I received the following via e-mail from the Philippines:

From the MILF Secretariat Web site: MILF concern over CMO.

Civil-military operations more lethal, MILF says
Date: Monday, April 09 @ Malay Peninsula Standard Time
Topic: News
April 9, 2007

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has described the latest approach to the insurgency problem in Mindanao by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which is civil-military operations, as more lethal than brute force. Khaled Musa, deputy chairman of the MILF Committee on Information, told Luwaran that this approach has a chilling effect on Moros fighting the government who are less in ideological armor, saying this was tested during the early years of the MNLF when practically everybody surrendered to the government, if the basis of counting is government statistics.

He said it was mainly due to the policy of attraction pursued by the Americans that worked effectively against Moros who were up in arms.

But he clarified that using this approach to hard core ideologues of revolutionary struggles would only scratch the surface of things.

"Dedicated and rightly guided revolutionaries," he said, "do not expect material rewards for sacrificing everything dear to them."

AFP chief General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said the military would abandon Oplan Ultimatum and focus on civil-military operations against the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao.

"We are shifting to civil-military operations," Esperon said during an interview over ANC cable news television.

More than 5,000 troops under Oplan Ultimatum have been pursuing the Abu Sayyaf since last year and it had its successes following the killing of its chieftain, Khadaffy Janjalani, and his deputy, Abu Solaiman, late last year.

Esperon said the change in strategy was meant to address the problem of innocent civilians displaced by the encounters between government troops and the Abu Sayyaf.

"There have been a lot of people who have been displaced and so we want to go into their areas and tell them that we... did not intentionally displace them. This was all part of the security operations that would benefit them anyway," he said.