even civilian farmers, but they're also making their presence known in the cities. De Guzman travels to the major port city of Davao, where the previous day a bomb exploded, killing 16 people. The government claims that the MILF is responsible, with help from Jemaah Islamiya, the same group responsible for the Bali nightclub bombing in October 2002. The MILF denies the claim.

Attacks such as the one in Davao, de Guzman notes, increase religious tension in an already volatile community and often result in counterattacks. Indeed, a few hours after the bombing, unidentified men in fatigues attacked three nearby mosques with hand grenades.

Fighting between the Philippine military and the MILF has resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of Muslims. They seek refuge in evacuation centers set up by the government. The refugees now number 350,000, and some have been in an evacuation center for three years. De Guzman visits a center and finds life to be miserable and provisions scarce. Last month, he hears, more than a dozen children died from dysentery.

De Guzman receives word that the MILF is finally ready to meet him, so he and his producer Margarita Dragon travel into the jungle, into MILF-controlled territory. He ends up in Abubakar, a camp that spans 12,000 acres and was once home to 25,000 people. It formerly was a working model of the MILF's vision of an Islamic state, with a mosque, a school and a sharia court. But in 2000, in what was called "the all-out war," the Philippine government overran and destroyed Abubakar, which they said had been used as a terrorist training center. Though pushed underground, the MILF still controls most of their former territory by the use of a rotating volunteer force.

Most of the villagers have fled, but on his trek into the mountains, de Guzman meets a 70-year-old man who has refused to leave. When asked why he hasn't moved to the city like so many others, he says there's nothing for him to live on in the city -- no corn, no cows, no money, no living. So he stays, armed with the gun he recently bought and is prepared to use against the military. De Guzman asks him if the people here feel that they are fighting for their land. "No," the man says. "They are fighting for their lives."

After an uneasy night sleeping in hammocks to the sound of artillery fire, de Guzman and his escorts press through the rugged terrain to the former headquarters of the MILF. Only a broken-down cement structure remains, but the MILF show it off as a symbol that they have reoccupied the territory the government forced them to leave three years ago. De Guzman meets the local field commander, code-named "Congressman," who has been fighting with the MILF for 30 years. In an unusual moment, Congressman breaks down crying, as he says he would rather die fighting in the mountains than give up the dream of a separate Islamic state.

De Guzman is ordered to leave not long after he arrives. Back in the city, he waits two days, then receives word he will meet Al-Haj Murad, the MILF's chief military commander. This will be the first interview Murad has given in three years. De Guzman and Murad meet a short distance from a heavily guarded highway.

One of the founders of the MILF, Murad is the man in charge of its military operations. Like many MILF leaders, he is a former Mujahideen who fought the Soviets in the late 1980s in Afghanistan, where he met Osama bin Laden. The Philippine government has a $1 million bounty on Murad and other key MILF leaders. He is wanted for murder and for suspected involvement in bombings throughout Mindanao.

Surrounded by MILF soldiers, Murad talks to de Guzman over lunch. De Guzman asks him for his take on the joint U.S.-Philippine military exercises. Murad says he hopes the United States will realize that not all Muslims are terrorists, and he says the MILF is trying to avoid being labeled as such. "They cannot equate Islam to terrorism," he explains. "And the problem here in Mindanao cannot be a part of the fight against global terrorism."

De Guzman points to the links that security and intelligence analysts have made between the MILF and known terrorist groups like Jemaah Islamiya. Murad concedes that while some MILF members fought in Afghanistan and may have developed personal relationships with terrorists, there is no organizational connection. He states plainly, "We are fighting on our own. Our objective is to achieve the aspiration of the Moro people. We are not concerned with the objective of the brothers in Indonesia, in Malaysia or in other regions in the Middle East." Murad labels the problem in Mindanao a domestic problem. U.S. intervention, he says, will only complicate the situation.

In the two months since de Guzman left Mindanao, joint U.S.-Philippine military exercises have commenced near Manila and will be starting in the southern Philippines soon. The MILF has responded with more attacks on Christian villages. On the eve of her recent visit to Washington, President Macapagal Arroyo ordered more attacks on MILF strongholds, inluding the same positions Orlando had visited. An additional 50 civilians have been killed and 30,000 more residents have been displaced. If history is any guide, de Guzman says, a U.S.-Philippine war against the MILF will be "long and dirty." He concludes, "For the people of Mindanao, a protracted war will certainly mean more suffering and deepening hatred between Christians and Muslims."


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Jolo and its surrounding islands are home to some of the world's most enchanting beaches.  
Jolo's volcanic mountains rise sharply from the turquoise waters of the Sulu Sea. It is an island formed by fire: Everywhere you look there are clues to its violent geological past. The terrain is stunning, with dense jungle covering most of the island's near-perfect volcanic cones. It would be a perfect place to set up a beach resort -- if it weren't for the island's other, more lucrative business. Jolo has long been home to a number of Islamic insurgent groups -- the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and others. The most recent one, Abu Sayyaf, has degenerated into a notorious kidnapping group, which the government says is linked to al Qaeda. Dozens of foreign tourists and journalists have been held captive on the island -- some released only after paying thousands of dollars in ransoms.


Kids collect water at a popular beach resort near Jolo.  
"Jolo is nature friendly, but not very people friendly," my friend Alfadhar Pajiji, or "Fads," cheerfully reminds me as I gaze out of our ferry's portholes, admiring the view. I could never have made it to Jolo without the help of Fads, whom I met by chance in Manila as he was giving a talk. Fads -- a Jolo native, educated in Manila -- was offering up a passionate appeal to the public for aid to civilian casualties after a military offensive in Jolo, and arguing for an end to the military operations in his homeland. He invited me to come for myself and see what was happening. Most people on the island loathe the military. It's not uncommon for pitched gun battles between the military and equally armed civilians to erupt in the center of town.  

There are two ways to travel safely to Jolo: You can be escorted by a dozen or so heavily armed soldiers from the Philippine military, or you can keep a low profile and go with a trusted friend, as I did with Fads. Going with the military is a guarantee that no one will talk to you.

Years of military rule have placed power firmly in the hands of the men with the most guns -- the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Most people on the island loathe the military: even those who do not share the separatist views of the various insurgent movements often seem enraged by the Philippine military's occupation.

In the outskirts of Jolo's town center, the number of bullet holes that mark the gates to the army's main barracks give you a good idea of the public's sentiments toward the military. It's not uncommon for pitched gun battles between the military and equally armed civilians to erupt in the center of town. One such incident occurred last year during a demonstration by residents against the government The fighting began near the crowded market and continued all the way to the military camp, where both sides lobbed mortar shells over the high walls that ringed the barracks, the civilians from outside the barracks and the military from inside the barracks.



Jolo's dense neighborhoods are built on stilts to combat the swelling tides.  Decades of war between the central government and separatists have insured that the area remains one of the poorest in the Philippines. The main town on Jolo relies on expensive crude oil to run an ailing power generator. Every night, rolling blackouts plunge the island into darkness. The local hospital lacks basic sterilization equipment and suffers from chronic medical shortages. "There are only two ways the government in Manila makes its presence felt in Jolo," a local resident said to me. "They print the bank notes we use in the market; but besides that, the only other government presence here is the military."

Jolo is a heavily militarized island. There are about 5,000 Philippine troops here, most of them concentrated near the town center. The soldiers mill about in almost every street corner, their rifles lowered menacingly. Abu Sayyaf's estimated numbers range from 200 to a thousand men. Many on the island wonder out loud why the government hasn't been able to get rid of Abu Sayyaf, given that the rebels are vastly outnumbered. Now U.S. Special Forces are going to train the Filipino soldiers how to fight Abu Sayyaf.
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U.S. soldiers are scheduled to conduct training exercises in Jolo. The U.S.-Philippine military exercises, called Balikatan ("shoulder to shoulder"), are meant to quell Abu Sayyaf, another Islamic militant group with alleged links to Al Qaeda that has degenerated into a kidnap for ransom gang.  
The day I arrived in Jolo, it was announced that joint U.S.-Philippine military exercises were going to be held on Jolo, among other places in Mindanao. The plan is controversial, given the Jolo residents' venomous relationship with the Philippine military. Streamers protesting the joint U.S. military exercises had been hastily strung in a number of prominent places. One reads, "No to War. We Do Not Want a Repeat of History."  

"We heard the Americans are coming. We are sharpening our swords to slaughter them when they come ... our ancestors are calling for revenge."  

This is not the first time American troops have come to Jolo. In 1902, U.S. soldiers imposed military rule on the island in an attempt to quell a brewing rebellion. In 1906, a tax revolt culminated in the massacre of hundreds of Muslim men, women and children who holed up in a mountainous area called Bud Dahu. It took the United States almost 15 years to "pacify" Muslim trouble spots in Jolo and elsewhere throughout Mindanao. It was a brutal campaign that became known as the Moro-American War.

Jolo's inhabitants deeply resent the heavy Philippine military presence and the U.S. occupation of 1902-1945. The second Balikatan incited new tensions.  

Jolo has largely been forgotten in U.S. history books, but the people here have never forgotten the Americans. Residents are reminded of the United States' past atrocities almost daily. The local radio station plays mesmerizing ballads known as "kissa": songs that recollect how Jolo's Tausug warriors fought the Americans in Bud Dahu at the turn of the previous century. The songs, which can go on for hours, weave current events with reflections from the past. "We heard the Americans are coming," the lyrics will go, the singer's voice rising with the melody of two violins, "and we are getting ready. We are sharpening our swords to slaughter them when they come ... our ancestors are calling for revenge." These songs waft through Jolo's dense neighborhoods -- clusters of ramshackle houses built on stilts above the swelling tides.

A traditional "kissa" singer performs a song of heroic resistance. American forces are almost always the enemy in these songs.  

This is one of the few places in the Philippines where Western pop music hasn't pushed out traditional songs. The people here are proud of their intact culture and their independent spirit. Spanish and American colonial troops portrayed the Tausugs as sword-wielding warriors who charged into certain death in battle. Today's perception hasn't changed -- the only difference is that now the Tausugs are armed with M-16 rifles. People here are proud of their martial tradition.

But they are also worn down and tired of war. "America first came to us in the name of war," says Julkipli Wadi, a history professor from Jolo. "Now they're coming again in the name of war. It is not fair. In the 21st century, they should come in the name of peace." To win the hearts of the people of Jolo, the United States has delivered medicines and hospital equipment and has promised to start a number of civic projects on the island. But the United States' alliance with the Philippine military will likely stir trouble. Filipino soldiers are seen as an occupying force here. Many on the island feel that the American presence will only complicate matters, that it will continue to militarize an island that has already seen enough war.

"You cannot continue to intimidate a people who've long been intimidated," says Wadi. "At best, what a military solution can do is neutralize for a moment the agitation of a people. But you cannot totally remove the sting that has been there for a very long time."
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A "kissa" singer at a live radio performance.  
Any radio enthusiast would feel at home in the Philippines, an archipelago of some 7,100 islands. Turn the AM dial a notch, and you'll likely pick up half a dozen stations, each bumping against the other in the ever-crowded radio spectrum. And the news is never simply read over the airwaves -- it is shouted. You can't become a radio announcer here if you don't have the booming, macho voice of God or if you can't roll your r's for longer than three seconds. Reverb is used extravagantly to polish off each news item before you move to the next story. The rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun pace of newscasts never loses its cadence; news of a power outage is aired with the same urgency of a coup. Philippine radio makes NPR sound like a lullaby.
Philippine radio makes NPR sound like a lullaby. There is no place more fanatical about radios than Mindanao.  
As a radio reporter and a lover of the spoken word, I feel at home here. The first time I spent the night in a village in Mindanao, I was awakened before sunrise by six radios playing at full volume. The news -- a cacophony of voices and crackling live field reports -- barged into my room through the thin bamboo walls. There is no place more fanatical about radios than Mindanao. Radios are cheap, and they work even when power is cut and the whole island is plunged into darkness. But most importantly, radio stations are always the first to know the news. If the local radio station doesn't know something, someone will call in and tell them.



Radio broadcasts are unusually popular in Mindanao.  
While traveling on the most dangerous roads in Mindanao, our driver -- a former Muslim rebel -- would instinctively switch on the car radio, just in case there were any ambushes or major military operations along our route. As we were traveling early one morning in North Cotabato Province, we heard on the radio that the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] had felled several high-voltage power lines with explosives. It must have just happened, as we had just enough time to swerve to avoid a tangle of cables and toppled posts.

The decades-old conflict in Mindanao is one of the most under-reported wars in the world. Mindanao is also one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist. Local reporters who live in Mindanao constantly face threats; journalists -- especially radio journalists -- are often gunned down for what they say, often in their broadcast booths as they're saying it.



A "kissa" violinist performs at a radio performance.  
Nonetheless, radio was our unseen guide throughout our entire journey. While we were there, the country's national press dropped Mindanao off its pages and airwaves to make room for the war in Iraq. There was no news from Mindanao, even as some of the biggest battles were raging on the country's own doorstep. Only the local radio stations continued to cover Mindanao's own war with loyalty.

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Mortar and sometimes heavy artillery is used to ward off rebel attacks at Midsayap.  
News of the battle at Midsayap first came to us via -- what else -- the radio. Our film crew was loading our gear into our van when we heard about a pitched firefight raging in Midsayap, about 45 minutes from our hotel. Our driver, Bong (we affectionately called him Commander Bong), knew the area well, as did our guide, George Vigo -- a fearless local reporter and a friend whom I'd worked with on my first and subsequent assignments in Mindanao. The battle at Midsayap was close enough to get to and film as it was unfolding.


Military reinforcements arrive to help civilian militia against a sudden rebel attack.  
We arrived at the front line even before the military's reinforcements. There were sporadic bursts of gunfire, coming from armed pro-government civilians who were keeping the MILF from advancing. At some point I knew we'd have to film a gunfight, and I expected the worst. I had brought along two kinds of bullet-proof vests: a light one and a much heavier one for high-velocity rounds, the kind used by the U.S. military and made famous by all those television war correspondents in Iraq.


I hate war and I hate guns. I grew up in the northern Philippines during the communist insurgency's heyday in the 1980s. I lived in the midst of war, and I still get the same visceral reaction to guns as I did when I was younger. But more than anything, I was gripped with fear.

Farmers are armed and must patrol their fields at all times.  
One of the strangest things about the front line in Mindanao is that life carries on as usual. Sure, there are frightened people hastily packing their pots and pans and rounding up their cattle to flee. But then there are those who choose to stay and calmly carry on with their daily farm tasks. Rice is cooked, chickens are fed and wood is chopped as bullets fly overhead. These are the people who've seen enough conflict to know exactly when to stay and when to go. The thunder of mortar doesn't move them until it is close enough to shake the earth beneath their bare feet. It's a sadly confusing truth that you can actually grow accustomed to a war raging literally in your own backyard. I suppose this is what more than 30 years of conflict will do to you.



Children cover ears while watching Midsayap battle.  
What's even more disturbing about Mindanao's front line is how much of a spectacle it is. No battle is complete without its own army of children, teenagers and grannies watching the whole thing as if it were a movie. They gather by the hundreds, milling about and cheering every time Filipino soldiers fire deafening 105mm artillery rounds on enemy positions. They mockingly yell, "Allah Akbar" -- a sacrosanct Arabic phrase meaning "God is great" -- at MILF rebels pinned down by gunfire. The children scratch around in the dirt for black gunpowder pellets spilling out of crates of artillery rounds. Some of the kids light the pellets uncomfortably close to live shells. When gunfire rings across the rice paddies, those who are working in the paddies don't stop what they're doing -- they just watch while they work. It makes wearing a bullet-proof jacket seem pointless; it makes the wearer look like a buffoon.
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Orlando de Guzman bides his time in Cotabato as he waits to hear from "Azwar," his MILF contact.  
"Meet me at 3 in front of the post office. I'll take my hat off a few times so you'll know it is me." This text message, in abbreviated Tagalog, appeared on my hand phone, and it came from our mysterious MILF guide. I'll call him Azwar. I'd never actually met him, but we'd traded a few messages the past couple of days.
The Philippines is one of the heaviest users of short messaging in the world. It sends more text messages than all of Europe. The MILF is just as hooked on "texting" as the rest of the country. One MILF cadre told me that cell phones are just as important as rifles.

The MILF is as hooked on "texting" as the rest of the country. One MILF cadre told me that cell phones are just as important as rifles.  
This text message from Azwar was significant. It was the first one to refer to an exact location and time. All the other messages I'd received had been deliberately vague and misleading. So at 2:45 p.m., our van was waiting at the meeting point. We kept the engine running so we could use the air conditioner, but it was no match for the scorching afternoon sun. I was baking by the time someone approached us. He wasn't wearing a hat. We walked over to a nearby coffee shop, where he explained the plan in clipped sentences. It boiled down to this: We were to be taken to the MILF's stronghold in a sprawling jungle, to an area known as Camp Abubakar.



As in the villages, life in Cotabato City continues despite the war.  
In 2000, Camp Abubakar fell to the military. Thousands of MILF fighters had once trained there and used the area as a base. And now the MILF's leaders had set up a shadow government there. It had a clinic, a school, mosques, a jailhouse and even a paved concrete road, courtesy of the Philippine government. The road was called "Friendship Highway," from back when the government and the MILF were still intent on forging some kind of peace agreement. Now the MILF does not operate so openly. In fact, its movements are highly secretive. The MILF's chairman, a Cairo-educated religious preacher called Hashim Salamat, no longer makes public appearances.



Producer Margarita Dragon films MILF fighters praying at Camp Abubakar.  
As we talked, I glanced around the coffee shop for possible spies. A man behind us appeared to be taking an interest in our conversation, but my companion carried on, stirring his coffee incessantly. First, we were to drive outside of Cotabato City to a small town, where we'd switch vehicles. We would then take a dirt road to an even smaller village, where we'd unload and immediately start walking toward the jungle. The big wildcard was that the route we were going to take has more than a dozen military checkpoints. We could avoid the checkpoints by avoiding the roads completely, but that meant adding a whole day's walking to the journey. Pressed for time, we opted for the quickest route. We'd just have to talk our way through the checkpoints if we were stopped. We were to set off at dawn the next day.

After leaving the coffee house, I got another text message from Azwar, saying that the man we'd just met was not actually him. It was his messenger. We would meet him the next day, he promised.
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De Guzman meets MILF contact.  
The next day we switched vehicles without too much trouble. We left our van behind and piled into a mustard-yellow passenger "Jeepney." Its engine sounded like it was running on half of its cylinders. Our new driver plied this route every day, and the familiar vehicle would raise few suspicions along the way.
Before we left, I was led through a crowded market to meet the real Azwar. I found him squatting on a low stool next to a tobacco vendor. He was wearing aviator shades that covered almost half his face. He explained that there were at least a dozen checkpoints along our route, but that an informant had traveled the road earlier this morning and found that the military was not searching any vehicles. We were clear to go.



Villagers flee as intense fighting begins between civilian militia and MILF rebels.
But as we were leaving town, two heavily armed soldiers flagged us down. My heart skipped a beat. It turned out they just wanted a ride. I overheard them asking my MILF guide if I was Arab. (In the past, Camp Abubakar had hosted a number of foreign guests from the Middle East. And there have been persistent reports of Malaysian and Indonesians, presumably belonging to the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiya, helping train the MILF. The MILF hasn't denied it has hosted foreigners, but insists it has nothing to do with al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya.)


We passed more checkpoints, but seeing our two military hitchhikers hanging off the back of the Jeepney, the soldiers waved us through. I tried my best to hide my anxiety, and in my head, I was polishing my alibi in case we were questioned. "We've started a water project here, and we've come to film a short information video about the village up ahead, to convince our donors to release the funds soon." My MILF guide had a phony government I.D., and he was accustomed to bluffing his way through checkpoints. I lost count of the checkpoints after number 21. Our hitchhikers dropped off, and we continued alone.

Finally, the dirt road passed through a small village and ended next to a river. We were told to hurry up and walk. The trail took us through coconut groves and a few houses, where villagers dried fragrant strands of abaca fiber on wooden racks. Abaca fiber, or Manila hemp, was once the engine of the country's economy -- until DuPont invented nylon. There are few things as eerie to me as abandoned farmland. These hills have become too dangerous to till. The land lies weed-choked and fallow from war.

Along the way, we passed entire villages turned to ashes. We were told that these homes were burned by the military before they pulled out earlier this year. I met a 70-year-old man gathering wood along one of the mountain's ridges. He took me to his burned-out home. The roof was gone, so was the kitchen. A rain-soaked copy of the Koran rested on a shelf in what must have been the bedroom. I pulled it out to find it infested with thingyroaches. He must have left in a hurry when he saw the soldiers. I offered the Koran to him, and he told me to leave it where I'd found it. "I don't need it anymore," he said bitterly. "Everything is now in the hands of Allah." Before leaving, he told me that he would join the MILF if he only had a rifle and more years to live. "I have nothing else to lose," he said, pointing to his blackened house. As I left him, I couldn't help feeling that there must be something terribly wrong with a nation that makes a 70-year-old man want to pick up a gun and kill.
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It is pointless to ask a guerilla how long it will take to get from point A to point B. They'll never tell you the truth, and if they give you an estimate, say three hours, multiply it by four. So 12 hours, give or take. We set off mid-morning, and the sun is already burning my skin. It is difficult to imagine how much hotter it will get. Soon, the evenly spaced coconut groves thin out, giving way to grassland and, finally, to thick jungle. A heavily armed unit of the MILF greets us further up the mountain. They wear ski masks and bandanas to cover their faces from our cameras. They carry homemade rocket-propelled grenades. But, most interesting, almost all of them have standard American-made M-16 rifles, each one engraved "Property of the U.S. Government."


The MILF says it buys its weapons and bullets from members of the Philippine military who run arms deals on the side. The Philippine military gets most of its weaponry from the United States. After September 11, 2001, the United States promised $100 million in military aid to the Armed Forces of the Philippines. "Whenever there's a gun battle between us," an MILF cadre would later tell me, "the soldiers see money, and we see new bullets.

"Here's how it works: A neutral emissary will show up to deliver the cash, and the [Philippine soldiers] will give him the bullets. Crates of bullets. If anyone asks the soldiers where the bullets have gone, they say it was a heated gun battle, and they used up everything. The bullets sell for 25 pesos [50 cents] apiece. Sell a hundred of those and you've got a sack of rice to feed your family."


These stories keep my mind off the grueling walk for a while, as do the giant ferns that grew as large as trees. By sundown we'd made it to our halfway point, where we'd planned to spend the night. But the camp site is in too much of a clearing and provided no cover. We were told that it wasn't safe. Helicopter gunships had attacked this very spot. So we carried on, walking -- stumbling -- through the jungle in this moonless evening. The military's nightly barrage of artillery fire echoed across mountain. I was told not to worry. The shells were landing a long way from us. By midnight we finally reached an empty concrete house. We crashed out in our hammocks, too tired to eat. At 2 in the morning, we were awakened for a meal of sardines and rice.

The morning light makes me realize that the house we'd slept in is actually a bunker. It is made of 1-foot-thick reinforced concrete, strong enough to withstand artillery fire. This structure, it turned out, was once the home of the MILF's chairman, Hashim Salamat. We were not allowed to meet Salamat. No one has since 2000, the year Camp Abubakar was overrun and Salamat made a hasty getaway from this very house. His location is known only by a handful of trusted MILF officers. But we were given unprecedented access to the MILF's field commanders and top political leaders.


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In Camp Abubakar, later that day, I interviewed a longtime MILF field commander, known only by his radio codename, "Congressman." He was surrounded by nearly a hundred armed men, watching us silently as we set up the cameras. His broad face and firm voice conveyed experience. He joined the armed movement in 1972, six years before the MILF was officially organized. I asked him why he's devoted all his life to this -- what is he fighting for? He turned to me and thought about the question. Then he began to sob. He tried to regain his composure, but it was useless. The tears flowed down his face. He struggled to speak. "We want to achieve freedom and independence for Mindanao's Muslims," he said. "We'd rather die fighting for an independent homeland," he said tearfully, "than continue living under this oppressive system." The armed men around Congressman shifted uncomfortably. They may never have seen their commander break down like this.


MILF fighters raise their arms in solidarity after prayer.  
On our way down the mountain, I thought about why he had cried. I tried to imagine how it would feel to spend 30 years of your life in the jungle, hoping that change will come. I imagined how it would be to put up with years of living in hiding, in danger, with little food or shelter, fighting a military much more powerful than yours. I wondered how many would willingly choose the path he'd taken.


We were escorted down the mountain with a group of young MILF cadres. Some looked as if they were still in their teens. At some point they stopped to change into civilian clothes. Their 10-day-a-month stint in the jungle was over, and it was time to rest and blend back into society. A few miles down the track, we met a group of young men making their way up the mountain. It was their turn to be rebels. The commander, it seemed, would not be alone. And the war in Mindanao would continue.

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'Islands Under Siege'
Orlando Guzman
Reporter, FRONTLINE/World
Friday, June 06, 2003; 11:00 a.m. ET


As U.S. forces attempt to win the peace in Iraq, FRONTLINE/World travels to another corner of the world -- the Philippines -- where the United States is being drawn into a long-running civil war between Islamic separatists and U.S.-trained Philippine soldiers.

Airing Thursday, June 5, at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), "Islands Under Siege" explores the island of Mindanao, to meet the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), 12,000 strong rebel group fighting for an Islamic state.

Reporter Orlando Guzman was online Friday, June 6, at 11 a.m. ET, to talk about the film and what he learned on Mindanao.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.



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Falls Church, Va.: Enjoyed the show last night. It was good to see what the situation is really like in the southern Philippines. Why do you think the Phillipine military has been so ineffective in combating the MILF? It seems that even without U.S. help, the military (along with their Christian militia allies) would be far superior to the guerillas in terms of numbers of men, weapons, tactics, etc.

Orlando Guzman: The insurgency in the southern Philippines isn't somethign that can be won militarily. The MILF along with the New People's Army rebel group -- a communist movement -- both of these groups have been fighting guerrilla warfare and they enjoy, to some extent, popular support amongst the people in Mindinao. And I think to successfully deal with these insurgencies, the government has to look at other ways to improve the lives of people in Mindinao -- the other underlying causes of the conflict. I think that's one of the reasons why there's been these persistent insurgencies. No matter how much military force you put in there, it doesn't seem to be going away.

________________________________________________

Toledo, Ohio: Does it hinder or promote the MILF's causes to never claim responsibility for the bombings that the government always blames on them? This seems similar to Prime Minister Abbas and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. World leaders say they need to curtail their rogue factions in order to be "worthy" of negotiations. Do you think the MILF could stand to use the same strategy?

Orlando Guzman: I think we should be very cautious about saying who is doing these bombings. For one, it's extremely difficult getting any real first-hand info from Mindinao. One thing you learn quickly there is that not everything that is published or claimed is true.

The Philippine govt has been very quick to tag the MILF and the one that claimed the bombing in Bali as being responsible for another in the Philippines this year. So far, though, the govt can't find any evidence. THe man the govt claimed was the bomber was recently released. None of the intelligence officials explained why he was accompanied by several family members. That first bombing in February at the airport -- the crime scene was swept clean and hosed down before investigators could get there.

It could be the MILF behind the bombings, other Islamic militants or, as some Muslims believe, security forces trying to raise the rent on security on the island. My opinion is that there is certainly a big possibility that there are groups that may be disgruntled with the MILF's strategies and may be taking things into their own hands. Al Haj Murad, the vice chairman of MILF's military affairs, told me that there are plenty of people in Mindinao who are desperate and have no other way of fighting the government but by using terrorist activities. He said it is beyond MILF's capacity to control them.

________________________________________________

Brooklyn, N.Y.: Where you scared when you were with the rebels?

Orlando Guzman: Absolutely not. I think I did quite a bit of research before I went to rebel held areas, and so far the MILF has not kidnapped journalists unlike the Abu Sayaf -- it's denounced these activities. The MILF is very organized, has a political structure, a very clear chain of command -- especially the closer you move to its political leadership. And I did not really fear for my safety.

I was more concerned in my previous trips to an island called Jolo, where the Abu Sayaf is active. They've kidnapped journalists and tourists. Jolo is also an area where kidnapping is very common -- it doesn't have to be Abu Sayaf, but anybody with a gun who wants to auction you off to the highest bidder. So I do take extra precautions when I'm there

________________________________________________

Toledo, Ohio: I just finished reading Gracia Burnham's book about her experiences with the Abu Sayyaf. The government has been horribly embarrassed about the candor Gracia expressed with regard to the ineptitude (at times) of the Philippine army. Will the publishing of this book make the government even more resolute in bringing down what they see as terrorist factions in their country?

Orlando Guzman: The part of Gracia's book that has caught the most attention in the Philippines is a section where she alludes to collusion between local security forces, military and Abu Sayaf. In the book she mentions that a military general stationed in Bafilan was leaving peanut butter for her and her kidnappers. And there have been persistent reports of a particular general who was asking for a 50 percent stake of the ransom money for the Burnham's release.

This is not the first time that there've been allegations of collusion between the Abu Sayaf and military officers. A number of people Bafilan island could happily tell you stories about their time in captivity by Abu Sayaf rebels. And the suspicious things they saw going on between Abu Sayaf and the military.

I think that the central govt is resolute at trying to bring down groups like Abu Sayaf, but I don't know if the Philippine military on the ground -- local commanders -- have the discipline nor the honesty to effectively deal with Abu Sayaf. And I think that this is something that the U.S. should look into before it sends its own men to work side by side with these troops.

________________________________________________

New York, N.Y.: I was very impressed that you and your producer were able to gain access to Al haj Murad. While he claims that the MILF is fighting a for their homeland, the muslims represent a small minority, even in Mindanao. What will make the MILF understand that they need to negotiate something less than full control of Mindanao? And if they did decide to settle and negotiate, would the government really grant it at this stage, especially with the support coming from the U.S.?

Orlando Guzman: First of all, I think it's highly unlikely the govt will give in to MILF demands. It seems impossible at this point to imagine a separate Islamic state in Mindinao. I think that previous govt policy, starting with the transmigration programs of the 1960s and 70s effectively prevents this from ever happening. The ethnic and religious makeup of Mindinao has been reengineered to make any kind of Islamic state practical.

The first part to your question. The other option for the MILF would be to receive autonomy, but they saw what happened with the Moro National Liberation Front and what happened to them after they received autonomy. Autonomy has done little to benefit those on Mindanao and a lot of it has to do with the corruption of Muslim leaders and the lack of seriousness in the central goverment to make autonomy work.

________________________________________________

Detroit, Mich.: The article regarding Muslim insurgency in the Phillipines blatantly failed to cover the history of the region adequately. More often than not, Islam has spread as a result of conquest and mass murder. How did it spread so far east in the first place? Did they just pop up one day and say "Allah Akbah?" Inquiring minds want to know!

Orlando Guzman: Unlike in other parts of the world, Islam spread to Southeast Asia through the peaceful winds of commerce and Islam arrived in Southeast Asia long before Christianity did. and I think that this is a misconception that a lot of people have about Islam, that most Muslims are from the Middle East. The largest Muslim population in the world is in Indonesia. The form of Islam I've seen practiced in the Philippines is the most tolerant and peaceful I've ever seen.

________________________________________________

Alexandria, Va.: In the show, you mentioned that about half of the Philippines export revenue is generated by Mindanao. What industries are producing that and who's getting that money? It doesn't seem like the Moros are seeing any of that revenue coming their way.

Orlando Guzman: Land distribution is a massive problem and especially acute in Mindinao. On the eastern side of Mindinao in Bukidnon, an eastern province there, I've driven across countryside for four hours and was told that only one person owns that land -- a sugar cane plantation. I imagine that's true in other areas of Mindinao. These very large plantations are owned by people from Manila. You really get a sense of the feudal state of the country when you go to Mindinao.

There's two kinds of Christian settlers there. The very rich ones, as mentioned before, and then the very poor ones who are hired by the rich. In many places I've seen the very rich pit the poor Christians against the poor Muslims and they win in the end -- the rich.

________________________________________________

Honolulu, Hawaii: Thank you so much for your thoughtful documentation of the current situation in the southern Philippines. I was wondering how it was possible for you to gain access to high ranking guerrilla leaders and if their indenitities or security were compromised in any way by this story?

Orlando Guzman: Many of these guerrilla leaders already have a price on their head. Some as high as a million dollars. And I figure that they know how to look after their own security. It was a very cloak and dagger effort to meet these people. Some of it would seem straight out of Hollywood. There were car changes, we had to cover our tracks and in some cases we had to hide our faces.

But in the end, the Philippines is a fun place to report, because people are so willing to talk.

________________________________________________

New York, N.Y.: What does this rebellion mean for the stability of the Philippine government?

Orlando Guzman: I'm not sure how much Philippine officials realize the future of the entire country depends on what happens in Mindinao. The Philippines has been dragged backwards because of its inability to effectively deal with these insurgencies -- to deal with them in any kind of lasting and peaceful way. Mindinao has so much potential, but its riches have been squandered and plundered and I think that the lawlessness that the war has spread has benefited a very rich elite and the sad thing is, as long as this war remains profitable for certain people, we'll never see an end to the conflict.



________________________________________________

Orange, Calif.: How will U.S. involvement change the situation in Mindanao?

Orlando Guzman: It really depends on how the U.S. decides to get involved. From everything that we're seeing the U.S. believes that by training the Philippine military, improving their arms, by selling them more weapons would improve the lot of people in Mindinao. There is a real security problem in Mindinao, that I don't deny and that region has been conducive to breeding terrorist organizations.

But I can't see how the involvement of a major superpower can bring peace.

I think that there should be a genuine recognition of the unique identity and history of the Moros or Muslims in Mindinao. And I think until they feel respected and they feel that the government is serving their interests I think that peace will continue to be elusive. American involvement there may just mess things up.

________________________________________________

Honolulu, Hawaii: Were you able to find any evidence that the military presence in Mindanao is actually being sponsored by international corporate investors in an attempt at further land-grabbing in the region in order to dominate the rich natural resources still available in the islands?

Orlando Guzman: I didn't really see any evidence of that. There are multi-national corporations operating in Mindinao, but I can't say that they are doing the things that you claim.

________________________________________________

Toledo, Ohio: How different do you think this situation would be if Mindanao wasn't so rich in natural resources and exports? Would both sides put up as much of a fight if it didn't count for such a big percentage of the Philippines' economy?

Orlando Guzman: I can't speculate on that because I just like to stick to the reality of the situation.

________________________________________________

New York, N.Y.: What do people in areas of the Philippines think of this MILF and the muslims in the south in general? Or do they even care? If the MILF laid down arms and decided to integrate into society, would they even have the option? Is the dominance of the catholics preventing muslims from integrating at all?

Orlando Guzman: I think that in the Philippines there's really very little awareness about what's happening in Mindinao and I think the local media has to take some steps to change that. When you're in Mindinao it's really quite surprising that how much of what's happening there actually makes it to the pages of the newspapers in Manila. There's a feeling that Mindinao is really an old story and a lot people, especially Muslims in Mindinao are exasperated by the lack of understanding of the rest of Philippinos.

I think that its fair to say that there's a certain degree of bigotry toward Muslims amongst the majority Catholic population. And there's very little effort to try and understand where the Muslims are coming from. The Moro National Liberation Front, which is the other rebel group did lay down a lot of their arms in the early 1990s and a lot of them have been integrated into the army and police. But still there is a real lack of jobs, opportunities, for Muslims in general in Mindinao. There's also a real lack of education. Schools are overcrowded and there's very little incentive to go to school if there's no jobs at the end. So, I think that there's always going to be problems for people (rebels) trying to integrate back into normal society.

________________________________________________

Chicago, Ill.: Why don't modern Moro separatist groups widely use suicide attacks? Long ago Moros used to launch "juramentado" attacks withs blades against Spanish and American colonialists. Why haven't modern Moros revived the practices with explosives?

Orlando Guzman: I don't know the answer to that. Let's just hope that it doesn't turn that.

________________________________________________

Miami, Fla.: I read your walk-through experience on the Frontline Web site. I was left with the impression you sympathized with the Islamic groups, and painted the Americans as the perpetrators of "atrocities."

Am I correct in this impression or did you just inadvertently present more of the Islamic's side than the American?

Orlando Guzman: I don't think there's any saints in this conflict. I think that both sides -- the Philippine government and the MILF -- are guilty of atrocities. One thing that I do realize as well is that so few people have bothered to spend enough time in Muslim areas of Mindinao. So few people have bothered to ask these people why they're so angry. So few people have bothered to hear why Muslims support the MILF and why they see it as a legitimate revolutionary group.

And I find that it's my job as a reporter to go to areas where few have gone and listen to people, because maybe their greivances are valid.

________________________________________________

Boston, Mass.: Bottom line, regardless of how locally they operate, are the MILF terrorists?

Orlando Guzman: There've been a number of reports, the most prominent being in the NY Times, that suspected foreign terrorists have been training in areas controlled by the MILF. The claim that foreigners have claimed in MILF camps is not new. We've heard this for some time now. A lot of this information about these so-called training camps comes from PHilippine intelligence sources and it's difficult to say where they're getting their information from and whether its reliable or not.

We do know that there are individuals who've had plans to carry out bombings in Singapore and other other areas who have had personal links with MILF members. One of them is Fathur Rohman Al Ghozi, an Indonesian, with suspected links to Jamaah Islamiyah. He was arrested last January in Mindinao with a half a ton of explosives in his home. The MILF doesn't deny that Al Ghozi has visited MILF camps, but it says it didn't know Ghozi was a part of Jamaah Islamiyah.

That said, I've met a lot of MILF rank and file who've devoted all of their lives to what they see as a genuine revolutionary struggle. Like any organization, the MILF is a mixed bag, but I'll leave it to others to decide what to call it.

U.S. To Expand Sanctions Against Myanmar
Jun 06, 2003

The U.S. State Department announced June 6 an expansion to sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the list of Myanmar officials banned from entering the United States will be lengthened. The move follows increased criticism by Congress of Myanmar's military crackdown on the political opposition.

STRATFOR'S GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT
http://www.stratfor.com
5 June 2003

=================================================================


Today's Featured Analysis

Suu Kyi Detention Points to Deeper Troubles for Myanmar

Summary

The recent detention of pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi
following clashes between government supporters and members of
her National League of Democracy has raised questions of the
efficacy of the snail's-pace talks between the government and
opposition in Myanmar. But the attack that led to Suu Kyi's
detention might reveal a deeper problem for the central
government than simply an active pro-democracy movement.

Analysis

U.N. Special Envoy to Myanmar Razali Ismail has said he will go
ahead with a scheduled trip to Yangon on June 6, a week after the
military government placed pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu
Kyi in "protective custody" after a clash between members of her
National League of Democracy (NLD) and pro-government members of
the Union Solidarity and Development Association.

The detention has raised questions about the government's
commitment to the ongoing dialogue with Suu Kyi, aimed at
ultimately ending the international isolations and sanctions on
cash-strapped Myanmar. But more fundamentally, the timing of the
clash, just before Razali's long-planned visit, suggests deeper
problems for the regime than simply dealing with the NLD. Rather,
it might signal dissent from local officials worried that
Yangon's talks with Suu Kyi will strip them of their power and
economic well-being.

Reports vary widely over what exactly happened May 30, but both
government and opposition sources agree that there was a violent
clash between NLD and union members in northern Myanmar after Suu
Kyi visited the area. The union was founded in 1993, and,
according to the government, was established "to strengthen the
Union of Myanmar, to promote love and understanding among
indigenous peoples, to strengthen state sovereignty, to safeguard
territorial integrity and to develop the country and to build a
peaceful and modern State."

Yangon claims a spontaneous melee broke out when union members
rallied against NLD supporters, leaving four dead and about 50
injured. The government then took Suu Kyi and 19 other NLD
leaders into protective custody to avoid further violent
outbreaks.

Opposition supporters claim the government sent police or
military troops, local thugs, prisoners and union members to
ambush Suu Kyi's caravan, attacking NLD members and assaulting
Suu Kyi herself, who by some accounts sustained head and shoulder
injuries from broken glass. These reports claim that about 70 or
80 people died, several hundred others were injured and numerous
NLD members were detained.

While the exact cause of the violence is disputed, the existence
of the clash is undeniable. NLD members had complained prior to
the May 30 clash that union and local officials were harassing
their meetings and travels, using the excuse that the NLD was
"disrupting" traffic when members came to town. This incident,
then, was not entirely out of the blue, but the timing is rather
unfortunate for the central government.

Despite some differences of opinion within the ruling State Peace
and Development Council (SPDC), there had been an agreement to
try to press ahead with talks with Suu Kyi and undertake a public
relations campaign to try to extricate Myanmar from its
international isolation -- largely triggered by the military
government's refusal to accept the results of the 1990 elections.
Thus Yangon freed Suu Kyi from house arrest, allowed her to
travel the country and agreed to talks. Government officials also
reassured the United Nations, through Razali, that it was
interested in reform.

But the arrest of Suu Kyi just before a scheduled visit by Razali
is a black mark against Yangon. And, given the timing, it
suggests that the clash in northern Myanmar might not have been
entirely sanctioned by the SPDC. Rather, it instead might reflect
an already existing split in the SPDC or, more troubling for
Yangon, it could be the result of a local official taking things
into his own hands.

The SPDC has been split on the idea of working with Suu Kyi, but
had come to a consensus to continue. But in February, the SPDC
promoted Maj. Gen. Soe Win to Secretary 2, the fourth-ranked
position on the council. Soe Win had been commander of the
Northwest Military Region until a sweeping change in Myanmar's
regional military commanders placed him in Yangon -- where the
top leadership could monitor him.

Several opposition sources inside and outside Myanmar have
accused Soe Win of masterminding the attack on Suu Kyi in an
attempt to undermine the reconciliation process and return to a
more hard-line approach toward the NLD. And while this might be
true, there is another, more likely underlying trigger for the
incident -- a growing distrust of the reconciliation process by
regional officials.

The central government understands the need to alter the
international opinion of Myanmar to break free from sanctions and
boost the country's economy. Thus, Yangon has assured neighboring
Thailand that Suu Kyi's detention is only temporary and that it
will re-open universities on June 16, less than three weeks after
their closure following the clash. But local military commanders
and government officials currently benefit from the existing
political order, one in which they effectively serve as local
warlords backed by Yangon. It is this reason that the SPDC called
back nearly all of the regional military commanders in 2001 -- to
reign in the growing power of these disparate officials who were
stripping power from Yangon in their own self-interest.

And for them, the idea of more democracy in Myanmar is a direct
challenge to their current power and authority. They oppose moves
to compromise with Suu Kyi -- even moves shy of reintroducing
full participatory democracy -- because it threatens their very
existence. Thus, it is not unlikely that the May 30 actions were
locally organized attempts to throw a wrench into the already
difficult mechanics of reconciliation.

And the government's decision to place Suu Kyi and other NLD
leaders in protective custody -- a common euphemism for detention
-- might actually be in part to prevent further outbreaks of
violence -- particularly given the apparently unrelated bombings
that have taken place in various areas of the country in the past
six months. Yangon now is in a difficult position. If it intends
to maintain some momentum toward international normalcy, it must
continue talks with Suu Kyi and refrain from overly obvious
actions designed to limit the NLD's movements and operations.

But if regional commanders -- or even some members of the central
leadership -- are opposed to the process, Yangon's top three
leaders must take action. And that very well might come in the
form of another military or regional government reshuffle.
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Putting the world back together again
Jun 5th 2003 | AQABA, CRACOW AND EVIAN-LES-BAINS
From The Economist print edition

American diplomacy is widely regarded as arrogant and selfish. The president's trip this week should refine that verdict


GEORGE BUSH began at Auschwitz. He laid wreaths at the wall of death, a place where prisoners were summarily shot, and at the unbearable ruins of Birkenau's gas ovens, a jumble of bricks that remain as they were found in 1945, half-destroyed by the retreating Nazis.

The sombre symbolism of the camps suited a week-long tour to the two most troublesome objects of American diplomacy. As the president said later that day, ?They remind us that evil is real and must be called by name and must be opposed.? That was aimed at critical Europeans. The camps also provide?though this remained unspoken?terrible reminders about Jewish insecurity. This was not irrelevant to the second half of the visit, to the Middle East.

Since September 11th 2001, the foreign policy of almost every other country has been driven by reaction to America's willingness to project its power unilaterally. Critics have argued that the Bush administration has too narrow a view of America's interests and uses its immense power disruptively. They have sought to restrain it, Gulliver-like, in a net of obligations. Supporters have tried to steer it, engaging in America's foreign-policy debates before decisions get made, and backing them afterwards. Arab states have hoped to attract its attention by persuading the president to commit himself to regional peacemaking.

This week they had their wish. Mr Bush made his first visit to the region, standing with the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers and the king of Jordan at Aqaba, in Jordan, to announce that they would take the first steps on the road map, supported the day before by Arab leaders at their summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt. In Aqaba, Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers, recognised each other's right to have a state. Mr Abbas reiterated Israel's right to peace and security and vowed to end both the armed intifada and incitements to violence against Israel. Mr Sharon confirmed Israel's acceptance of the ?two-state solution?, allowed that a Palestinian state would have to be formed on contiguous territory to be viable, offered to ease the plight of Palestinians under occupation and said his government would begin to remove ?unauthorised outposts?. These declarations all follow the road map.

Several developments made this possible. Victory in Iraq has prompted America and Arab regimes to push anew for peace, as happened after the first Gulf war. A reformed Palestinian Authority?itself partly a product of American pressure?is a more acceptable and viable partner. As important, terrorist strikes, especially those in Saudi Arabia last month, have given Arab governments a bigger stake in settling the dispute, since it fuels violence that threatens them, too.

?We will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism,? said Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, ?regardless of justifications and motive.? The lack of a qualification marks a shift. Arab regimes?though not Syria, which denounced the statement?now accept that terrorism by Palestinians is still terrorism. They promised to funnel their aid through the Palestinian Authority which, if done, might help dry up the outside money that fuels the militant groups.

At the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, the five Arab participants unambiguously endorsed the road map and Mr Bush's role. The ?rejectionists? were marginalised?Syria was not invited?and the Arab regimes, in contrast to some previous peacemaking attempts, were properly involved. ?A good beginning,? said Mr Bush, as he flew off to visit American troops in Qatar.

Naturally, that guarantees nothing about the future. During the first phase of the road map, the Israeli army is also supposed to withdraw from areas it has occupied since September 2000. Mr Sharon made no mention of that. The hardest issues of all?Jewish settlements, Palestinians' ?right of return? and the status of Jerusalem?remain for the third phase. Meanwhile, the summit raised, but left unresolved, more immediate doubts.


 

Many Arabs still worry that the Americans will disengage when things go wrong


 
First, many Arabs still worry that the Americans will disengage when things go wrong, as things surely will. For the administration, this is a brief but passing period which is favourable to engagement, after the Iraq war and before the 2004 election campaign. But Mr Bush shows some signs of preparing to stick it out. The administration announced a new envoy to the region, John Wolf, a career diplomat who is associated with the neo-conservatives. He will head a team of Americans who will go to the region to monitor negotiations. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, has been named as Mr Bush's ?personal representative? on the topic, a clear sign of engagement by the White House.

 
 
Great to see you, Prince Abdullah, President Mubarak, my good friend Tony...
 

Second, what are the roles of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians' new prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, their president? Mr Arafat was not invited, though Arab regimes have previously said peace will not be possible without him. Since last June, Mr Bush has said the opposite: peace will be impossible with him. The summits advanced America's aim of building up support for Mr Abbas as an alternative. Arab leaders gave his Palestinian government a ringing endorsement, and Mr Abbas himself seems to have increased his prestige with Mr Bush. By the end of their first meeting, said one observer, ?They were like pals from a long time ago.? But, as he also noted, Mr Abbas will need to show Palestinians proof that he can deliver benefits on the ground.

 

The hard road to trust

Politically, it is Mr Sharon who is in immediate trouble. According to Israeli defence sources, the government will start taking down some 15 ?unauthorised outposts? next week. There are dozens more outposts, built since March 2001, dotting the West Bank, which must be removed in this first phase of the road map. But if 15 go it will be a significant start, certainly in terms of domestic politics.

There have been intelligence warnings of violent or even armed resistance from settler extremists. The defence sources said that the army would act fast and firmly to dismantle the outposts, and to make sure that the evicted settlers did not return to them or set up new ones. Leaders of the mainstream settler movement, while dissociating themselves from threats of violence against the soldiers, intend to organise large-scale passive resistance against the dismantlement operation.

More than 40,000 people attended an anti-government rally organised by the settlers in Jerusalem, just hours after the summit ended. ?We won't allow a single inhabited spot to be removed,? declared one speaker. ?This road map goes straight to hell.?


?This road map goes straight to hell?
 
The looming clashes over the outposts could well grow into a terminal showdown between Mr Sharon and the two parties of the far right that sit in his cabinet. The National Union, with seven seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and the National Religious Party, with six, say they are staying in the government to keep the Labour Party out. But if Mr Sharon's words turn into deeds, they may have no choice but to leave. Labour promises Mr Sharon the support of its 19 Knesset members without necessarily joining the government?so long as he gets on with removing the outposts and freezing the rest of the settlements as required by the road map.

Mr Abbas faces a less immediate political embarrassment, but the challenge before him, if he is to translate his promise to end the armed intifada into reality, is enormous. He needs to achieve a ceasefire that includes the Islamic factions, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He will be able to do so only if he can point to changes on the ground.

Sobered by the new American wind blowing right into their now closed offices in Damascus, the Islamists have been sounding conciliatory, vowing not to ?embarrass? Mr Abbas in his endeavours for peace. But their terms for a truce remain as hard as ever, demanding reciprocity from Israel. They want a ?guarantee? that Israel will withdraw from the Palestinian areas it has reoccupied, and end its policy of assassinating known Islamist fighters. They have ruled out disarmament. ?We will continue to defend ourselves,? said one Hamas man. Many in Mr Abbas's own Fatah movement hold the same view.

At Aqaba, the Palestinians' new security chief, Muhammad Dahlan, urged Israel to release more prisoners beyond the 100 or so freed as goodwill gestures in recent weeks. There are 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many of them Fatah activists, including the movement's West Bank leader, Marwan Barghouti. Mr Dahlan believes the release of these prisoners would give him the legitimacy and the personnel to build an effective police force that might one day take on Hamas.

This is his and Mr Abbas's cautious game plan: first a ceasefire, next policing and then, and only then, disarmament. Time, and reciprocal action by the Israelis, will be required for all three phases. The Palestinians believe that Mr Bush, eager to see the new leadership strengthened, is sympathetic to this approach.

Monitoring both Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the road map, monitored by a team of American supervisors under Mr Wolf, will begin next week. The team, said Mr Bush pointedly, would be ?stating clearly who is fulfilling their responsibilities?. The Israelis professed themselves pleased that only America, and not the other authors of the map?the UN, the EU and Russia?would be involved in this monitoring. The Palestinians were pleased that it would begin forthwith.

Israel was particularly gratified that Mr Bush had been persuaded at the last minute to add a reference in his Aqaba speech to Israel as ?the Jewish state?. Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, said that this was meant as a negation of the ?right of return? claimed by the Palestinian refugees. Israel initially had wanted Mr Abbas to make this point in his speech, but the Palestinians are not prepared to renounce the right of return at this early stage.

 

Europe's quicksands

In the glare of all this momentous activity, the earlier leg of Mr Bush's trip was almost forgotten by mid-week. But this, too, was a vital mission to repair damage and make peace. Europeans had long taken America's power and Europe's relative powerlessness for granted, until the build-up to the war in Iraq. At that point, France and Germany started talking about American power as something to be contained. Some Americans started dividing Europe into old and new, sceptics and allies. Mr Bush's trip attempted to reinstate the old close ties, but only on certain conditions.

?The United States is committed to a strong Atlantic alliance,? the president told a crowd in Cracow, in Poland. ?This is no time to stir up divisions in a great alliance.? He went out of his way to claim that, in the Middle East and in developing countries generally, ? we need the help, the advice and the wisdom of our European friends and allies.? This seemed good evidence?and the rash of joint policy agreements on trade and aid after the G8 summit at Evian-les-Bains produced more?that the administration is still committed to the transatlantic alliance as a whole, not just to a few select members of it.

In some areas, closer transatlantic co-operation is certainly on the cards. After the G8 summit, NATO's secretary-general, Lord Robertson, reiterated demands that the organisation do more to act as a peacekeeper outside its traditional area of operation. During the summit, America announced the extension of the so-called Global Partnership against nuclear proliferation. Set up at last year's summit, the project is concerned with such matters as destroying Russian chemical weapons. It has now been joined, for the first time, by a group of small European countries.

What is much less clear is whether the broader differences about the use of American power have been narrowed enough to improve ties across the board. Only strong assertions of mutual interest were likely to allay the deep distrust engendered by the Iraq war, and these were not forthcoming.

Mr Bush did not flinch from pointing out specific areas where the two sides disagree: on lending conditions for poor countries, for example, and on genetically modified food. Nor did he gloss over the ructions before the war. He told the Poles that ?you have not come all this way only to be told [by France] that you must now choose between Europe and America.?

Backstage, the talk was blunter. Miss Rice talked of her disappointment at the questioning of America's motives in Iraq and of her ?consternation? at French and German behaviour. ?There were times,? she said, ?that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps, Saddam Hussein. I'll just put it very bluntly. We simply didn't understand it.? She added, at another point, ?That disappointment will, of course, not go easily.?

Jacques Chirac, France's president, was no less clear where he stood. ?I've no doubt whatsoever,? he said at Evian, ?that the multipolar vision of the world that I have defended for some time is certainly supported by a majority of countries throughout the world.? He turned the G8 meeting of rich industrial nations into virtually a global summit, inviting 13 leaders from developing countries. And he summarily rejected an American suggestion that the G8's resolution on Iran and North Korea implied that force could be used against countries that breach international rules against proliferation. ?This interpretation,? he said, ?seems to be extraordinarily daring.?

The contrast with Vladimir Putin was instructive. Russia, too, has worried about America's projection of unilateral power and has praised attempts to constrain it internationally. But Mr Putin gave Mr Bush almost everything he wanted. Before their meeting, at the 300th anniversary celebrations in Mr Putin's home city of St Petersburg, Russia's parliament ratified the treaty that pledges to reduce the two sides' nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over ten years (the treaty was signed last year, but the parliament had refused to ratify it during the Iraq war). Mr Putin said that Russian and American policies on Iran?one of the most contentious issues between them over the past few years?were closer than anyone thought, and that Russia did not want Iran to get hold of nuclear weapons. Their meeting ended in a bear-hug.

The difference lies partly in European and Russian attitudes. Russia has decided that it needs to work with America on strategic and nuclear matters, while Europe is divided about how close it wants transatlantic ties to be. It also lies partly in American attitudes. As Mr Bush's trip confirmed, his administration will not let allied reluctance slow down something that it perceives to be in its national interest. And when Europeans are split, America is quite prepared to cherry-pick among them. No better evidence for this can be seen than a new anti-nuclear proliferation measure announced at the G8 summit. Incensed by its inability legally to confiscate a weapons shipment from North Korea to Yemen that was intercepted at sea earlier this year, America decided to set up a new interdiction regime to crack down on such trade. The first countries it went to for support were Spain, Poland, Britain and Australia, the ones that sent troops to Iraq.

That may be understandable. When a country thinks its national security is threatened, it will hardly let even allies dictate its response. Yet the Bush administration also shows signs of cherry-picking here, seeing as its particular allies Britain, Spain, Italy and the new democracies of central Europe. To paraphrase Lord Acton, America may be seeking to create a New Europe in order to redress the balance of the Old.

 
FOTOS
Vladimir, let's hug again! After you, Jacques, you French bastard. This one's Polish, right?

 

This will not happen without a fight. The leaders of France and Germany frequently (though mistakenly) like to assert that nothing much happens in the EU unless they agree. Moreover, they do not seem seriously abashed by the outcome of the war in Iraq. True, both voted for the United Nations resolution to lift sanctions. But French officials do not think America has been vindicated by victory. On the contrary, they argue that military action has reaped a harvest of chaos in Iraq and more terrorism by al-Qaeda. If anything, they feel their opposition has been vindicated by the failure to find Mr Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

In short, American diplomacy, like Mr Bush's foreign travels, seems to come in two parts. In the Middle East, America showed that it is willing to use its power in ways that are neither arrogant nor selfish. But whether that will be enough to reassure European critics is another matter.

If the truth matters, then all should read the full text of President Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly on 12 September 2002. This speech began the overt and official US policy that culminated in the invasion of Iraq. For those who wish to read the complete speech, here is the text. I have posted the complete text here because excerpts have a way of reflecting the editor's bias.

As an example, consider the Wolfowicz quote in the Vanity Fair press release. That press release hyping the Vanity Fair article fails to include Wolfowicz's next sentence. That sentence reads, "But there have always been three fundamental concerns: One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism and the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."

One thing is clear. The President's speech to the UN mentioned a lot more than just WMD's.

Rick
***********************************************************

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html

"Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, and ladies and gentlemen: We meet one year and one day after a terrorist attack brought grief to my country, and brought grief to many citizens of our world. Yesterday, we remembered the innocent lives taken that terrible morning. Today, we turn to the urgent duty of protecting other lives, without illusion and without fear.

We've accomplished much in the last year -- in Afghanistan and beyond. We have much yet to do -- in Afghanistan and beyond. Many nations represented here have joined in the fight against global terror, and the people of the United States are grateful.

The United Nations was born in the hope that survived a world war -- the hope of a world moving toward justice, escaping old patterns of conflict and fear. The founding members resolved that the peace of the world must never again be destroyed by the will and wickedness of any man. We created the United Nations Security Council, so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk, our resolutions would be more than wishes. After generations of deceitful dictators and broken treaties and squandered lives, we dedicated ourselves to standards of human dignity shared by all, and to a system of security defended by all.

Today, these standards, and this security, are challenged. Our commitment to human dignity is challenged by persistent poverty and raging disease. The suffering is great, and our responsibilities are clear. The United States is joining with the world to supply aid where it reaches people and lifts up lives, to extend trade and the prosperity it brings, and to bring medical care where it is desperately needed.

As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to UNESCO. (Applause.) This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.

Our common security is challenged by regional conflicts -- ethnic and religious strife that is ancient, but not inevitable. In the Middle East, there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides. America stands committed to an independent and democratic Palestine, living side by side with Israel in peace and security. Like all other people, Palestinians deserve a government that serves their interests and listens to their voices. My nation will continue to encourage all parties to step up to their responsibilities as we seek a just and comprehensive settlement to the conflict.

Above all, our principles and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions. In the attacks on America a year ago, we saw the destructive intentions of our enemies. This threat hides within many nations, including my own. In cells and camps, terrorists are plotting further destruction, and building new bases for their war against civilization. And our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale.

In one place -- in one regime -- we find all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront.

Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation. And the regime's forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources. Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world. Yet this aggression was stopped -- by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations.

To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq's dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear, to him and to all. And he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations.

He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations, and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge -- by his deceptions, and by his cruelties -- Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.

In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities -- which the Council said, threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored.

Last year, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights, and that the regime's repression is all pervasive. Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution, and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation, and rape. Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents -- and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state.

In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolutions 686 and 687, demanded that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke its promise. Last year the Secretary General's high-level coordinator for this issue reported that Kuwait, Saudi, Indian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Bahraini, and Omani nationals remain unaccounted for -- more than 600 people. One American pilot is among them.

In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolution 687, demanded that Iraq renounce all involvement with terrorism, and permit no terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke this promise. In violation of Security Council Resolution 1373, Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder. In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and a former American President. Iraq's government openly praised the attacks of September the 11th. And al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq.

In 1991, the Iraqi regime agreed to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and to prove to the world it has done so by complying with rigorous inspections. Iraq has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge.

From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its weapons program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs, and aircraft spray tanks. U.N. inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared, and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons. Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

United Nations' inspections also revealed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.

And in 1995, after four years of deception, Iraq finally admitted it had a crash nuclear weapons program prior to the Gulf War. We know now, were it not for that war, the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.

Today, Iraq continues to withhold important information about its nuclear program -- weapons design, procurement logs, experiment data, an accounting of nuclear materials and documentation of foreign assistance. Iraq employs capable nuclear scientists and technicians. It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. And Iraq's state-controlled media has reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons.

Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is building more long-range missiles that it can inflict mass death throughout the region.

In 1990, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the world imposed economic sanctions on Iraq. Those sanctions were maintained after the war to compel the regime's compliance with Security Council resolutions. In time, Iraq was allowed to use oil revenues to buy food. Saddam Hussein has subverted this program, working around the sanctions to buy missile technology and military materials. He blames the suffering of Iraq's people on the United Nations, even as he uses his oil wealth to build lavish palaces for himself, and to buy arms for his country. By refusing to comply with his own agreements, he bears full guilt for the hunger and misery of innocent Iraqi citizens.

In 1991, Iraq promised U.N. inspectors immediate and unrestricted access to verify Iraq's commitment to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. Iraq broke this promise, spending seven years deceiving, evading, and harassing U.N. inspectors before ceasing cooperation entirely. Just months after the 1991 cease-fire, the Security Council twice renewed its demand that the Iraqi regime cooperate fully with inspectors, condemning Iraq's serious violations of its obligations. The Security Council again renewed that demand in 1994, and twice more in 1996, deploring Iraq's clear violations of its obligations. The Security Council renewed its demand three more times in 1997, citing flagrant violations; and three more times in 1998, calling Iraq's behavior totally unacceptable. And in 1999, the demand was renewed yet again.

As we meet today, it's been almost four years since the last U.N. inspectors set foot in Iraq, four years for the Iraqi regime to plan, and to build, and to test behind the cloak of secrecy.

We know that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass murder even when inspectors were in his country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left? The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.

Delegates to the General Assembly, we have been more than patient. We've tried sanctions. We've tried the carrot of oil for food, and the stick of coalition military strikes. But Saddam Hussein has defied all these efforts and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. The first time we may be completely certain he has a -- nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one. We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.

The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?

The United States helped found the United Nations. We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful. We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime. Our partnership of nations can meet the test before us, by making clear what we now expect of the Iraqi regime.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis -- a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty, and internationally supervised elections.

The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq.

We can harbor no illusions -- and that's important today to remember. Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. He's fired ballistic missiles at Iran and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel. His regime once ordered the killing of every person between the ages of 15 and 70 in certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. He has gassed many Iranians, and 40 Iraqi villages.

My nation will work with the U.N. Security Council to meet our common challenge. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively to hold Iraq to account. We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions. But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced -- the just demands of peace and security will be met -- or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

Events can turn in one of two ways: If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission. The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable -- the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom, and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. These nations can show by their example that honest government, and respect for women, and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond. And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time.

Neither of these outcomes is certain. Both have been set before us. We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress. We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well.

Thank you very much."
Attachments:

Item Number:13
Date: 06/03/2003
PHILIPPINES - MILF LAYS DOWN ARMS FOR NOW (JUN 03/BBC)

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP. -- The Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) rebel group began a unilateral cease-fire on Monday in the
Philippines, reports the BBC.  A MILF spokesman said the group will continue the cease-fire until June 12.

"The armed forces will not fire upon MILF groups that raise the
white flag, come out in the open and peaceably return to the fold,"
said President Gloria Arroyo.  However, said Arroyo, the military will continue to strike MILF elements that "remain underground."

A rant from VD Hanson:
---------------------------------
May 23, 2003 8:45 a.m.
Middle East Tragedies
Pressing ahead is our only choice.



The images are jarring, the hypocrisies appalling, the rhetoric repulsive.
Only in the Arab Middle East - and the Islamic world in general - are
suicide-murderers operating and indeed canonized, even blessed with cash bonuses. An inveterate liar like Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is lauded for his defense of a mass killer like Saddam Hussein - and at last lampooned not on moral grounds, but because his yarns about thousands of dead Marines are finally exposed by the sound of American tanks rumbling his way. The last gassings in the modern world - Nasser's in Yemen and Saddam's in Kurdistan and Iran - were all Mideastern; so are promises of virgins in exchange for bombing women and children.

Pick up any newspaper and the day's bombings, killings, and terror are most likely to have occurred somewhere in the Islamic world. The big, silly lie - Jews caused 9/11, the U.S. used atomic weapons against Iraq, Americans bombed mosques - has been a staple of Middle East popular culture. The hatred of Jews is open, unapologetic, and mostly unrivaled on the world stage since the Third Reich.

I think the American street - and as we have learned in the case of anger
toward the French, there surely is such a thing - has finally thrown up its
hands with Arab ingratitude. Egyptian, Jordanian, and Palestinian recipients of billions of dollars in American aid routinely reply by trashing the United States, whether in the street, through government publications, or via public declarations in Arab and European capitals.

In embarrassed response, we are tossed the old bone by their corrupt leaders - "Ignore what we say publicly and look instead privately at what we do." Arab apologists claim that triangulating with and backing off from the only democracy in the region would win back their good graces; but we know that  such perfidy toward Israel would only win us contempt, as we were shown to be not merely opportunistic, but weak and scared into the bargain as well.

Shiites, once murdered en masse by Saddam Hussein, now turn on the American and British liberators who alone in the world could do what they could not.  Iraqis, freed by us from their own home-grown murderers, in thanks now blame us for not stopping them from robbing themselves. Our citizens are routinely blown to pieces in Saudi Arabia or shot down in Jordan, even as we are told that Americans - after losing 3,000 of their citizens to Islamist killers - are not being nice to Arab students and visitors because we require security checks on them and occasionally tail those with suspicious backgrounds. Egyptians march and shout threats to America and the West - and then whine that thousands in Cairo and Luxor are out of work because most over here take them seriously, and choose to pass on having such unhinged people escort them around the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings. Have all these people gone mad?

The world is watching all this, and it is not pretty. After talking to a
variety of foreigners who do not necessarily share the American point of
view, I conclude that South Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Africans don't much like what they see in the Middle East - and blame those over there, not us, for the old mess.

The general causes of these Middle Eastern pathologies have been well
diagnosed since September 11, ad nauseam. The Arab world has no real
consensual governments; statism and tribalism hamper market economics and ensure stagnation. Sexual apartheid, Islamic fundamentalism, the absence of an independent judiciary, and a censored press all do their part to ensure endemic poverty, rampant corruption, and rising resentment among an exploding population. Siesta for millions is a time not for napping between office hours, but for weaving conspiracies over backgammon.

Class, family, money, and connections - rarely merit - bring social
advancement and prized jobs. The trickle-down of oil money masks the generic failure for a while, but ultimately undermines diversification and sound development in the economy - as well as accentuating a crass inequality. Autocracies forge a devil's bargain with radical Islamists and their epigones of terrorist killers, from al Qaeda to Hezbollah, to deflect their efforts away from Arab regimes and onto Americans and Israelis. All the talk of a once-glorious Baghdad, an Arab Renaissance in the 13th century, or a few Aristotelian texts kept alive in Arabic still cannot hide the present dismal reality - and indeed is being forgotten because of it.

Millions in the Arab street now enjoy merely the patina of Western culture - everything from cell phones, the Internet, and videos - but without either the freedom or material security that create the conditions that produce these and thousands of other such appurtenances. The result is that appetites and frustrations alike arise faster than they can be satisfied with available wealth - or constrained by the strictures of traditional and ever-more-fanatical Islam. Americans now accept all this - and snicker at the old Marxist and neocolonialist exegeses that the British, the Americans, the French - or little green men on Mars - are responsible for the Middle East mess.

Illegitimate governments - whether Arab theocracies, monarchies,
dictatorships, or corrupt oligarchies - rely on state police and their
labyrinth of torture and random execution to stifle dissent. Filtered
popular frustration is directed toward Israel and the United States - as the martyrs of the West Bank are the salve for anger over everything from dirty water to expensive food. Millions of Muslims collectively murdered by Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, the Taliban, the Assads, Qaddafi, and an array of autocrats from Algeria to the Gulf seem to count as nothing. Persecuted and often stateless Muslims without a home in Kurdistan or Bosnia gain little sympathy - unless the Jews can be blamed. It is not who is killed, nor how many - but by whom: One protester in the West Bank mistakenly shot by the IDF earns more wrath in the Arab calculus than 10,000 butchered by Saddam Hussein or the elder Assad.

Before 9/11, the West in a variety of ways had been complicit in all this
tragedy, and either ignored the alarming symptoms - or, worse still, aided and abetted the disease. Oil companies and defense contractors winked at bribery and knew well enough that the weapons and toys they sold to despots only impoverished these sick nations and brought the dies irae ever closer. "If we don't, the French surely will" was the mantra when bribery, Israeli boycotts, and questionable weapons sales were requisite for megaprofits.

Paleolithic diplomats - as if the professed anti-Communism of the old Cold War still justified support for authoritarians - were quiet about almost everything from Saudi blackmail payments to terrorists and beheadings to mass jailings, random murder, and disfigurement of women. Political appeasement - from Reagan's failure to hit the Bekka Valley after the slaughter of U.S. Marines, to Clinton's pathetic responses to murdered diplomats, bombings, and the leveling of embassies - only emboldened Arab killers.

Judging magnanimity as decadence, the half-educated in al Qaeda embraced pseudo-Spenglerian theories of a soft and decadent West unable to tear itself away from thong-watching and Sunday football. Largess in the halls of power in New York and Washington played a contemptible role too - as ex-ambassadors, retired generals, and revolving-door lawyers created fancy names, titles, and institutes to conceal what was really Gulf money thrown on the table for American influence.

On the left, multiculturalists and postcolonial theorists were even worse,
promulgating the relativist argument that there was no real standard by
which to assess third-world criminality. And by mixing a cocktail of
colonial guilt and advocacy about the soi-disant "other," they helped to
create a politically-correct climate that left us ill-prepared for the
hatred of the madrassas. Arab monsters like Saddam Hussein sensed that there would always be useful idiots in the West to march on their behalf if it came to a choice between a third-world killer and a democratic United States. More fools in the universities alleged that oppression,
exploitation, and inequality alone caused Arab anger - even as well-off,
educated, and pampered momma's boys like Mohamed Atta pulled out their Korans, put on headbands, and then blew us and themselves to smithereens, still babbling about unclean women in the last hours before their rendezvous in Hell.

So the general symptomology, diagnosis, and bleak prognosis of this illness in the Middle East are now more or less agreed upon; the treatment, however, is not. Arab intellectuals - long corrupted by complicity with criminal regimes, and perennial critics of American foreign policy - now suddenly look askance at democracy, if jump-started by the United States. American academics, who once decried our support for the agents of oppression, now decry our efforts to remove them and allow something better.

What in God's name, then, are we to do with this nonsense?

We seek military action and democratic reform hand-in-glove to end Islamic rogue states and terrorist enclaves - not because such audacious measures are our first option (appeasement, neglect, and complicity in the past were preferable), but because they are the last. Go ahead and argue over the improbability of democracy in the Middle East. Reckon the horrendous costs and unending commitment. Cite the improper parallels with Germany and Japan until you are blue in the face. Stammer on that Baghdad will never be a New England town hall.

Maybe, maybe not. But at least consider the alternatives.

Hitting and then running? Did that in Iraq in 1991 - and Shiites and Kurds
hated us before dying in droves; Kuwaitis soon forgot our sacrifice, and we spent $30 billion and 350,000 air sorties to patrol the desert skies for 12 years. Afghans gave no praise for our help in routing the Soviets, but
plenty of blame for leaving when the threat was over.

Establish bases and forget nation-building? Did that too once, everywhere
from Libya to Saudi Arabia, and we still got a madman in Tripoli and 60,000 royal third cousins in Riyadh.

Turn the other cheek and say, "What's a few American volunteers killed in Lebanon or the Sudan when the stock market is booming and Starbucks is sprouting up everywhere?" Did that also, and we got 9/11.

Pour in money? Did that for a quarter-century; but I don't see that the
street in Amman or Cairo is much appreciative about freebies, from tons of American wheat to Abrams tanks.

Get tough with Israel? Taking 39 scuds, pulling out of Lebanon, offering 97 percent of the West Bank, and putting up with Oslo got them the Intifada and female suicide bombers.

The fact is that the only alternative after September 11 was the messy,
dirty, easily caricatured path that Mr. Bush has taken us down. For all the
reoccurring troubles in Afghanistan, for all the looting and lawlessness in
the month after the brilliant military victory in Iraq, and for all the
recent explosions in restaurants, synagogues, and hotels - we are still
making real progress.

Two years ago the most awful regimes since Hitler's Germany were the Taliban and the Hussein despotism. Both are now gone, and something better will yet emerge in their place. The American military has not proven merely lethal, but unpredictable and a little crazy into the bargain - as if our generals, when told to go to Baghdad or Kabul, nod yes and smile: "Hell, what are they going to do anyway, blow up the World Trade Center?"

Two years ago the world's most deadly agent was an Arab terrorist; now it is an American with a laptop and an F-18 circling above with a pod of GPS bombs.

Two years ago nuts in caves talked about Americans who were scared to fight; now the world is worried because we fight too quickly and too well. There are no more videos of Osama bin Laden strutting with his cell phone trailing sycophantic psychopaths. Yasser Arafat is no longer lord of the Lincoln bedroom, but shuffles around his own self-created moonscape.

Two years ago Syria and Lebanon were considered sacrosanct hideouts that we dared not enter - or so a sapling ophthalmologist from Syria threatened us. Today we tell the custodians of terror there to clean it up or we will - and assume that eventually we must.

Two years ago - and I speak from experience - faulting our corrupt
relationship with Saudi Arabia brought mostly abuse from hacks in suits and ties in Washington and New York; now defending that status quo is more likely to incur public odium.

Two years ago the Cassandra-like trio of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Fouad Ajami were considered outcasts by disingenuous but influential Middle Eastern Studies departments; now they - not the poseurs in university lounges and academic conferences - are heeded by presidents and prime ministers.

No, we are making progress because we have sized up the problem, know the solution - and have the guts to press ahead. No one claimed all this would be easy or welcome. But like Roman senators of old with each hand on a fold of the toga, we offer choices. We hope that there are still enough people of good will and sobriety in the Middle East to rid themselves of the terrorist killers, and thus select a freely offered, Western-style democracy over the 1st Marine Division, a 1,000-plane sky, and some 30 acres of floating tarmac.

FORBES
Current Events
Five Vital Lessons From Iraq
Paul Johnson, 03.17.03



The Iraq crisis has already pointed up a number of valuable lessons. So far
I have identified five:

? Lesson I. We have been reminded that France is not to be trusted at any
time, on any issue. The British have learned this over 1,000 years of
acrimonious history, but it still comes as a shock to see how badly the
French can behave, with their unique mixture of shortsighted selfishness,
long-term irresponsibility, impudent humbug and sheer malice. Americans are
still finding out--the hard way--that loyalty, gratitude, comradeship and
respect for treaty obligations are qualities never exhibited by French
governments. All they recognize are interests, real or imaginary. French
support always has to be bought. What the Americans and British now have to
decide is whether formal alliances that include France as a major partner
are worth anything at all, or if they are an actual encumbrance in times of
danger.

We also have to decide whether France should be allowed to remain as a
permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, with veto power, or whether
it should be replaced by a more suitable power, such as India. Linked to
this is the question of whether France can be trusted as a nuclear power.
The French have certainly sold nuclear technology to rogue states in the
past, Iraq among them. In view of France's attempts to sabotage America's
vigorous campaign to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, we need
to be sure that France is not planning to cover the cost of its flagging
nuclear weapons program by selling secrets to unruly states. Certainly
Anglo-American surveillance of French activities in this murky area must be
intensified.

? Lesson II. Germany is a different case. The Germans are capable of loyalty
and even gratitude. For many years Germany was one of the most dependable
members of NATO. But the country is now very depressed, both psychologically
and economically, with unemployment moving rapidly toward the 5 million mark
and no prospect of an early recovery. With a weak, unpopular and demoralized
government, Germany has been lured by France into a posture of hostility
toward the Anglosphere, a posture that corresponds neither to the instincts
nor the interests of the German people. Germany is a brand to be snatched
from the burning; we must make a positive and urgent effort to win it back
to the fold.

? Lesson III. The assumption, in many minds, seems to be that whereas
individual powers act on the world stage according to the brutal rules of
realpolitik, the U.N. represents legitimacy and projects an aura of
idealism. In fact, more than half a century of experience shows that the
U.N. is a theater of hypocrisy, a sink of corruption, a street market of
sordid bargains and a seminary of cynicism. It is a place where
mass-murdering heads of state can stand tall and sell their votes to the
highest bidder and where crimes against humanity are rewarded. For many
people the true nature of the U.N. was epitomized by the news that Libya, a
blood-soaked military dictatorship of the crudest kind, is to chair the U.N.
Commissionon Human Rights. It's people like Muammar Qaddafi who benefit from
the U.N., who are legitimized by its spurious respectability.

Looking back on the last year, it is clear the U.S. should not have accepted
Britain's argument that, on balance, the U.N. route was the safest road to a
regime change in Iraq. In fact, going this way has done a lot of damage to
U.S. (and British) interests and has given Russia, China and other powers
the opportunity to drive hard bargains. President Bush should soon make it
clear that, where his country's vital interests are concerned, the U.S.
reserves the right to act independently, together with such friends as share
those interests.

? Lesson IV. The split within NATO underscores the fact that in its present
form and composition NATO is out of date. There is no longer a frontier to
defend or to act as a trip wire; there is no longer a reason for the U.S. to
keep large forces in fixed bases on the European continent--at great cost to
the U.S.' balance of payments. These forces should be repatriated with all
deliberate speed. There is obviously a need to have bases, which can be
activated in an emergency, in states the U.S. feels can be trusted to honor
their obligations.

Britain, which is not so much an ally of America as it is a member of the
same family, will continue to serve as the geographical center of the
Anglosphere and as America's offshore island to the Eurasian landmass. Other
than that, the U.S. should put its trust in the seas and oceans, which offer
a home and a friendly environment to its forces and do not change with the
treacherous winds of opinion. The military lessons to be learned from the
lead-up to the Iraq operation are profound, and all point in the same
direction: America should always have the means to act alone, in any area of
the globe where danger threatens and with whatever force is necessary.

? Lesson V. This last lesson flows from the fourth. The U.S. must not merely
possess the means to act alone if necessary; it must alsocultivate the will.
Fate, or Divine Providence, has placed America at this time in the position
of sole superpower, with the consequent duty to uphold global order and to
punish, or prevent, the great crimes of the world. That is what America did
in Afghanistan, is in the process of doing in Iraq and will have to do
elsewhere.

It must continue to engage the task imposed upon it, not in any spirit of
hubris but in the full and certain knowledge that it is serving the best and
widest interests of humanity.

Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author, Lee Kuan Yew, senior
minister of Singapore, and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, in
addition to Forbes Chairman Caspar W. Weinberger, are now periodically
writing this column.
 
Back to top    
 
 
LG Dog Russ
Guest





 Posted: Fri May 30, 2003 2:44 pm    Post subject: Response from Germany    

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Hilarious...., I later informed him that Paul Johnson is British!

"Hi Rus,
seldom a read more bull shit in a row!
Take care in this contry were some guys think, this is the place where all the
wisdom is held.
Frank"

Woof,
Dog Russ

1111 GMT - About 50 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) militants burned
down 10 houses and killed five civilians early May 29 near the southern
Philippines town of Carmen, Agence France-Presse reports. AFP cited a
regional military spokesman who said that the MILF rebels attacked the
civilian dwellings after simultaneous MILF attacks on three nearby military
detachments were repulsed. The attacks occurred just one day after the MILF had a declared a 10-day unilateral cease-fire, starting June 2, so that peace talks could resume with the government of President Gloria Arroyo.

Item Number:18
Date: 05/27/2003
PHILIPPINES - MILF OFFENSIVE CLAIMS LIVES OF SOLDIERS (MAY 27/AFP)

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- At least 13 Philippine soldiers were killed
last week in clashes with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)
guerrillas, reports Agence France-Presse, citing Defense Secretary
Angelo Reyes.  However, the MILF said its forces killed 28 soldiers and wounded 22.  Reyes said the fighting occurred in the Lanao del Norte province on Mindanao Island.

PHILIPPINES
Philippines President: Abu Sayyaf Losing Clout
from CNN on Thursday, May 22, 2003
"While there's been much progress on terrorism, there's still much work to do and it is very important that the countries work together in order to address this threat together," Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told CNN.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo held talks with President Bush on Monday and was later the guest of honor at a state dinner. The two leaders discussed the war on terror. Arroyo talked with CNN's Wolf Blitzer about al Qaeda-linked militant group, Abu Sayyaf, that is operating in the Philippines, and about the threat of international terrorism.

BLITZER: Thanks very much, madam president, for being with us. How much of a problem is this terror threat to you in the Philippines, specifically from Abu Sayyaf, this group associated with al Qaeda?

ARROYO: When September 11 happened, we had already been contending with a terrorist threat of Abu Sayyaf.

Now Abu Sayyaf has lost their last hostages because the last two hostages escaped from their clutches while their guards were sleeping and it was raining hard, so they could not chase after them with footprints. So I would say that this is a threat that has lost a lot of its clout.

Nonetheless, we have seen from the alert that it's happening now here in the United States. While there's been much progress on terrorism, there's still much work to do, and it is very important that the countries work together in order to address this threat together.

BLITZER: Madam president, is al Qaeda making a comeback right now? How significant of a threat is this terror organization, not only to you and your people in the Philippines, but around the world, including here in the United States?

ARROYO: What I understand is that al Qaeda is only half as strong as it used to be.

Nonetheless, if that one-half is still there, then the work is not yet over. I believe that al Qaeda is on a strategic retreat, and that is a tactical offense.

BLITZER: When you say strategic retreat, they're waiting, they're trying to regroup, but they will resurface with a vengeance? Is that what you're suggesting?

ARROYO: They're on a strategic defensive. In other words, they have a strategic setback, so they're going on a tactical offensive. It is -- it's like the death throes of somebody who is defeated or it is like a crab who's cornered, and therefore it's making its last brave stand. ...

Again, I repeat, while the threat or the strength has declined, it is now on a tactical offense to make up for strategic losses.

BLITZER: What can U.S. allies like the Philippines do together with the United States to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, this threat from international terrorism?

ARROYO: Because terrorism is now a transnational phenomenon, it is important that we also approach it in a transnational manner, and the most important way is to exchange information and intelligence and also to be able to cut the networks of the terrorist cells wherever they may be found. So this is very important.

The fight against terrorism is not conventional warfare. It is not so much moving troops all over the place. It is really a fight of intelligence and copying the networks.

BLITZER: The Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines, they've taken out their vengeance mostly against Philippine target, other targets, but not U.S. targets. Would they, together with al Qaeda, based on the intelligence that you have, go after U.S. targets in the Philippines?

ARROYO: If they could, perhaps, but what we've done is that we have -- we have brought them to a very defensive posture.

What we have done is that we are actively seeking them out and rooting them out from their terrorist lairs. So even tactically now, they are on the defensive because the Philippine military is in a strong offensive.

BLITZER: There was some controversy over how much of a role the U.S. military should play in the Philippines in fighting together, with your military, these terrorists. Have you and President Bush worked out an acceptable arrangement, acceptable to your country as well as to the Pentagon?

ARROYO: What President Bush said yesterday in his press conference is America will help the Philippines upon my request and in the manner in which I want it to be done in accordance with our constitution.

Now our technical people will be defining the limits of our constitution in accordance with the language that this is also known and used by the Pentagon authorities. So this is where we are now. It's a work in progress.

BLITZER: So basically, so far, right now you can have joint training exercises. They can serve as sort of advisers, but you're not going to let U.S. military forces actually go out there and fight and launch offensive mission against terrorists? Is that where it stands right now?

ARROYO: That's right, because in any case, when you're fighting a transnational threat like terrorism, the best tool that we should help one another with is the tool of intelligence and exchange of information.

BLITZER: What's next on the front? What's the most important thing that you and the United States, other allies, can do right now to defeat this threat?

ARROYO: We cannot underestimate the importance of exchanging information and intelligence and also try to cut off the money trail from one terrorist cell to another across borders.

BLITZER: The money trail is still flowing to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda? Is that what you're suggesting?

ARROYO: What I'm saying is that there is still movement of money from across borders, and this is what -- what makes these -- this makes the threat of terrorism a transnational threat. That's the connection among the cells. And therefore, that has to be stopped and interdicted.

? 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
-------------------------------
PHILIPPINES
97 MILF Rebels Surrender Amid Massive Assault
from Philippine Daily Inquirer [Manila] on Thursday, May 22, 2003
ZAMBOANGA--Six Muslim separatist field commanders and 91 guerrillas have surrendered to the Armed Forces amid punitive strikes launched by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the southern Philippines, a presidential aide said Thursday.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) men turned themselves in to the military in the southern city of Iligan on Monday, said Rocky Nazareno, a presidential aide who was sent here to monitor the military offensive. "The rebels also surrendered 82 various firearms," Nazareno said.

"They wanted to turn a new leaf because life in the mountains is harsh," said military southern command spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Renoir Pascua.

"They were also pressured amid a massive military pursuit," Pascua said.

The 12,500-strong MILF is the country's main secessionist insurgent force which the government blames for a spate of bombings and raids that have left about 100 dead since March.

Before departing for a state visit to the United States last weekend, Arroyo ordered the military to carry out artillery attacks and air assaults in areas in the south where alleged MILF-linked terrorist cells were operating.

Fighting has left more than 60 MILF rebels dead and at least two soldiers wounded, according to the military.

Emboldened by assurances of support from US President George W. Bush, Arroyo on Thursday again called on the MILF to renounce terrorism if it wanted to return to the negotiating table.

"The path of peace is always open, but I have been very clear about what I want from them. I want them to renounce terrorism, I want them to stop terrorist attacks. I want them to surrender the terrorists among them," the President told Filipino reporters in a news conference in New York, which was broadcast live here.

Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, who was in Iligan to oversee the surrender, said the offensives would continue until the government was convinced the MILF had been defeated.

?2003 www.inq7.net all rights reserved

Item Number:13
Date: 05/20/2003
PHILIPPINES - GOVERNMENT ATTACKS REBEL STRONGHOLDS (MAY 20/PS)

PHILIPPINE STAR -- A new offensive by the Philippine army has left
more than 50 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas dead,
reports the Philippine Star.  Troops launched a heavy aerial bombardment and artillery attack on several rebel positions near Mindanao.  The attack came after President Gloria Arroyo ordered the military to undertake "selective aerial and artillery attacks to dislodge
embedded terrorist cells."  OV-10 Bronco planes and MG-520 helicopters, as well as 155-mm and 105-mm howitzers smashed the rebel positions.

----------------------------
www.Stratfor.com


Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo met with Bush in the White
House on May 19. It was agreed that the United States would designate the
Philippines a "major non-NATO" ally. These days, that designation makes the
Philippines even more important to the United States than most NATO allies.
The United States is in the process or redefining its strategic
relationships in the wake of the Iraq war. The Philippines represents a
triply significant ally. First, given its problems with Islamic separatists
in Mindanao, who are linked to al Qaeda, the Philippines is a major ally in
itself. Second, should there be a complete breakdown in Indonesia, and
should the United States decide to intervene, U.S. bases in the southern
Philippines would be critical to an intervention. Finally, should the world
return to pre-al Qaeda days, the Philippines would be an important ally
against the Chinese.

This represents a major shift in Filipino foreign policy. Arroyo has gone
farther in aligning with the United States than appeared politically
possible a few years ago. There clearly is a risk to her in this action, but
given the internal dynamics of the Philippines, the decision to re-ally with
the United States was more manageable than it might have been previously.