Posted on 05/25/2005 6:16:48 AM PDT by robowombat
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.
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.
"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.
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.
U.S. soldiers at a training camp. 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."
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.
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.
"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
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.)
A home destroyed during intense fighting deep in MILF territory. 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.
Elderly man whose home was burned down. 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 cockroaches. 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.
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."
Orlando de Guzman and crew accompanied by heavy armed MILF fighters, en route to Camp Abubakar. 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."
Orlando de Guzman stops to drink water from a stream. 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
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.
Little boy at Camp Abubakar. 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.
Is this not the area that gave us the 1911 .45 cal ?
Yes, in part, it is. Google "vic hurley" and see what you find on the kind folks of the lovely islands of Moroland.
The moros are the reason the Army upgraded from the .38 used previously. A drugged up moro with a sword needs to be stopped in his tracks, just killing him might not be enough to save your life. Colt gave us the 1911.
Ping for later reading.
Like many, I expect the GWOT will shift to the Pacific -- especially the Philippines and Indonesia -- in coming years and decades. The more we know about this region, the better.
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