Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[Dayuhan]

Yes, the indigenous population and those "settlers", who came from where and represented who? And of course Magsaysay's program to help reduce the Huk problem in the north by forcing massive resettlement to the south.

The settlers didn't and don't represent anyone, except themselves. Settlement was encouraged by government but it wasn't really organized for the most part, people pretty much just went, on their own. Magsaysay's resettlement of people from the Huk areas had little visible impact in Mindanao: the Huk areas are Tagalog speaking, and the settlers in the areas where there's conflict with the Muslims are overwhelmingly Ilonggo speakers fro Negros and Iloilo, where the Huks never got established.

But at the end of the day, who does the populace go to for resolution of such problems??The Government. If they find no justice, no equity there, if they really don't feel that government to be their government, what do they turn to next? This is the essence of insurgency.

The point that needs to be remembered in this case is that people didn't go to the government for resolution. They just started fighting each other. At that stage it wasn't insurgency at all, it was sectarian conflict, though the conflict was actually driven less by religious issues than by conflict over land and political control. It didn't become "insurgency" until the government took sides.

The point of all this is simply that this is not a fight between "the insurgents" and "the government", and it can't be resolved by trying to broker a peace between the insurgents and government. That flawed interpretation has already led to one disastrously failed attempt at peacemaking, and it will lead to others if it isn't changed. You can't resolve the "insurgency" without addressing the underlying sectarian conflict, and that's populace vs populace, not populace vs government.

Careful readers will note that i too recognize that many Filipinos do blame the US for their situation. Insurgency is all about perception, and facts and truth are distant cousins at best.

Returning to the point, I'll just repeat that the perception that the US is to blame for their situation really isn't much of a factor in the conflict in the southern Philippines.

AQ is an opportunist, non-state actor that targets Muslim populaces with actionable grievances and conducts UW to attempt to incite local insurgency to action, and to recruit individuals to conduct AQ specific operations as well. The governance-populace dynamic in SEA shook off Western manipulation in the 40s-70s and is on their own messy journey of self-determination, so AQ is not needed and has little influence there.

Again I think this is an wildly oversimplified rendition that omits many of the forces driving support for AQ and overemphasizes what has in actual fact been AQ's least successful narrative. The conclusion re Indonesia and the Philippines is I think incorrect. AQ's lack of appeal in these places hasn't come about because AQ isn't needed, but because AQ's attempts at organizing here have stressed global narratives that have minimal resonance for populaces focused on local issues.

In the Middle East the path to self determination began with the Turkish and Iranian revolutions over 100 years ago, but was quickly quashed by European and US efforts to secure their own interests in the region. It began moving again post-cold war, and even blind men could see this as "Arab Spring" took these movements to the next level. AQ has set up franchised UW shops around the region to leverage this popular energy. They do not cause it, they support it. (We do not support it, we help suppress it or stand neutral. We are in a quandary of the principles we profess, the values we peddle as "universal," and the fears over economic and security interests that drive us to decisions that no one can figure out).

What I think you don't want to see here is that the energy that AQ has successfully tapped is the generic resentment toward the west and toward military intervention in Muslim lands. AQ's attempts at leveraging resentment toward Muslim leaders have generally failed rather miserably, which doesn't necessarily mean those populaces like their governments, but does suggest that they don't care to be ruled by AQ. AQ gets all kinds of support when they are fighting foreigners somewhere far away, but the support dries up when they try to start revolution at home.

The Arab Spring movements have succeeded where AQ failed, and they did it without help from AQ. They did it by holding out hope that AQ didn't and tapping popular support that AQ can't draw. I don't see anything to suggest that AQ has an inside track in the Arab Spring movements, in fact those movements have left them out in the cold in many ways