RF in PHIL

Islands in the War:

Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club, longtime resident of the Philippines, is back there on special assignment to PJM. He has a very useful writeup on the background of the conflict in the southern, Muslim regions. He also has a much darker forecast than mine about the region's prospects.

For example, when counterterrorist intelligence learned that Jemaah Islamiyah cadres were being trained in terrorist skills in a Moro Islamic Liberation Front area, they hesitated to raid the site because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was a officially a "peace partner" of the government.

A Filipino intelligence official attempted to square the circle by persuading his Muslim contacts in the MILF to attack the JI camp with government sanction. Asked whether this may have tipped the JI off into escaping, the official said "That was a risk, but what else was there to do? The official policy is to pursue a political settlement whether anyone really wants it or not." But if the chance of a comprehensive political solution seemed distant ("They’ll solve the Israeli-Palestine problem before we solve this") a military solution seemed equally remote.

I still think exactly that is the way forward -- using the MILF's natural pursuit of its own interests to deny the area to the JI. The MILF has been a "peace partner" in more than name, having assisted government forces on several occasions; and its spokesman, Eid Kabalu, has a devotion to peaceful rhetoric unusual in armed Muslim movements. Even when his brother was killed by police in a drug raid, he kept to formulations built around investigations and negotiations. Rhetoric is just words, but you'd have to go a long way to find another movement of this type which was as willing to be judicious with its words.

There is little doubt that some elements of the MILF, and its parent organization the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), have had contacts with terrorist groups. There are persistant reports that the two have allowed terrorists to train in their camps. However, there is also a record of cooperation -- sometimes grudging, sometimes ready -- that marks the MILF and MNLF alike as a different sort of movement from al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah. If the right tools can be found, we should be able to disaggregate the MILF from the true terrorist groups in Southeast Asia. Given the fact that Mindanao is beyond the capacity of the RP government to truly control, that seems a wise policy.