Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[Bob's World]

The key to victory (i.e., some enduring state of peaceful good governance in the Southern Philippines), has always been in Manila. The military effort helps create conditions for success, but until the government in Manila seriously addresses the legitimate concerns and perceptions of the entire populace it is only a finger in the dike.

The Supreme Court's decision to stymie the peace process was devastating to good results coming from the Basilan Model. This in no way invalidates the model, it actually proves the model. What it invalidates is the positions of those who think these things can be wholly addressed through military means; or engagement by US military.

[Dayuhan]

The key to victory (i.e., some enduring state of peaceful good governance in the Southern Philippines), has always been in Manila. The military effort helps create conditions for success, but until the government in Manila seriously addresses the legitimate concerns and perceptions of the entire populace it is only a finger in the dike.

I agree. The defect in the model, from the start, was that it relied on the Philippine Government doing what it has neither the will nor the capacity to do.

I should note that I think the model has virtues and is by no means a bad thing: my criticism is of the wave of simplistic and naive pronouncements of success that emerged from it, which seemed to me to be both deceptive and self-defeating. Announcing "success" prematurely reduces the will to carry on and complete what has been begun, and generates disillusionment when the inevitable complications arise.

The Supreme Court's decision to stymie the peace process was devastating to good results coming from the Basilan Model. This in no way invalidates the model, it actually proves the model. What it invalidates is the positions of those who think these things can be wholly addressed through military means; or engagement by US military.

I'm not really sure how much impact the court decision would have had in Basilan. The MOA/AD was a primarily Maguindanao initiative that was viewed in the Tausug/Sama/Yakan regions with a fair amount of suspicion and cynicism from the start. The negotiations took place almost entirely between the GRP and the MILF, with little effort made to include the numerous other stakeholders among both indigenous and immigrant populations. I personally think the agreement ws doomed from the start; even before the Supreme Court decision I thought it a likely candidate for a "peace agreement least likely to produce peace" award. In some ways it's a positive thing that it never came around to implementation, which would have been a major mess. Given the degree to which immigrant and indigenous settlements are mixed, an ancestral domain/territorial autonomy "solution" is going to raise massive problems: either you will have an autonomous region that is not even close to geographically contiguous, or you will include numerous people in regions where they will violently resist integration, or you will have to move large numbers of people: not an attractive set of alternatives.

A far better approach, IMO, would be for the Manila government to try to reverse the tragic and stupid mistakes of the 1970s by positioning itself as a neutral arbiter between the immigrant and indigenous populations, targeting equitable justice and fair resolution of disputes instead of taking sides... but unfortunately, that won't happen either.

At this stage very little is going to happen, and all I could suggest would be for the GRP and MILF to agree to cease hostilities until after the 2010 elections and pick up negotiations from there. The current administration is so controversial and so unpopular that anything it initiates is going to be rejected out of hand by both the legislature and the majority of the populace.

It will be difficult and probably not advisable for the US to take a direct or even an open role in negotiations. The (generally exaggerated) involvement of USIP in the MOA/AD negotiations was widely perceived as a US attempt to promote a breakaway entity for some self-interested purpose (resource extraction privileges, a military base, whatever), just as the Arroyo administration's promotion of an agreement that would have required constitutional revisions was perceived as a backdoor attempt to open an amendment process that could be used to remove term limits and keep her in power. Whether or not these ulterior motives actually existed (in the first case probably not, in the second not at all unlikely) is less important than the impact of their perceived existence on public opinion.

[davidbfpo]

I think this article fits here and yes, I know very little about this area. In the UK we rarely see anything on the Phillipines, whether it is more than advocacy you can decide:

A new, purportedly human rights-orientated counter-insurgency strategy has little chance of success in the Philippines if the clientelism of a flawed political and economic system is not simultaneously addressed.

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensec...uses-of-confli

[Bob's World]

I suspect there is a little bias and a couple of inaccuracies in that piece, but if one can look past that to the essence, the tone, to the populace's perception, one gets an idea of why this nation has never been able to resolve the conditions that give rise to such persistance of insurgent challenge.

Many want to argue "facts" but facts mean little in insurgnecy, what matters is perception. The final sentence is telling:

"As insurgency expert Robert Kilcullen notes, the aim of counter-insurgency is to “return the insurgency’s parent society to its normal mode of interaction.” In the Philippines it is the normal mode of interaction itself which promotes insurgency, with the veneer of Philippine ‘democracy’ and economic growth sating only the relatively few who benefit from it."

[Dayuhan]

David, I actually think the article would fit better in a thread discussing the NPA insurgency, since it relates more directly to that... but of course that's not even directly related to OEF/P, so I'm not sure where such a thread would belong!

Yes, some bias, some inaccuracy, and a great deal of superficiality... essentially a transcription of what might be called the moderate left position, with little evident effort to challenge or refine that position. The conclusions are of course true enough, but don't reveal anything that isn't already known to anyone half looking, and don't offer much of a solution. That's not unusual: the Philippine left invariably has all the right questions and all the wrong answers.

Probably the most glaring misperception, a very common one in observations of the Philippines, is the Manila-centric perspective the article takes, notably toward extrajudicial killings. The left has consistently tried to portray these as a policy of the Manila government, but that's generally inaccurate. Virtually all political violence in the Philippines revolves around local issues and local rivalries. We always hear about election-related violence, but this rarely if ever stems from Presidential or other national elections. Village, municipal, and provincial elections are where the killing happens: this is where the clan rivalries and family feuds kick in, and where the results actually mean something. Manila politics to most Filipinos is analogous to the Tagalog-dubbed Mexican soap operas that proliferate on daytime TV: entertaining, but distant and with little or no impact on day to day life.

Most of the people being killed on the left (the left does its own share of killing, which of course they don't talk about) are no threat at all to the central government, and the killings actually cause the central government more harm than benefit. The equation is reversed at the local level, where feudal bosses routinely connive with local military and police (or simply use their own assets) to remove people they find inconvenient, embarrassing, or simply offensive. The central government lacks the power to crack the whip over its own people, so they do whatever they want, even when that involves killing people they don't like. The areas in which the NPA is strongest are generally those dominated by self-serving political dynasties that are effectively immune to interference from Manila, and the hostility of the populace is generally directed at the local authority. Manila can certainly be faulted for lacking the will (and often the capacity) to rein in its people, but talk of reform needs to be built around the realization that Manila is less abusive than ineffectual, and what needs to be reformed are the local governments.

Looking specifically at the ethnic/sectarian/separatist insurgency in the south, it's important to avoid the trap of seeing the fight as between "the government" and "the populace". It's actually a fight between two populaces (even that is a simplification, but I'm not writing a book here), with the government vacillating between supporting one side and ineffective attempts at mediation. Neither of the populaces involved trusts the government or has much respect for it. The populaces involved have incompatible demands, and efforts to placate one generally enrage the other. This plays into the hands of local warlords, who control their own people with the old "I may be a bastard, but you need me to protect you from the other" routine, and manipulate the central government with their ability to keep a provisional lid on their area and and to deliver the votes - often over 100% of the votes - to their patrons.

What can be done about this? I wrote about that at some length (dated, but main points remain) here:

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journ...5.4rogers.html

and can provide a .pdf with anyone who has the interest or needs a substitute for valium.

If anyone wonders what the US, or any other outside party, can do about this, I'd say very close to nothing. On the historical side we had some role in the way the problems developed (not the cause, but one among many), but I don't see us having much place in the search for a solution. Like everybody else, the Filipinos are carrying some historical baggage. Like everyone else, the job of setting that baggage aside, deciding where they want to be, and going there is ultimately theirs.

[Bob's World]

Dayuhan

Agree that the U.S. can do little about it, and by our very presence create a handy 3rd party to lay blame at the feet of (governments do not take responsibility, and even populaces generally prefer to blame someone else's government over their own. This is every bit as true in the U.S. as it is in the Philippines. Well, Philippine culture is actually notably bad at not taking responsibility. 400 odd years of colonial rule and influence didn't help that situation.)

We pointedly avoid involvement in the NPA situation, though it is the main insurgent concern of Manila, it is not ours. However, when one builds security force capacity in another country one has little control over where or how that capacity will be applied. This is a important tidbit that we seem to overlook or minimize. Capacity developed in the south is shifted to the north. In Arab countries capacity developed to counter terrorism is applied to the suppression of nationalist subversion and insurgency. We are not very clever at deducing 2nd and 3rd order effects, so typically we focus on the primary objective and the primary effects of our efforts and go home calling the operation a big success. One reason why I am far more in favor of going after root causes rather than throwing a range of diverse and uncoordinated activities planned by State, Aid, 4 separate services and SOF, and a host of LEAs and NGOs at a problem. No efficiency, little synergy, and virtually all aimed at the symptoms of a problem with US interests in mind; with little consideration of what the higher order effects might be, or how it might affect the interests of the host govt or populace.

[Dayuhan]

We pointedly avoid involvement in the NPA situation, though it is the main insurgent concern of Manila, it is not ours. However, when one builds security force capacity in another country one has little control over where or how that capacity will be applied. This is a important tidbit that we seem to overlook or minimize. Capacity developed in the south is shifted to the north. In Arab countries capacity developed to counter terrorism is applied to the suppression of nationalist subversion and insurgency. We are not very clever at deducing 2nd and 3rd order effects, so typically we focus on the primary objective and the primary effects of our efforts and go home calling the operation a big success. One reason why I am far more in favor of going after root causes rather than throwing a range of diverse and uncoordinated activities planned by State, Aid, 4 separate services and SOF, and a host of LEAs and NGOs at a problem. No efficiency, little synergy, and virtually all aimed at the symptoms of a problem with US interests in mind; with little consideration of what the higher order effects might be, or how it might affect the interests of the host govt or populace.

To some extent yes, the built capacity is transferred, but the extent is limited. The fight with the NPA is, even more than the fight in the south, more political than military, and military action isn't all that prevalent. It's at a bit of an impasse. Most at the center know that political reform is needed to finish the reduction of the NPA, but Manila hasn't the will - or in many cases the ability - to take on the feudal rulers in the provinces and force reform. The feudal rulers in the provinces use repression to bottle up symptoms and keep Manila off their backs. That typically takes the place of close-range shootings by men on motorcycles. That hasn't really been affected by US capacity building; it's something they already knew how to do.

Similarly, I'm not really convinced that US "capacity building" has really had much impact on the ability of Arab regimes to suppress their populaces. It's a capacity they've always had and always used; they probably know more about it than we do. Our intel sharing cooperation probably helps us more than it helps them.

In some ways the current administration in Manila is well placed to lay on some pressure: there's a real mandate, the election isn't being questioned, and there's no rumbling of coup threats. These are factors that the military and the provincial elites have long used to keep the central government bottled up, and they aren't much in play now. Unfortunately, i don't see this administration having the backbone ort initiative to take on that kind of job.