U.S. role in Philippine Raid Questioned.

From L.A. Times There is not just distrust of the U.S. presence in Muslim separatist areas such as Jolo but also of AFP forces. While the U.S. may have had some role in this operation the actual combat operation was by the AFP. The U.S. provides considerable support for "anti-terrorist" operations in the Philippines especially in this area. Many locals may think that the war on terror is used as a cover to battle with local separatists such as the Moro National Liberation Front and Moro Islamic Liberation Front.


From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. role in Philippine raid questioned
A Philippine general says American intelligence guided his troops in a hunt for militants, but eight villagers were slain.
By Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 9, 2008

IPIL, PHILIPPINES — In a hut on stilts with paper-thin walls of bamboo strips, an off-duty Philippine soldier was asleep alongside four members of his family when the crackle of assault rifle fire and shudder of grenade blasts awakened them early last month.

Within minutes, Cpl. Ibnun Wahid, 35, was dead, along with seven other villagers, including two children, age 4 and 9, two teenagers and two women, one of them pregnant. All were shot at close range, witnesses said in interviews and sworn affidavits gathered by the provincial governor's staff to support expected criminal charges.

Like many on Sulu island, provincial Gov. Abdusakur Tan believes the dead were victims of coldblooded killings by government troops. The independent Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines has called for charges to be filed against troops and officers involved in gathering intelligence for and planning the operation, as well those directly responsible for the deaths.

Gen. Ruben Rafael, commander of Philippine troops on the island, also known as Jolo, said in an interview that a U.S. military spy plane circling high above this seaside village provided the intelligence that led to the Feb. 4 assault. He said the crew of the P-3 Orion turboprop, loaded with a sophisticated array of surveillance equipment, pinpointed the village as a stronghold and arms depot for the radical Islamist Abu Sayyaf movement. Government soldiers were ambushed in the area in August, Rafael said.

"The intelligence was very excellent because they have identified the houses, the men with the guns and all the armed men who were occupying these houses," the general said. Rafael said the U.S. military also warned his troops during a firefight that dozens of militants were approaching to counterattack -- information he said was also gathered from the spy plane.

"Because of that, we had to fly our choppers and they were able to prevent these people from reinforcing" insurgents already in the village, the general said. "So that was very crucial support given to us by the U.S."

Maj. Eric Walker, commander of U.S. forces on the island, declined an interview request, and the U.S. military spokesman for the region referred questions to the U.S. Embassy in Manila.

Without specifically confirming any flights over Ipil, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Karen Schinnerer said that "an aerial reconnaissance vehicle" gathered intelligence over Sulu "at the request of, and in coordination with," Philippine forces.

No witnesses have said there were U.S. forces on the ground when the killings occurred, and Schinnerer said that none were. She also said that intelligence gathering does not violate a prohibition against U.S. forces engaging in combat here.

The human rights commission report recommending criminal and administrative proceedings against troops and officers involved in the operation was written before a Times reporter informed the panel of Rafael's account of U.S. surveillance. The commission gets its mandate from the Philippine Constitution.

Asked whether the U.S. military would assist Philippine authorities in any prosecution arising from the assault, Schinnerer said, "It would be inappropriate to speculate on what remains a hypothetical situation." But, she added, "as a general rule, the U.S. would provide such support to the [Philippine government] if asked."

Under the Philippine Constitution, the hundreds of U.S. military advisors in the southern Philippines are not allowed to engage in combat while helping train local forces in the hunt for militants with Abu Sayyaf and the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiah.Both groups are allied with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

The guerrilla force that Rafael said the Orion spotted would have been unusually large for Sulu. No insurgents were captured, wounded or killed approaching the village, according to the military's accounts. A small arms cache, including a .45-caliber handgun, an M-16 assault rifle and some rifle grenades were seized in the raid, Rafael said.

Two soldiers were killed and five wounded in the Ipil operation, statistics the army cites as proof of a battle with militants. Villagers contend that the soldiers were killed in their own crossfire. Commission investigators found that was a possibility, but suggested Wahid may have opened fire on the troops as they swarmed around his house.

The Philippine military said an internal investigation had cleared its troops of any wrongdoing, which many here see as a whitewash.

While condemning the findings, attorney Jose Manuel Mamauag, regional director of the Commission on Human Rights, said he was glad the military had issued its conclusions, allowing the commission to take the next step.

"Definitely, we will file charges against the soldiers," Mamauag said.

Sulu Gov. Tan, taking a rare stand against the powerful military, has directed provincial officials and police to build a separate criminal case against as yet unidentified soldiers and commanders involved in the Ipil assault.

Counterinsurgency missions on Sulu have been held up as a model in the battle against militants because a combination of aid programs and military force has brought relative peace to the island. But insurgents are staging a comeback, and clashes have escalated over the last year.

With kidnappings and decapitations fairly common, tourists rarely risk coming anymore. Yet anger and suspicion toward Philippine forces and U.S. advisors also run deep here, even though, Rafael said, U.S. aid for projects including new schools, roads and drainage is expected to total more than $12 million over the next 18 months.

Ipil is a small village on Sulu's southern shore, accessible only by water. Most of its people earn a meager living farming seaweed that yields agar, used as a laxative as well as a gelatin substitute and thickener for soups, desserts and pharmaceuticals.

The Philippine military says a dense network of seaside mangroves here are prime Abu Sayyaf turf and that the assault, which included U.S.-trained Special Forces, was an effort to rout them. Since the troops didn't identify themselves, Wahid, a former rebel who joined the army as part of a 1996 peace pact, feared they were bandits or insurgents, relatives said.

He drew his licensed .45-caliber handgun from its holster and went out on the rickety bamboo porch, ready to defend his family, which insists he did not fire it. When he saw fellow soldiers, he put the gun down, raised his hands and shouted, "Papa Alpha, Papa Alpha," signaling he was in the Philippine army, said his wife, Rawina Lahim Wahid, 24.

Within minutes, Wahid, his wife and parents, and 9-year-old nephew, Nurjimer Lahim, were ordered to lie face-down on the white sand, according to his widow and parents, Udam Lahim, 70, and Andiyang Lahing, 65.

Soldiers tied Wahid's hands behind his back. Then one leveled an assault rifle at his head, and pulled the trigger, his widow said. The weapon jammed. The soldier recocked the M-16 and fired a bullet into Wahid's head, said family members, who were later released.

On the other side of the small, southern Philippine village, 17 members of three families were fleeing the gunfire in a long canoe. They headed straight toward a blocking unit of Philippine soldiers on the edge of a thick mangrove swamp.

From a few yards away, the soldiers opened fire, and kept shooting, ignoring the screaming villagers' pleas, witnesses said.

"It was not an accident," said Saida Failan, 21, whose 4-year-old daughter, Marisa, was shot dead. "We were shouting, 'Stop firing, we are civilians!' and children were crying."

When the shooting stopped, six people in the boat were dead. Villagers also found the body of a local councilor, Eldisim Lahim, shot dead outside his home.

Soon after sunrise, Philippine troops prepared to move the bodies by boat, but Rawina Wahid refused to let them take her husband's corpse without her. "I was afraid they were going to throw him in the ocean, so there would be no evidence," she said.

She said she joined them and was taken to a naval vessel offshore, which she was unable to identify. Rafael said it was a Philippine military "support ship."

As she stepped onto the boat, she said, she saw four foreign men in American camouflage fatigues, each armed with an assault rifle, standing next to a second deck railing.

"They were smiling," she said. "They were happy."

She said she had no way of knowing what the men, who she assumed were Americans, were doing on the ship, or whether they were aware of the horrors she and her neighbors had suffered.

"That's not important, as long as justice is done," she said.

U.S military aid to the Philippines

This is from UPI. In absolute terms 13 million seems like a drop in the bucket as far as US defense expenditures are concerned but no doubt it is an important boost for the AFP. The U.S. has always used a carrot and stick approach in fighting terrorism but the stick is always bigger than the carrot it seems.

There is no mention of the recent killing of civilians in the battle against terrorists. There is nothing much said about the NPA (New People's Army) the long lasting Maoist insurgency. Of course extra-judicial killings are not mentioned either. After all, the US does the same thing with drones and no doubt through special forces as does Israel. However in the Philippines extra-judicial killings seem to target many who are simply leftist activists rather than suspected terrorists. The NPA also eliminates some it does not like as well.






Analysis: U.S. military aid to Philippines
Published: Feb. 12, 2008 at 11:20 PM
By SHAUN WATERMANUPI Homeland and National Security EditorWASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- U.S. military assistance to the Philippines has been effective in building counterinsurgency capacity, according to a forthcoming study for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, but critics say it has come at the price of a U.S. blind eye to extrajudicial killings there.The debate highlights different views among policymakers and experts about the right way to implement a hearts and minds approach to counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism.The Filipino government has been locked for decades in a conflict with separatist groups in the southern region of Mindanao, home to the far flung archipelago nation's Muslim minority.Peace deals and cease-fires were negotiated with the mainstream rebel groups in the 1990s, and Mindanao was granted autonomy in 1996, but more radical elements, some linked to al-Qaida and other Islamic terror groups have emerged since -- principally the Abu Sayyaf Group, or ASG, the primary target of U.S. and Filipino counter-terrorist operations in the area.In addition to ASG's links with transnational terror networks, the study, to be released by the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center Thursday, says the U.S. government "views the ASG as posing a direct threat to a highly important ally."The current Filipino government, it says, is "one of the most ardent supporters in President Bush's global war on terrorism" and "remains crucial to legitimating U.S. basing options in the wider Asia-Pacific."The Philippines is now the largest benefactor of the Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing budget, receiving $11 million in 2005, $12 million in 2006 and $13 million in 2007. "The bulk of this money has been used to promote defense reform and underwrite the logistics for ongoing counter-terrorism efforts in the southern Philippines," reads the study.According to the study the main thrust of U.S. security assistance "has been directed toward vitiating the operational tempo of the ASG -- an effort that, at this point, has met with some relatively significant results.""One of the key factors" in the success of the U.S. assistance program "was the attitude of the Philippines government," its author, Peter Chalk, told United Press International.Chalk, an analyst at the RAND Corp., a think tank with historic links to the U.S. military, said Filipino officials had "recognized they need help, taken ownership of the problem and come to table" to get the assistance they. "If you don't have that buy-in, you can't succeed," said Chalk.Chalk said there were currently "less than 1000" U.S troops in Mindanao, about one third of them special forces."The strategy (the Filipino military) were employing -- hit 'em as hard as you can -- wasn't working," said Chalk, adding that the new strategy, implemented with U.S. assistance, was oriented to winning hearts and minds."The key drivers of militancy in the south are seen as poverty and underdevelopment," he said, adding that the Filipino military was now concentrating on so-called civil-military operations -- using troops to do development work like building roads, sewer systems and clinics.He cited the forthcoming U.S.-Filipino joint training exercise called Balikatan 2008, scheduled to start later this month, which he said would not involve any war games or conventional military exercises. "That will be exclusively civil-military operations," he said.Human-rights advocates were unimpressed by the study, citing reports that the Filipino military was involved in widespread extrajudicial killings of government opponents. "What is needed to build (the population's) confidence in the military is for people all the way up the chain of command to be prosecuted for their involvement in these killings," Human Rights Watch Asia Program Deputy Director Sophie Richardson told UPI.She accused U.S. officials of soft-pedaling the issue of accountability for the killings and other human-rights abuses."The United States disgracefully backed one murderous dictator" in the Philippines, she said, referring to U.S. support for anti-Communist strongman Ferdinand Marcos. "The tragedy of U.S. policy is that they cannot see that it is not inimical to their counter-terrorism agenda to push for … accountability.""It is ironic," she added, that U.S. officials could not see the value of "publicly enforcing the laws" in combating an insurgency "partly fueled by disenfranchisement and discrimination -- precisely the feeling that the laws offer them no protection." Other observers say that counterinsurgency operations directed against the ASG have complicated the peace negotiations that the government is conducting with other armed Islamic groups in the region. "It is a complicated situation," acknowledged Chalk.He said that the other plank of U.S. assistance, reform of the Filipino military, was also moving ahead.For the first time the government had a strategic plan for resource allocation within the military, he said, and the armed forces were engaged in a process of transformation."They are moving away from large scale procurement (of aircraft and other major weapons systems) designed to enable them to do force projection against an external enemy."Instead, military leaders were trying to shape "a smaller, more nimble force oriented towards dealing with internal security threats."Critics said these observations were beside the point."Improved budgeting processes and better administration … cannot be the benchmark" for reform, Richardson said. Real reform would be orientated towards producing "a truly disciplined, rights respecting military.""I don't see any evidence of that," she concluded.
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