Private Armies; Booby-Trapped Cars
Private armies
Updated 02:36am (Mla time) Sept 12, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 12, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
LAST week's three-part special report by Abra correspondent Artha Kira Paredes and photographer EV Espiritu is a chilling look at the ultimate dirty trick in politics: assassination. The devil is quite literally in the details, but what makes the story truly terrifying is the shock of the old: The country has seen all this before.
We have already suffered through convulsions of violence by what in government jargon is now called partisan armed groups, or PAGs. In the 1960s and early 1970s, especially, the provinces of Northern Luzon and Southern Mindanao were the battleground of politicians and businessmen who killed each other or each other's relatives and supporters through their private armies.
The armies were the classic symptoms of a weak state: groups that flourished in the absence or feeble presence of the law, that rivaled the local police or military contingent, or that served as an alternative source of power.
It is too early to say that Abra, like a patient on an operating table, has slipped back into this nightmare. Altogether, there are about a hundred PAG soldiers in the province of over 200,000, possibly responsible for 14 politically motivated killings in the six years between the election years of 1998 and 2004. But local officials acknowledge that the polls last May gave the private armies a new lease on life.
Their re-appearance, however, is marked by the same old pieties of local politics.
The same old recourse to the practical: "As someone educated in Manila, I had a different perspective of how the political playing field should be. But when a mayor, who happened to be my close friend, was assassinated, it was then that I decided to put up my own private army," said a public official, with all the wisdom of his 29 years.
The same old lack of faith in the justice system: "Actually, all politicians here have their own private armies. Hindi uso ang demandahan dito [Lawsuits aren't the norm here]," said another politician with a PAG.
The same old symbiotic relationship with the authorities: "They have become so emboldened because they are being protected by some high-ranking police officers," said Vicente Valera, who is only the governor of Abra. But a police sergeant passes the buck. "We are only issued rifles but members of PAGs here are armed with baby Armalite rifles and other high-powered guns. I am 99 percent sure that these were issued by the military."
The same old complaint about corruption and misuse of public funds: "PAG members are better armed than us because the politicians they serve use government funds to buy guns," a police official said.
And not least, the same old justification, the same old argument from deterrence: "The only way for the killings to stop is to make them feel how painful it is to lose someone that you love," said a third public official who maintains a private army.
That line was said with all the security that money can buy, but the politicians interviewed for the special report had one thing in common: They were all, quite literally, under the gun. The specter of violent death hounded them or their families. In sum, their private armies, or the violence that their armies inflicted, have not performed as advertised. They have not made the killings stop.
But the false sense of security they bring is a potent drug; it will become even more potent if the creeping sense of lawlessness the country has been suffering from in recent months-symbolized in the spate of unsolved attacks on journalists-picks up speed.
It is the job of Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes to slow it down, and then to eliminate it altogether. He can start in Abra, scheduling that first meeting with Valera which the governor seems unable or unwilling to set up. His background as Armed Forces chief of staff and then defense secretary should give him the credibility to put pressure on the military; his experience as anti-kidnapping czar should give him an insight into how the police can overcome its traditional rivalry with the AFP and get the job done.
He needs to set an example that the arm of the law is not only long enough; it is also made of steel.
Booby-trapped cars
Updated 10:25pm (Mla time) Sept 12, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE CAR bomb that exploded outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta last Thursday was not the first to target Australians. Sadly, it won't be the last.
The Jemaah Islamiyah posting that claimed responsibility for the bombing spoke of more attacks against Australian targets in the future. "This is only the first reply of many replies that are coming, God willing, which is why we advise all Australians in Indonesia to leave it or else we will make it their graveyard, God willing."
The message (an edited version can be found on www.theaustralian.news.com.au) suggested more "martyrdom operations" in graphic terms: "The columns of booby-trapped cars will not end and the lists of martyrs are still full and will not end."
The JI claim justified the attack, which killed nine Indonesians and injured 180 others, as retaliation for Australia's participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but an SMS message received by the Indonesian police some 45 minutes before the bombing gave another reason: the group wanted its leader, the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, freed from jail.
There is no reason to doubt that both justifications are equally relevant; that is to say, that each, by itself, explains the latest act of terror. The Jemaah Islamiyah-the deadly al-Qaeda-linked group that seeks to establish a pan-Islamic fundamentalist state in Southeast Asia through whatever means-sees the US-led occupation of Iraq as an attack on Islam itself, at least as the group understands it. The detention of Bashir, their spiritual leader, is another such provocation; for all practical purposes, he is already a martyr, inspiring more martyrs.
To be sure, many of the top leaders of the JI, as in the case of al-Qaeda itself, have been arrested or killed. But, also like al-Qaeda, the JI is a movement of martyrs that replenishes itself on the blood of its suicide bombers. JI's loose network of schools and camps and safehouses, some of which are reportedly based in parts of Mindanao, continues to gather more recruits and produce more holy warriors. As last week's bomb attack proved, the JI may be on the run, but it remains a potent threat.
It is for this very reason that many in Canberra criticized Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for bad-mouthing the Philippines last July, after Malacañang's decision to withdraw the Philippine contingent from Iraq. The two countries are both victims of JI violence, and they need to continue cooperating closely. Undiplomatic language only gets in the way.
But collaborative police and intelligence work is only half the story. It isn't enough to catch the martyrs before the bomb is lit; the allies in the international war on terror must work together to root out the causes that lead to the making of martyrs in the first place.
In a larger war
ACTS of terrorism are skirmishes in a larger war; they are battles in the war of ideas and images. There is deliberate symbolism in the timing of the Jakarta attack, just days before the third anniversary of the September 11 strike. (The Bali bombing, which killed 202 victims, including 88 Australian citizens and three Australian residents, was another such symbolic battle; it took place a year, a month, and a day after the first anniversary of 9/11.)
But there is also an element of political calculation. The Australian federal elections will be held a month from now, and Australia's role in the so-called Coalition of the Willing is a critical election issue. The al-Qaeda railway bombings in Madrid last March led directly to the ouster of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's pro-United States government. The Jakarta bombing seeks to do the same: to roil the political waters, to start a wave of sympathy and revulsion and outrage strong enough to sweep Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government out of power.
What does all this mean? Terrorists have grown more cunning. They now have a better feel for where the democracies are most vulnerable: in the very political exercise that marks them as democratic-the conduct of elections. Through well-timed acts of terror, they now seek to decide the outcome of the vote.
Updated 02:36am (Mla time) Sept 12, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 12, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
LAST week's three-part special report by Abra correspondent Artha Kira Paredes and photographer EV Espiritu is a chilling look at the ultimate dirty trick in politics: assassination. The devil is quite literally in the details, but what makes the story truly terrifying is the shock of the old: The country has seen all this before.
We have already suffered through convulsions of violence by what in government jargon is now called partisan armed groups, or PAGs. In the 1960s and early 1970s, especially, the provinces of Northern Luzon and Southern Mindanao were the battleground of politicians and businessmen who killed each other or each other's relatives and supporters through their private armies.
The armies were the classic symptoms of a weak state: groups that flourished in the absence or feeble presence of the law, that rivaled the local police or military contingent, or that served as an alternative source of power.
It is too early to say that Abra, like a patient on an operating table, has slipped back into this nightmare. Altogether, there are about a hundred PAG soldiers in the province of over 200,000, possibly responsible for 14 politically motivated killings in the six years between the election years of 1998 and 2004. But local officials acknowledge that the polls last May gave the private armies a new lease on life.
Their re-appearance, however, is marked by the same old pieties of local politics.
The same old recourse to the practical: "As someone educated in Manila, I had a different perspective of how the political playing field should be. But when a mayor, who happened to be my close friend, was assassinated, it was then that I decided to put up my own private army," said a public official, with all the wisdom of his 29 years.
The same old lack of faith in the justice system: "Actually, all politicians here have their own private armies. Hindi uso ang demandahan dito [Lawsuits aren't the norm here]," said another politician with a PAG.
The same old symbiotic relationship with the authorities: "They have become so emboldened because they are being protected by some high-ranking police officers," said Vicente Valera, who is only the governor of Abra. But a police sergeant passes the buck. "We are only issued rifles but members of PAGs here are armed with baby Armalite rifles and other high-powered guns. I am 99 percent sure that these were issued by the military."
The same old complaint about corruption and misuse of public funds: "PAG members are better armed than us because the politicians they serve use government funds to buy guns," a police official said.
And not least, the same old justification, the same old argument from deterrence: "The only way for the killings to stop is to make them feel how painful it is to lose someone that you love," said a third public official who maintains a private army.
That line was said with all the security that money can buy, but the politicians interviewed for the special report had one thing in common: They were all, quite literally, under the gun. The specter of violent death hounded them or their families. In sum, their private armies, or the violence that their armies inflicted, have not performed as advertised. They have not made the killings stop.
But the false sense of security they bring is a potent drug; it will become even more potent if the creeping sense of lawlessness the country has been suffering from in recent months-symbolized in the spate of unsolved attacks on journalists-picks up speed.
It is the job of Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes to slow it down, and then to eliminate it altogether. He can start in Abra, scheduling that first meeting with Valera which the governor seems unable or unwilling to set up. His background as Armed Forces chief of staff and then defense secretary should give him the credibility to put pressure on the military; his experience as anti-kidnapping czar should give him an insight into how the police can overcome its traditional rivalry with the AFP and get the job done.
He needs to set an example that the arm of the law is not only long enough; it is also made of steel.
Booby-trapped cars
Updated 10:25pm (Mla time) Sept 12, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE CAR bomb that exploded outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta last Thursday was not the first to target Australians. Sadly, it won't be the last.
The Jemaah Islamiyah posting that claimed responsibility for the bombing spoke of more attacks against Australian targets in the future. "This is only the first reply of many replies that are coming, God willing, which is why we advise all Australians in Indonesia to leave it or else we will make it their graveyard, God willing."
The message (an edited version can be found on www.theaustralian.news.com.au) suggested more "martyrdom operations" in graphic terms: "The columns of booby-trapped cars will not end and the lists of martyrs are still full and will not end."
The JI claim justified the attack, which killed nine Indonesians and injured 180 others, as retaliation for Australia's participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but an SMS message received by the Indonesian police some 45 minutes before the bombing gave another reason: the group wanted its leader, the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, freed from jail.
There is no reason to doubt that both justifications are equally relevant; that is to say, that each, by itself, explains the latest act of terror. The Jemaah Islamiyah-the deadly al-Qaeda-linked group that seeks to establish a pan-Islamic fundamentalist state in Southeast Asia through whatever means-sees the US-led occupation of Iraq as an attack on Islam itself, at least as the group understands it. The detention of Bashir, their spiritual leader, is another such provocation; for all practical purposes, he is already a martyr, inspiring more martyrs.
To be sure, many of the top leaders of the JI, as in the case of al-Qaeda itself, have been arrested or killed. But, also like al-Qaeda, the JI is a movement of martyrs that replenishes itself on the blood of its suicide bombers. JI's loose network of schools and camps and safehouses, some of which are reportedly based in parts of Mindanao, continues to gather more recruits and produce more holy warriors. As last week's bomb attack proved, the JI may be on the run, but it remains a potent threat.
It is for this very reason that many in Canberra criticized Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for bad-mouthing the Philippines last July, after Malacañang's decision to withdraw the Philippine contingent from Iraq. The two countries are both victims of JI violence, and they need to continue cooperating closely. Undiplomatic language only gets in the way.
But collaborative police and intelligence work is only half the story. It isn't enough to catch the martyrs before the bomb is lit; the allies in the international war on terror must work together to root out the causes that lead to the making of martyrs in the first place.
In a larger war
ACTS of terrorism are skirmishes in a larger war; they are battles in the war of ideas and images. There is deliberate symbolism in the timing of the Jakarta attack, just days before the third anniversary of the September 11 strike. (The Bali bombing, which killed 202 victims, including 88 Australian citizens and three Australian residents, was another such symbolic battle; it took place a year, a month, and a day after the first anniversary of 9/11.)
But there is also an element of political calculation. The Australian federal elections will be held a month from now, and Australia's role in the so-called Coalition of the Willing is a critical election issue. The al-Qaeda railway bombings in Madrid last March led directly to the ouster of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's pro-United States government. The Jakarta bombing seeks to do the same: to roil the political waters, to start a wave of sympathy and revulsion and outrage strong enough to sweep Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government out of power.
What does all this mean? Terrorists have grown more cunning. They now have a better feel for where the democracies are most vulnerable: in the very political exercise that marks them as democratic-the conduct of elections. Through well-timed acts of terror, they now seek to decide the outcome of the vote.
posted by Dante at 11:54 AM
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