Philippines (2012 onwards, inc OEF)

[Dayuhan]

I note the air strike was 0300hrs by two OV10s dropping 4 x500lb bombs and no-one is being specific what the US help was.

The Philippine Air Force does not have much recent history of night strikes or employing guided weaponry. This would seem a substantial upgrade from what they've done in the past, especially as reports suggest direct hits on the target houses.

Local speculation along two lines...

1. The US provided targeting information and has been providing equipment and training to build this capacity.

2. The US did it and said they didn't.

Take your pick, not like we'll know.

Should be noted that Marwan is presumed dead, body was not found.

[Dayuhan]

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/articl...st-3043242.php

Surviving militants suspect that villagers secretly working for the military helped track down Jumdail, said a Philippine military intelligence official who had been helping monitor the militants. The official said militants believe villagers pretending to seek medical treatment traveled to Jumdail's hideout and left some kind of sensor that the military used to target his Abu Sayyaf lair....

...The Philippine military announced that the long-hunted Marwan and his Singaporean ally Abdullah Ali, better known as Muawiyah, were killed in the air raid along with Jumdail and other Filipino extremists. But two security officials said Sunday that new intelligence shows that Jumdail was killed but that the two foreign terror suspects are still alive and were not in the Abu Sayyaf lair that was bombed.

The military continues to insist that Marwan and Muawiyah are dead and are searching for their remains. Not a single body was retrieved by police in the bombed hilly jungle lair near Lanao Dakulah village, fueling different versions of who was killed.

[Dayuhan]

The attack referred to above is now being openly referred to as a US drone strike:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...732969894.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southea.../NB29Ae01.html

These are in no way impartial sources and the reports are definitely agenda-driven. They will be widely believed. They are also not entirely unbelievable: as I mentioned above, the official account of the operation does not seem at all consistent with the observed capacities of the PAF.

It's unlikely that there will be any official word on the subject, so speculation is all there is.

[Bob's World]

This is the primary problem when one defines the problems between a government and its populace in terms of "threats" and then applies a military solution to resolve them. It leads to an excessive focus on the aspects of the "threat" that are identifiable. The organizations as a whole are simply members of the populace, so lack any special identification. But such organizations typically apply some framework of shared ideological beliefs, so we can focus on that. Such organizations also have leaders, so we can focus on them.

It is no wonder that in military headquarters, where endless daily briefings pound like a drumbeat on ideology and the names and faces of a handful of guys, that such organizations might come to convince themselves that if they could just make the ideology go away, if they could just get a red slash through some of those faces and names, that they would somehow be making progress.

The obsessive pursuit of such progress leads to growing frustrations with the obstacles to being able to bring to bear the full power and capabilities possessed by the military to achieve those purposes.

Things like the laws of the intervening country, the country where these organizations live and operate, and of the international community often get in the way of effectiveness.

Respect for the sovereignty of the country where these organizations live and operate is a major obstacle to effectiveness.

Tailoring the actions of any intervening country actions so as to not degrade the legitimacy of the government and security forces of the country where these organizations live and operate is a major obstacle to effectiveness.

But for the irritating self-imposed obstacles of concepts like "justice" "sovereignty" and "legitimacy" military forces could be far more effective in getting after the identifiable military aspects of such problems. At getting after the "threat."

In Afghanistan and Iraq the solution was easy. Call it a war, remove the host nation government, and 'bingo'! No more messy obstacles to effectiveness. What we learned, however, or should have learned, is that such efforts to improve "effectiveness" of military operations designed to defeat the symptomatic "threat" component of such problems between populaces and governments is more often than not antithetical to getting to an understanding and resolution of the true issues of the matter.

The great strength of the operations conducted with the government of the Philippines was that we constrained ourselves, that we sacrificed "effectiveness" in a recognition that when working with a friendly government one cannot simply ignore the law or their sovereignty, or act is such away as to call in question in the eyes of the populace the legitimacy of their own government. But in military headquarters those same targetable factors of leadership and ideology get briefed with the same frequency, constantly feeding feelings of frustration with those pesky obstacles to "effectiveness."

Don't blame the military for being the military and doing what militaries do. These are civil problems demanding civil solutions. Governments long used to not having to compromise on longstanding grievances with important, minority (or suppressed majorities in many cases, such as Bahrain) populaces, are going to have to realize that simply throwing these problems to the military to resolve can only restore suppression of the symptoms at best.

I don't know what happened in the Philippines. I know the Philippine security forces have the capacity to execute such an operation when supported by US forces within the rules, laws and agreements that have long defined and constrained that operation. I also appreciate the frustration of senior leaders with self-imposed obstacles to effectiveness.

Effectiveness is the enemy of true success in these types of situations. Look at night raids in Afghanistan. A masterpiece of effectiveness, yet every override of justice, sovereignty and legitimacy put in place to achieve that effectiveness serves to strengthen the Taliban movement across the populace, even as effective operations add to the score card virtually every night.

Effectiveness is the enemy of success. That is one frustrating concept to wrap your brain around as a military tasked with solving a problem. A problem that was never really a military problem to begin with. Currently the US Army is very focused on "the lessons learned of the past 10 years." Mostly, so far as I can tell, the focus is on how to be "more effective." I believe it is time to shift the focus of that study, of that conversation, to one of "how do we be more successful." But first we will need to redefine our measures of success.

[Dayuhan]

I don't know what happened in the Philippines. I know the Philippine security forces have the capacity to execute such an operation when supported by US forces within the rules, laws and agreements that have long defined and constrained that operation.

There are actually some questions being asked about that supposed capacity. Obviously there are limits to what's known, but the strike appears to have involved very precise placement of munitions in a night strike, a capacity the Philippine air force has previously either not had or kept very quiet. Even in daytime the track record is not all that good. Whether this is a new capacity developed with US help or whether the US carried out the strike is not possible to determine with the information ublicly available.

The great strength of the operations conducted with the government of the Philippines was that we constrained ourselves, that we sacrificed "effectiveness" in a recognition that when working with a friendly government one cannot simply ignore the law or their sovereignty, or act is such away as to call in question in the eyes of the populace the legitimacy of their own government.

True enough... but the great weakness of those operations is that ultimately very little has changed. The core of the problem - the neo-feudal clan governance that prevails in the affected areas - is still in place. US intervention hasn't changed that and the Philippine government hasn't the will (or arguably the ability) to do anything about it.

Of course success or failure are relative to goals. If the US goal was to alter the pattern of recurring insurgency, we've probably not accomplished much. If the goal was to break or reduce the connection between that insurgency and international Islamist movements, there may have been some success. The connection between AQ and ASG was tenuous and fairly transient to begin with, and the JI connection is largely opportunistic. The "global Islamist" narrative has never had much traction in Mindanao; the fighting is over local concerns. Those concerns remain largely in place, but the area is a much less hospitable place for the international operatives than it once was.

Whether the operation was or is perceived to be a US strike, the impact will probably not be that great. The Als will sell it as further evidence of a global US campaign of drone-based destruction raining down on innocent Muslims. That will carry some weight in some places, but not much in the Philippines. The left will howl, but they've little real political influence. The average Christian Filipino is delighted to see Muslim militants being blown up, no matter who does it. Filipino Muslims have little exposure to the Als and will continue to have a generally positive view of US involvement, driven less by "hearts and minds" development projects than by the widespread perception that the US presence is a restraint on the Philippine military's customary and unwelcome mode of operations.

In short, more of the same. The US presence can keep the symptoms of insurgency, but it's not doing anything about the causes and the insurgency will probably re-emerge. It may be a constraint on internationalization of that insurgency, and strikes such as this one will certainly give JI people a disincentive to move here (they're here in the first place because Indonesia is no longer safe for them).

The question, of course, is how long to we want to stay in the picture.

[Bob's World]

Agreed. OEF-P has no hope of resolving the reasons why large segments of the Philippine populace have historically been dissatisfied with their situation, and their perceptions of how the government serves to perpetuate that situation.

To continue even a very well designed and executed operation where it has no hope of true success is not smart on many levels. The one senior leaders seem to appreciate least is that where we act in ways that facilitate the development of the belief, reasonable or otherwise, that the US is somehow an obstacle to the host nation government having to listen to their people and evolve, we create the very motivation for acts of transnational terrorism against the US that led us to be there in the first place.

I doubt that 10 years ago there were 5 Pashtuns in all of Afghanistan or Pakistan who would be willing to join any AQ operation aimed at conducting an act of terrorism against America. Who believes that to be true today after 10 years of US operations aimed at forcefully subjecting the Pashtun populaces to an Afghan governance dominated by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara? Are we creating similar lines of motivation among segments of the Philippine populace?

Its not so much about who's in charge or how they govern, it is about how the various populace groups subjected to that governance feel about it, and who they blame.

[Dayuhan]

Agreed. OEF-P has no hope of resolving the reasons why large segments of the Philippine populace have historically been dissatisfied with their situation, and their perceptions of how the government serves to perpetuate that situation.

To continue even a very well designed and executed operation where it has no hope of true success is not smart on many levels.

"True success" would of course depend on the goals of the mission. If the goal was "resolving the reasons why large segments of the Philippine populace have historically been dissatisfied with their situation", then of course there has been no success, nor was there any hope of success. I suspect (and hope) that the goals were rather more modest than that.

If the goal was to disrupt the connection between local militant groups and the global Islamist infrastructure, that would be a qualified success. Of course that connection was always much less than it was cracked up to be. At one point US pressure actually drove a return to Islamist/terrorist principles, but subsequently there has been some real success in dismantling the connections, largely because they never spread beyond a relatively small number of individuals.

If the goal was to improve the capacity and performance of the Philippine military, perhaps qualified success as well. They've backed away from some practices that openly exacerbated insurgency, but whether that will endure beyond our departure remains to be seen. The extent to which capacity and performance have improved in any enduring sense is really not known at this point, and won't be until we leave.

If the goal was to improve governance, I'd say we've achieved little or nothing. The governing elite have been reminded that largesse is available to those who say the words and go through the motions, but I don't see any reason to think any lasting change is in the picture.

The one senior leaders seem to appreciate least is that where we act in ways that facilitate the development of the belief, reasonable or otherwise, that the US is somehow an obstacle to the host nation government having to listen to their people and evolve, we create the very motivation for acts of transnational terrorism against the US that led us to be there in the first place...

...Are we creating similar lines of motivation among segments of the Philippine populace?

Not to any visible extent, I'd say. If anything the US gets credit for being a moderating influence on the Philippine armed forces. It's worth noting that there have been no acts of "transnational terrorism against the US" emanating from Filipino-based groups. The explosives for the Bali bombs were sourced here, but that's because explosives are easy to buy and smuggle here, not because of Filipino sympathy for the agenda. A transnational terror group based in Manila planned some attacks and executed one, but they weren't Filipino and had only very tenuous connections to any local group. Kidnappings in the south were profit-driven banditry, not terrorism.

I see no significant risk that the US presence here will inflame Filipinos into attacking the US. On the other hand, I see no special gain to be achieved by staying. Staying poses some risks... the Tausug/Sama insurgency will eventually re-emerge, and we don't need to be caught up in it. We also don't want to be tempted to mess about in the Maranao/Maguindanao insurgency, even though it has more connection to global Islamic radicalism than the ASG.

We do need to be aware that the perception in much of the Philippines is that Gloria Arroyo's initial request for US assistance was orchestrated by the US in its post 9/11 moments of Bushy aggressiveness, and thus that we are here on our own initiative. Objections to that are not that widespread, but it can be a sticking point. At this point we might be well advised to announce that we believe the mission is largely accomplished, and that unless the Philippine government specifically requests that we remain, we intend to withdraw. I suspect that such a request would be made. If it wasn't and we withdrew, we'd lose nothing. If it was, there would be a new and more credible mandate.