Managing violence must be made an indispensable strategy because the country today remains seriously riven by three types of pervasive threats.
These threats are illegal drugs and other serious crimes, the Moro separatists and the insurgents of the communist New People’s Army (NPA), who are separately stalking our regions in Mindanao and the provinces in Luzon and Visayas, oftentimes staging ambuscades, political assassinations, banditry, kidnappings, revolutionary taxation and predatory raids on local communities.
Worse, these threats have made the military and police organizations inordinately very large, expensive and indispensable to the orderly conduct of public affairs.
In normal times, for instance, the military is a sword kept in the scabbard in preparation for external enemies; now, it is a sword perpetually unsheathed because of real and formidable challenges to public safety.
Apart from the foregoing, many external factors in the military and police organizations have also contributed to cynicism and disenchantment, such as the inability of the civilian government to provide the armed services with a clearly defined tactical and strategic anti-insurgency plan.
For instance, is it the primary mission of the military and police organizations to find and kill Moro and NPA terrorists? To attack and dismantle their political, social and economic structure? To provide security to threatened areas? Or all of these?
The truth is that the military and police organizations are still stuck to the Vietnam-body count syndrome that is quite misleading because what is merely reported in the media is the number of terrorists killed, wounded, captured or surrendered.
What is not reported is that the terrorists produce more recruits faster than the military and the police could attrite them. This is so, because for the separatist and leftist terrorists, the most important battlefield is not the military one but the political, social and economic fronts where they built their foundation and have made tremendous gains over the past five decades.
This is validated by the presence of more than 100 front insurgent organizations with headquarters in Utrecht, the Netherlands, a network in other countries similar to Bin Laden’s al-Qeada, and many of their members are already sharing power with the government after having successfully infiltrated Malacañang, Congress, labor, church, media, schools and universities, and other sectors of the society.
As the late Sen. and Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople once said, many of them supported then-Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Edsa 2 power grab. “Thus, they claimed the right to give advice to President Arroyo as members of her political alliance.”
Some of the American observers who secretly visited the country were wondering why Arroyo in her time excluded the leftists as targets in her 14-point anti-terrorism agenda she submitted to the Senate and the House when, on record, they killed more Americans than the Abu Sayyaf and MILF combined in the past.
Subsequently, Arroyo also issued 100 safe-conduct passes to top members of the leftist organization and declared a unilateral cease-fire that hampered on going military operations and further exposed the country to security risk. The job to eradicate the root causes of insurgency belongs to the civilian authority, but it often received only lip service from the policy-makers although they are at the frontlines of the guerrilla war in the countryside, as well as in the urban centers.
Because the functions and responsibilities of the police and military are not clearly defined and prioritized, there is no agreed means by which the people can gauge the military’s overall capabilities and performance.
Some years ago, former AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Diomedio Villanueva promised that the military would be able to settle the Abu Sayyaf problem before the end of November 2001. Before this, President Arroyo bragged that “isang bala lang kayo” (Abu Sayyaf).
Clearly, those who anticipated spectacular battlefield victories are not familiar with the way the enemies operate, and will undoubtedly be disappointed at the outcome of the war. The classic guerrilla tactic the enemies employ and their extensive support structure from the population make them an elusive and difficult target even for an armed forces not suffering from a serious leadership and structural problems.
Because for the insurgents, the military is not the most important battlefield but the political, social and economic fronts where the causes of rebellion are rooted.
This is so because insurgency and separatism have two fronts: the guerrilla wars between the NPAs and the military, on one hand, and the military and the separatists, on the other. The military and police forces are stuck to the body-count syndrome—how many were killed, wounded, captured and surrendered—and this is the most visible front to the public because of the daily news reporting of armed encounters and battlefield casualties.
The other is the political, social and economic front where the communists and separatists built their foundation and have made tremendous gains over the years. And in our supposedly democratic politics, partisans of the Administration and the Opposition cannot make contact without heaping insults at each other.
This is aggravated by many politicians who looked at soldiers and policemen being just “security guards” without realizing that they are guards who are putting their lives on the line, and many of them are dying without the proper support and direction.
In short, the crisis is a political one, in which the military and the police are only one factor among so many.
In military science or in the management of violence, the task of the military and the police are many times more complex and expensive because there is so much violence to manage.
Indeed, the military and police here are involved in nearly every problem of violence that occurs today.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.