By Rene Acosta & Manuel T. Cayon
Part One
IN 1990, while Rodrigo R. Duterte was fending off a case filed against him at the Sandiganbayan, the United States was still in shock at its first taste of narcoterrorism: the bombing of a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) building in Florida.
“The bombing marked the first time a DEA facility has been attacked since the federal government stepped up its war on drugs,” a March 19, 1990, Los Angeles Times story said.
Twenty-six years later, Mr. Duterte, former mayor of Davao City and current President, has seen the gauntlet thrown down at his home turf.
But while there were no casualties in the 1990 bombing of the DEA administrative office in Fort Myers, Florida, there were in the July attack at a Davao City market. Fourteen people, including a pharmacy student, died and wounded at least 70 others. One of them was a pregnant mother who succumbed to the injuries she suffered and died in the hospital.
Hornet’s nest
PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald de la Rosa described the bombing at Mr. Duterte’s own turf as a classic case of “narcoterrorism,” emphasizing the multifaceted problem of narcotics in the country.
If the bombing was indeed committed by a local terrorist group or any of its allied groups, the terrorists have been paid with drugs money to carry out the attack, de la Rosa said. Police investigators noted that the principal suspect behind the blast was among people named by Mr. Duterte in his list of those involved in the illegal-drugs
supply chain. “Until it is discounted that it is the Abu Sayyaf, and they did it to ease the tension of the ongoing military and police operations against them, there is still the angle of narcoterrorism,” de la Rosa said. “This is not totally being discounted.”
“If these Abu Sayyaf kidnaps people, they can also bomb people for money. They only go for money,” he added. “So if I am a rich drug lord, I can pay the Abu Sayyaf, I can pay them to bomb. After all, they are terrorists.” Still, like the DEA officers in Florida nearly three decades ago, de la Rosa and Mr. Duterte should have seen it coming, political analysts said.
“You can’t poke a stick on a hornet’s nest and expect butterflies to come out,” one who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal told the BusinessMirror.
Project tokhang
BACK in July, or while barely warming his seat, Mr. Duterte has warned that unless drastic measures are taken against the illegal- drugs problem, nothing can stop the country from spinning into a narcotics state (“narco-state”), or a “country of drug addicts.”
Mr. Duterte, known for being brusque, has been consistent in that view. While running for the most powerful position in the government, the former mayor of Davao City has said the Philippines will follow the fate of Colombia if illegal drugs would not be eradicated.
Hence, Mr. Duterte began the country’s war on drugs.
At a Senate hearing three months later, de la Rosa said he estimated the casualties of the war on drugs between 1,100 and 1,500, excluding those killed by unidentified gunmen or vigilantes. According to a Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), a report it obtained from the PNP said that, from July 1 to September 8, a total of 1,445 persons had been killed in police operations; 15,762 had been arrested (6,948 alleged drug users and 8,814 alleged drug pushers); 704,074 had “surrendered” (652,309 alleged drug users and 51,765 alleged drug pushers); and 859,299 houses had been visited under Project Tokhang. The latter was derived from a combination of two Visayan word that means “to knock” (toktok) and “to appeal” (hangyo).
Narco-state
UNTIL the night-market bombing in the President’s hometown on September 2 and the rising number of casualties in the war on drugs, analysts have told the BusinessMirror the Philippines “has already breached the initial phase for a narco-state.”
One example of a narco-state is Afghanistan, if we go by the United Nations’s definition.
“Afghanistan has already become a narco-economy in the sense that drugs are now Afghanistan’s largest employer, income generator, source of capital, export and foreign investment,” UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa told a 2006 ministerial conference. Six years later, the UNODC has named Guinea-Bissau as Africa’s first narco-state.
Analysts have said that, with drug lords lording it over inside the country’s penal system, as alleged by the drug lords themselves, the Philippines is not far from following these countries.
De la Rosa noted that the reach of these drug lords is surprising.
The PNP chief said the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) can be paid by drug lords imprisoned at the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa and those who are outside and still the subjects of the anti-illegal-drugs campaign.
Other than the ASG, de la Rosa said those who are involved in the illegal-drugs trade can also pay other criminal groups to carry out other criminal activities against the state in order to create chaos, get back at the government and fend off the campaign against the illicit business.
He said that, since the drug trade in the country is a multibillion pesos business, drug lords can buy and do anything with the money if they are not stopped.
De la Rosa earlier revealed about the existence of a plot to kill him and the President for more than a billion pesos, with the plan being master minded by drug lords currently held at the national penitentiary.
To be continued
Image credits: Robinson Ninal/Malacañang Palace Presidential Communications Operations Office Presidential Photographers Division via AP