Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan, I think you know the JSOTF mission is an advise and assist mission, not a train and equip mission, so the short answer to your wondering is no.

Yes, I was imprecise with the words... I should have wondered whether US advice and assistance had done anything to address these issues. Of course I already knew the answer was no, which raises the next question: what exactly has all the advice and assistance done?

The fact of the matter is the Gov of the Philippines has for years under invested in its military and its law enforcement, which I suspect is one reason corruption is rampant and obviously a key reason they're combat ineffective outside of a few narrow parameters.

Corruption is rampant because the people involved are corrupt, and because the organizational culture stresses loyalty to other members of the force over effectiveness of the force. Everybody in the ranks knows who's corrupt, who's selling weapons, who has what rackets. They don't tell, because that would be ratting, and not ratting is more important than winning fights. You have to wonder how the guys doing the fighting feel about that, especially knowing that most of the guns and ammunition used against them came from government stock, but that's the way it is and has been for a long time.

If you tripled the budget tomorrow, corruption would just get worse. There'd be more to steal.

It's true that the Philippine military is woefully underresourced, but in incidents like this you have to wonder if what they have is being used effectively. They have aircraft... nothing terribly modern, but an OV-10 or an MG520 can be a useful thing if it shows up. Even if the actual fighting is in dense brush and too close for effective air support, aircraft can be both a physical and psychological deterrent to other forces looking to move in and join the fight, no? The UH-1 is hardly cutting edge but they've delivered reinforcements to many battlefields in many places and I'd think they could do so again (unless generals are using them as taxis at the time). They have artillery... obsolete by modern standards but with effective communication and training I imagine it could be used to provide some support to a unit under attack in the field. If nothing else, you'd think they could have had other units ready to relieve a group that's going into an area with a long-standing reputation for resistance.

Again, I'm no expert on the military side, but over and over again they seem to be sending guys out into the hornet's nest without the capacity to back them up if the hornets get stirred up. That just seems wrong on any number of levels.

It will be decisions and paradigm shifts made, adopted and operationalized in Manila that will ultimately bring stability to places like Basilan. OEF-P is a good US operation, but it will never achieve that effect as it is designed to bring some small degree of goodness to that small (ok, not so small) corner of the Philippines where the various manifestations of Philippine insurgency among the Muslim segment of the populace manifest. As we all know, this same insurgency manifests differently in other regions of the country among other segments of the populace, and has been porpoising up and down with varying degrees of activity and violence for hundreds of years.

It's fair to say that OEF-P covers only a small corner even of the Muslim insurgency.

To some extent yes, but it's also a bit more complicated than that. You can blame Manila for its inability to control the local elites that gain from keeping the conflict going, but you can't overlook the role that the local elites play, or the structure that makes it difficult for central government to overcome or work against local elite interests.

I wouldn't refer to the NPA and the various Muslim groups as manifestations of "this same insurgency". Different things in most ways.

One of the difficult aspects of the Muslim insurgency is that the majority populace is actually much less inclined to accommodation than the government. The government simply reflects the existing cultural bias... they try to compensate to some extent, but generally with little effect.

We can mitigate symptoms of such conflicts, or we can exacerbate symptoms of such conflicts, but we cannot truly resolve the actual roots of such conflicts with such engagement. US foreign and US military policies and doctrines need to evolve to grasp this reality. Our history and doctrine on COIN tout temporary suppressions as "wins," or overly focus on military actions that occurred over major political changes that were implemented where more enduring effects were achieved (most famously in Malaya, or perhaps the American Colonies), so we miss the most important lessons to be learned from such operations.

In the Philippines we primarily conduct mitigation operations. In Afghanistan we conduct a mix of mitigation and exacerbation operations (but see that latter group as also contributing to success,( i.e., Ranger raids on Afghan homes to take out low-level Taliban leaders of the resistance movement in Afghanistan proper, or haul off their friends and family to gain more info to capture or kill such leaders; or drone strikes into Pashtun homes in the FATA in efforts to kill senior leaders of the revolutionary core of the insurgency).

We must change how we think about these types of conflicts, and how we think about what our proper role (if in deed, any role is proper in most cases) to best help bring stability and enduring peace to such people should be as well.

Until then Manila will keep sending good young citizens out to do battle with other good young citizens in an effort to not have to take on the hard decisions about who they are and how they govern. Same same in Kabul. And the US will keep sending good young men out help those governments in those Sisyphian-like efforts.

We can do better, but first we must think differently. Until then, there will continue to be avoidable "bad days" like this.

If "we" means the US, I don't think anything "we" do is going to make any difference at all in the Philippines.

[Ken White]

Yes, I was imprecise with the words... I should have wondered whether US advice and assistance had done anything to address these issues. Of course I already knew the answer was no, which raises the next question: what exactly has all the advice and assistance done?
...
If "we" means the US, I don't think anything "we" do is going to make any difference at all in the Philippines.

All that is sadly correct. Why?

Why can't we use our own rules instead of trying to play by those of others. Why do we play on the turf of others, turf about which we remain almost willfully and stubbornly ignorant. Why don't we play to our strengths; have a few people that know a lot about specific areas and we listen to those people instead of egoistically (a term used due to its absolute appropriateness in these matters...) and arrogantly rejecting their knowledge...

As our interventional failures are known and proven all over the world and not just in the Philippines, why do we keep doing it so badly? Our poor methodology provides little to no success at great cost.

[Steve Blair]

As our interventional failures are known and proven all over the world and not just in the Philippines, why do we keep doing it so badly? Our poor methodology provides little to no success at great cost.

I would posit that one of the reasons is that our interventions are often motivated by emotion and not necessarily long-term calculation. Combine that with a deliberately unstable political system and a military that tends to reject learning and lessons, and you get a bad mix.

[Ken White]

I would posit that one of the reasons is that our interventions are often motivated by emotion and not necessarily long-term calculation. Combine that with a deliberately unstable political system and a military that tends to reject learning and lessons, and you get a bad mix.

a Master of Understatement...

[ganulv]

I would posit that one of the reasons is that our interventions are often motivated by emotion and not necessarily long-term calculation.

Are you suggesting that concentrating on what is urgent rather than what is important is the American Way? Hmmm, that would explain why the Man of Steel is always getting run so ragged…

[Steve Blair]

Are you suggesting that concentrating on what is urgent rather than what is important is the American Way? Hmmm, that would explain why the Man of Steel is always getting run so ragged…

Not so much urgent (as many of Wilson's interventions weren't urgent per se), although we do have a massive addition to instant gratification.... I would say that we tend to react to things that are emotional triggers and not necessarily products of calculation or long-term policy/planning. TR, for example, did avoid some interventions that he may have been emotionally or philosophically attracted to but determined that in long-term policy terms they weren't good ideas.

[ganulv]

Not so much urgent (as many of Wilson's interventions weren't urgent per se), although we do have a massive addition to instant gratification....

I’ve seen so much management by urgency that I am convinced a lot of people are confused about the concept. When I hear the word I think careening bus or CPR rather than the kind of institutional financial issue that I have been told is so urgent that I really should be good enough to postpone my reimbursement for six months. By my definition that issue can’t be urgent. But maybe there’s a reason I don’t get paid the big bucks like middle management.

[Bill Moore]

Bob,

I don't disagree with your drum beat, I can dance to it, but too often you hijack forums that are focused on different issues. Despite the flawed strategy approach and other issues I won't address here, the one issue that we may be able to address is improving our security force assistance system.

Dayuhan, advise and assist authorities only gets you so far, so I think there needs to be some expectation management/strategic communications to clarify the limits of our support.

I don't think our time there was wasted, but agree we certainly didn't maximize our return on investment.

As for good governance, and Bob knows this, the JSOTF has actually done quite a bit to assist with good governance at the local level, and they improved helped improve the relationship between the populace and the military in many areas, but obviously southern Basilan is not one of those areas.

It frustrates the hell out me that whether it is in Afghanistan, the Philippines, or elsewhere we can't accomplish relatively simple objectives like developing effective security forces due to a number of factors, but most prevalent is a failed SC/SA system.

I have no hope of improving our overall strategy.