U.S. Military to stay in Philippines

The article never mentions that the Philippine government might have some say in whether these units stay in the Philippines. It is taken for granted that Arroyo thinks this is fine, and that is no doubt correct. However, there has always been opposition to the U.S. presence and although the troops are not supposed to be directly involved in battle there is a suspicion that sometimes they may be.
The MILF group leaders are in peace talks with the Arroyo government, the article must mean some renegade leaders who had taken up arms again. Abu Sayyaf is still active even though some of their leaders may be captured.
This rah rah article is from the New York Times..



August 21, 2009
U.S. Military to Stay in Philippines
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has decided to keep an elite 600-troop counterinsurgency operation deployed in the Philippines despite pressure to reassign its members to fulfill urgent needs elsewhere, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.
The high-level attention given to the future of the force, known as the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, illustrates the Pentagon’s difficulty in finding enough of these highly trained units for assignments to two wars — as well as for the wider effort to combat insurgencies and militancy in other parts of the world deemed to be threats to American interests.
Senior officials said the decision also acknowledged a cautionary lesson from Afghanistan: that battlefield success should be rewarded with sustained commitment, while prematurely turning the military’s attention elsewhere — as when the Bush administration shifted focus to Iraq — provides insurgents and terrorists the opportunity to rush back in.
In the seven years that the Philippines-based American force has been operating, its members have trained local security units and provided logistical and intelligence support to Filipino forces fighting insurgents.
Senior officials say the American force and partners in the Central Intelligence Agency were instrumental in successes by the Filipino armed forces in killing and capturing leaders of the militant group Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, antigovernment organizations operating in the south.
......................................The American ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie A. Kenney, said that measuring the impact of the military mission there was difficult, but she emphasized that the task force’s efforts were multiplied by being closely coordinated with the Filipino government and American development assistance.
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