Editorial
Embedded danger
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:55:00 10/02/2009
The death of two American soldiers in Sulu last Tuesday refocuses the nation’s attention on the need to revisit the Visiting Forces Agreement. The agreement has been so loosely interpreted by both the Philippine and American governments as to provide carte blanche for US forces to engage in operations never contemplated by the Senate (and the public) when it was asked to give consent for the agreement. It essentially allows the Americans to undertake military operations in tandem with members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, under the camouflage of training activities.
The US government is fully capable of assessing the danger posed to their investments and the tens of thousands of people with US citizenship who reside in the country by the activities being undertaken by their troops. What remains to be answered is whether our own government has carefully thought-out the implications of its permissiveness.
Our government’s policy, particularly since it embarked on tying itself to the Bush administration’s apron-strings after Sept. 11, then cut those strings in a panic in Iraq, has been to compensate the Americans by essentially giving them a free hand in Mindanao. Asean basically wants this, too, as governments in the region, such as Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia, have a low opinion of Filipino capability in securing Mindanao and terrorist networks that find refuge there. And the Philippine government wants it because it is unable to achieve either a military or political solution to the cases of conflict in Mindanao.
This quid pro quo permits the government to eke out aid from the Americans, and our officialdom’s lapses in bringing development to Muslim Mindanao in particular, where its political alliances with warlords matters more than giving our Moro brethren opportunities to improve their lives, can be compensated, at least partially, by foreign assistance.
This foreign assistance, as all assistance does, comes at a price, and the price is the abdication of much of our sovereignty and control over the security situation in Mindanao. It comes at the price of an agreement intended, officially speaking, to beef up our armed forces by giving them access to training with friendly forces. It comes at the price of a Constitution observed more in the breach by keeping a round-the-clock foreign military presence here while skirting the basic law’s actual provisions on the conditions that should apply for such a presence.
The Americans have been effective in putting a lid on things, but medals and citations have been issued since the Bush administration to servicemen and officers wounded in actual encounters with rebels and terrorists in Mindanao. American troops are not sheltered in training camps or simply directing spy drones to provide intelligence to Filipino troops. Far more than will ever be officially acknowledged, there’s a close coordination down to the patrol level between Filipino and American soldiers.
This makes the Americans a target for forces fighting our government’s troops, and it puts US troops in many combat or near-combat situations. We only have to point to the case of Americans firing their weapons when an explosion rocked the pier in Jolo some weeks ago. And now comes the death of the two American soldiers together with a Philippine Marine.
As the Americans focus on the offensive in Afghanistan, sympathetic groups will try to take the edge off the attacks on al-Qaida and the Taliban by mounting attacks on American troops and civilians everywhere else around the world. Unless our government begins by reexamining the VFA, this situation will only continue as an irritant in RP-US relations. It will bring back the specter of the Philippines becoming part of the front line in the confrontation between the terrorist organization and the West.
And considering the motivations of our government, it means the country is increasing its risks for all the wrong, because mainly mercenary, reasons.
Source: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20091002-227925/Embedded-danger
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