Death Squad Democracy:OPLAN BANTAY-LAYA (A Book Review by Prof. Roland G. Simbulan)

The Phillipines makes a decent representative example of the US' first official exercise in colonial imperialism and formal empire [*], also referred to as "civilizational imperialism" - a project we're presently repeating.

"Lest this seem to be the bellicose pipedream of some dyspeptic desk soldier, let us remember that the military deal of our country has never been defensive warfare. Since the Revolution, only the United Kingdom has beaten our record for square miles of territory acquired by military conquest. Our exploits against the American Indian, against the Filipinos, the Mexicans, and against Spain are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan, the Japanese in Manchuria and the African attack of Mussolini. No country has ever declared war on us before we first obliged them with that gesture. 

Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war. And at the rate our armed forces are being implemented at present, the odds are against our fighting one in the near future." - -- Major General Smedley D. Butler, America's Armed Forces: 'In Time of Peace', 1935. 1898-1914: The Phillipines. 

Protesters wearing masks of activist Jonas Burgos protest in a busy street in Manila August 6, 2007 to commemorate the 100th day of his abduction. Jonas, an activist, has been missing since April 2007 when a group of men, widely thought to be an army "black squad", allegedly abducted him from a shopping mall in Manila.  Picture taken August 6, 2007.
REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/Files

Protesters hold pictures of leftwing activists alleged to have been abducted in the Philippines, during a protest in front of the Supreme Court in Manila in this June 4, 2008 file photo.  Hundreds of activists have been shot dead or are suspected to have been abducted over the past seven years in what is viewed internationally as a "dirty war" by the army against groups it sees as fronts for a violent communist insurgency. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/Files

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NOTE: THE COLORED AND UNDERLINED WORDS ARE MY ADDED LINKS (click them to open) - Bert
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THE TOOLS OF DEATH SQUAD DEMOCRACY 
by Roland G. Simbulan

(Book Review of OPLAN BANTAY LAYA: THE U.S.-ARROYO CAMPAIGN OF TERROR AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES,Balay Internasyunal, U.P. Diliman, July 29, 2010)

IBON FOUNDATION has published a book that explores the deadly tools of our death squad democracy. 

The ingredients and elements of a classic Third World country are there : A selfish, pro-Western oligarchy that has almost complete control and influence over state power and institutions. Weak and compromised government institutions that cannot render real justice to the weak, and where we see institutionalized impunity to human rights, corruption and abuse of power. Lack of basic social services or even decent social security net. An economic and political system that basically preserves the power and dominance of the local elite and their foreign corporate counterparts in tapping the natural and human resources of a rich country with a predominantly poor majority.

This book examines how this situation is preserved despite people's resistance and struggles for a better life. It examines the emergence of the U.S.-inspired Oplan Bantay Laya (1 & 2) during the Arroyo administration. This counter-insurgency program was used to combat people's opposition not only to the detested Arroyo administration, but also to combat revolutionary Filipino nationalism challenging U.S. interests in the country.

The book tries to provide answers to key questions like:

1. What makes Oplan Bantay Laya distinct from past, failed counter-insurgency programs of previous administrations ?
2. What is the U.S. role in the formulation and implementation of Oplan Bantay Laya?
3. How does OBL compare with other past and present U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns, especially those ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This book tries to fill in these gaps.

The four major parts of the book: Oplan Bantay Laya, U.S. Counter-Insurgency Strategy, Impacts and Implications, and Unfinished Agenda, all weave together a tightly-knit reference on what is in fact a country case study of another failed counter-insurgency strategy and its impact on the Philippines.

If you have watched Christopher Nolan's latest film, "Inception", you will find that "almost every dream is like a nightmare and you wake up just when you are killed or fatally shot in your dream." Oplan Bantay Laya is not the only nightmare. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Norberto Gonzales, Jovito Palparan, et al are also part of the nightmare that devastated our nation for the past nine years, causing untold bloodletting and damage to the life, liberty and safety of our people.

The canvas on which the various authors in this book paint their chapters is splattered with the trail of blood and sickening horror of the extra-judicial killings and disappeared victims of Oplan Bantay Laya, the latest failed but nevertheless, deadly counterinsurgency campaign to inflict our people.

A major contribution of this book is that it firmly establishes the U.S. role in OBL, that is, as part of the U.S. strategy of suppressing revolutionary nationalism and insurgency. It investigates the tentacles of imperial America in directing, advising the political assassination of progressive mass leaders and their sympathizers whose only crime is to work for meaningful social reforms in our society.

Though there is a lot of government rhetoric and even a written blueprint for counterinsurgency to focus on socioeconomic measures to address poverty that is at the root of the armed insurgency and conflict, on the ground, the battlefield approach is still the dominant approach. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police and the paramilitaries are still the main agencies for counterinsurgency pursuing military objectives. The killings of unarmed social movement leaders, members and sympathizers can only exacerbate the conflict and further feed the flames of armed insurgency.

After Sept. 11, 2001, with the U.S. already thinly spread out in its direct military invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Oplan Bantay Laya emerges as the alternative strategy to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Philippines. The local insurgency and the Muslim secessionist struggle - long in existence since the late 60s - are transformed into War on Terror - Philippines aka new name Overseas Contingency Operation. The Pentagon bankrolls a Philippine Defense Reform Program where it directs the entire counterinsurgency program and structure of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which now includes Bantay Laya.

Multi-dimensional but essentially political/ psychological in nature, Oplan Bantay Laya or OBL disguised U.S. intervention and covert operations in targeted areas in the country by introducing USAID- funded piece-meal community services, disaster relief and infrastructure, while selectively assassinating local activists and leaders. The tools in this counterinsurgency kit - now also used widely in Iraq and Afghanistan -- include a combination of community/social programs, but it also includes their "special ops " which is to strip out mid-level leaders and coordinators of militant mass movements whom they believe are part of the "political infrastructure" of the armed insurgency.

The public is also targeted by psychological operations to achieve support and demonize targeted sectors. However, the role of Fr. Romeo "Archie" Intengan's indoctrination of soldiers to eliminate all communists, and the Norberto Gonzales - Palparan tandem in the creation of "privatized" anti-communist death squads with the tolerance and support of the AFP/PNP, need to be further explored.

But counterinsurgency campaigns of terror that target unarmed people's advocates can only further radicalize--not terrorize -- the people as is the intention, especially those in the rural areas. The command structure of the military, police and security forces are themselves guilty of these dastardly activities, when they tolerate and encourage these crimes, and where no one is arrested or prosecuted. Police and meticulous detective work, as well as the preservation of vital evidence is necessary for the prosecution of those responsible.

I would have wanted to see included in this book an analysis of the U.S. Special Forces Counter-insurgency Manual which is one of the classified Pentagon documents leaked to WikiLeaks.com 

It has the title, FOREIGN INTERNAL DEFENSE TACTICS, TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES FOR SPECIAL FORCES (1994, 2004 ). What is very revealing is that the manual refers to itself as about, " what the U.S. learned about using death squads and propping up corrupt governments in Latin America and how to apply it in other places." The template and model that the manual uses is El Salvador where killings and torturing were done by the U.S.-backed army and right wing death squads affiliated with it, until the paramilitaries themselves got out of hand that they raped even American missionary nuns who were stopped at a checkpoint, causing massive outrage in the United States. 

According to a 2001 report of Amnesty International, many U.S. -backed right wing governments through their military and paramilitary death squads " committed extra-judical executions, other unlawful killings, disappearances and torture", and obviously with the advise and direction of U.S. military advisers.

A whole gamut of agreements keep the AFP (and even the PNP) under the thumb of the United States: the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Military Assistance Agreement, the Visiting Forces Agreement, the Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement, the Security Engagement Board Agreement. 

The book takes and hard look at the tentacles of Imperial America and the mechanisms of U.S. influence and control from the JUSMAG and the USAID projects concentrated in areas of unrest most contested by insurgency and the Muslim rebellion. Today, an entire contingent of 600 U.S. Special Operations Forces composed of elite SEALS and Ranger Teams provide direction, advise, training, intelligence and even surgical combat operations to many of the AFP's front-line battalions all over the country.

The selection of so-called "quality targets" who are identified for political assassination, abduction, and disappearances can only rely heavily on battlefield intelligence and order of battle lists. This has been upgraded with CIA up-country advisers and U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) technicians who assist to improve the record-keeping ability of the Philippine armed and intelligence services through the provision of special computers.This monitors, records and classifies the rivers of digitized intelligence information that flow throughout the country.

This book outlines the nature of OBL and its different forms, and identifies the local and foreign "agencies" that actually implement it in both lethal and "non-lethal" forms. It studies the emergence and evolution of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and argues that it is also very much operative in the Philippines. In so doing, it argues that counterinsurgency programs such as the OBL are not intentionally formulated and applied for the Philippines alone, but other places as well.

The dirty wars in Latin America launched by military dictators whose armies were trained and armed by the Pentagon and CIA to suppress progressive movements, and the Operation Phoenix in Vietnam which liquidated as many as 40,000 unarmed suspects in the political infrastructure of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front, to the US training of the Indonesian Kopassus (Army Special Forces Command) which abducted and killed many Indonesian farmers, workers and intellectuals during the Suharto military dictatorship -- all testify that other places besides the Philippines had been testing grounds for this counterinsurgency doctrine -- perhaps with other names.

Counterinsurgency doctrine simultaneously evolved in different locations as a product of similar factors as the various U.S. administrations groped for ways of combating revolutionary nationalism (both Islamic, Marxist and secular), in the Third World. During the Arroyo administration, OBL and U.S. counterinsurgency strategy gained cohesion over time with the recognition and acceptance that its seemingly unrelated components constitute a political / psychological strategy for achieving U.S. objectives. But what about the role of other U.S. allies like Australia and Israel, among others, whose intelligence operatives and special forces are also now actively involved in honing and assisting in local counterinsurgency operations?

OBL was eventually elevated to the status of a de facto national security strategy by the Arroyo administration, which in attempting to justify its illegal stay in power, gave this strategy an overt profile with ideological cohesion and rationale provided by such rabid clerico-fascists like Fr. Archie Intengan and his disciple Norberto Gonzales. In this sense, the Arroyo administration was itself an expression of OBL. For this Arroyo will be remembered as as extrajudicial killer as expressed by OBL-- distinctly stamping our own brand of death squad democracy.

The Alston recommendations found in the U.N. Special Report on Extrajudicial Killings are specific enough. But scrapping the OBL could just produce another counterinsurgency strategy clone with another name as they have done before.

I have always believed that the state can either be a very repressive apparatus that can cause so much misery and suffering to the people, or, if redirected, it can be placed in the hands of an enlightened people to serve its ends and national interests, and to achieve a higher quality of life.

There is the need to resist repression. But, how do we make our government and armed forces work for us instead of being our oppressors and enemies? Transparency and accountability in government are necessary to monitor and check abuses, as well as to make civilian and military agencies accountable for actions that they do. 

There is a need for more and effective Congressional oversight and reform measures on the following:

1. The misuse of military and intelligence funds, not only those under the DND/PNP, but also those under "contingency funds" of the Office of the President, line departments, and local governments.
2. Local intelligence should likewise also be directed at monitoring U.S. intervention in the country as well as other foreign agencies.
3. There should be transparency in sensitive issues as national security to curb abuse of power and authority and so that they cannot mislead or undermine our very own people's security.
4. The Commission on Audit should be tasked to carefully audit any intelligence program, a power COA never had.

The victims of Oplan Bantay Laya await justice, and we all expect that justice be rendered from the new administration that has promised to bring the perpetrators to the bar of justice.

Maybe it would be a kind of redemption if we could unify as a nation against the real enemies of national sovereignty who have divided us through their divide and rule tactics, in order to dominate us. Better still, it would be a kind redemption if justice was rendered to all the victims and the extra-judicial masterminds were punished.

The prospects for peace are always there as they have always been there. If the rest of the developing world is any guide, economic development that benefits the majority of the people is the best road map to lasting peace.

Overall, the book is a major contribution to the literature on the impact of the U.S.- directed counter-insurgency policy, and how and why the old recycled strategies have failed. I hope that the counter-insurgents in the new administration will not fail to read this book.

Source: http://www.cenpeg.org/index.htm

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U.S. Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States." 

Major Littleton W. T. Waller: How young? Smith: Ten years and up. --Exchange on October 1901, quote from the testimony at Smith's court martial by the New York Evening Journal (May 5, 1902). 

General Smith, a veteran of the Wounded Knee Massacre, was popularly known as "Hell Roaring Jake" or "Howling Wilderness".

CIA-admits-US-exports-terror

U.S. behind reign of terror sweeping Philippines

By Teresa Gutierrez
Cebu City, Philippines 

Published Jan 9, 2007 11:38 PM

The International Action Center (IAC) sent a fact-finding delegation to the Philippines Dec. 7 to Dec. 19. The delegation was comprised of IAC National Co-Director Teresa Gutierrez, and Dianne Mathiowetz of the Atlanta IAC. Also on the trip were two representatives of BAYAN USA and a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement from New York City.

International Human Rights Day demonstration, Dec. 10, Cebu City, Philippines. WW photos: Dianne Mathiowetz

Jan. 8—Our trip coincided with the scheduled meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which was to take place the first week of December in Cebu City. ASEAN’s main role is to facilitate economic and political penetration of the area for imperialism. However, the Philippine government announced that the ASEAN meeting would be cancelled due to a reported typhoon that was to hit the island at the same time. It was evident, however, that the summit of 25 Asian countries was actually cancelled due to the political typhoon sweeping the country.

Major demonstrations and massive political sentiment against the president of the country, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, were the real reasons the summit was cancelled. As of this writing, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has announced that the ASEAN summit will take place here in Cebu City from Jan. 10 to 15.

One of the most outstanding developments revealed to our delegation was the tremendous wave of repression hitting the Filipino population. Since 2001, over 700 people in the Philippines have been killed or disappeared. The wave of repression against the people is so stark that every week since 2004 approximately two activists have been killed and one has disappeared.

This alarming situation was described to us repeatedly, confirming published reports by several sources. Amnesty International issued a report in August stating its concern over “continued violation of human rights in the country.”

In fact, during the two-week period since we arrived, a total of seven people have been reported missing or killed by the official newspapers of this country.

The findings of the “Stop the Killings in the Philippines Campaign,” published by the IBON Foundation, concluded that, “The pattern of assassinations and political persecution of activists, members of people’s movements, and leftist leaders in the Philippines has become an urgent international issue.”

IBON continued, “While killings and summary executions are not rare in the Philippines, this trend of political assassinations intensified in 2004 during the national elections, and has continued in the last two years—making it possibly the worst period for human rights violations since the Marcos era.”

Behind the wave of terror: U.S. imperialism

The wave of terror currently sweeping the Philippines is part and parcel of U.S. imperialism’s historical and bloody drive to dominate and control the South East Asian region, especially the Philippines. These aims are best capsulated in the words of U.S. Sen. Alfred Beveridge when he said in 1900, “The country that rules the Pacific, rules the world.”

U.S. imperialism invaded and occupied the Philippines and other countries of the Asia Pacific region at the beginning of the 20th century.

Indeed, East Asia is key to imperialist aims to control markets and make ever greater profits. Over 2.5 billion people live in this region—one-third of the world’s population—and their economies are 25 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Southeast Asia is 9 percent of the world’s population and 5 percent of the global GDP.

The region is home to some of the most strategic countries in the world: China, Korea and Vietnam, which have all been at the center of imperialism’s war drive. Japan, an imperialist country, is a major rival to Wall Street.

According to the Institute of Political Economy, based in the Philippines, the U.S. currently has more than 386,000 U.S. troops deployed in 150 countries, including 70,000 troops in East Asia. There were 850 U.S. military bases in 138 counties as of 2005.

Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are key nations to Washington, used in every way possible to maintain its domination in the area.

The task of these thousands of troops is to make sure that the main strategic objectives of the U.S. are protected in the region. Southeast Asia is of particular interest to the U.S. It seeks to maintain hegemony with its puppet regimes and exclude Japan and China, one reason why the Philippines is key to the U.S. It wants free access to major sea lanes and to deepen and expand trade and investment in the area.

Imperialism carries out these aims at the same time that it drives the Asian Pacific people further and further into poverty and despair. Eliza Griswold, a journalist, writes: “[T]he most pressing problem in today’s Philippines isn’t terrorism or even government corruption but poverty and a lack of social mobility. About 15 percent of its people live on less than $1 a day.”

The war on terror: a basis for re-colonization

The U.S. has operated military bases in the Philippines since 1947. After righteous struggles that shook the country, most of these bases closed in 1992. But with the advent of U.S. imperialism’s so-called war on terror, there is now a concerted effort to once again militarize the Philippines. The rebuilding of official U.S. bases in the Philippines is centered in Mindanao, a primarily Muslim area.

U.S. Navy Commander Adm. William J. Fallon—commander of the U.S. Pacific command—said last March 7, “Southeast Asia is the front line of the war on terror.”

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has not only become a key ally of imperialism, she is a puppet of Washington.

This so-called war against terrorism is in reality a war of terror against the people.

Victims of repression in the Philippines—those who have died as a result of these extrajudicial killings—are mainly people who are fighting against deadly economic policies or who are denouncing the repression: activists, students, labor leaders, journalists, members of people’s movements and leftists.

State terror reigns in the Philippines. The situation is so serious and so critical that even spokespeople of foreign chambers of commerce and transnational corporations have been forced to pay lip service against the repression.

On Jan. 6 the Macapagal-Arroyo administration announced that the government will spend about 10 billion pesos in 2007—a lot of money for an impoverished nation. About $200 million is earmarked for the purchase of attack helicopters and other military equipment, which is a sign that the repression will not only continue but intensify.

Repression breeds resistance

Since Macapagal-Arroyo assumed office in 2001, about 730 people have been killed. (IBON)

They include Bishop Alberto Ramento; Markus Bangit, an indigenous leader of the Malbong Tribe of Tomiangan, Tabuk, Kalinga and the coordinator of the Elders Desk of the Cordillera People’s Alliance; activist teacher Napolean Pornasdoro; Bayan Muna Party (People First Party) members Jayson Delen and Jimmy Mirafuente; Cris Hugo, the regional coordinator of the League of Filipino Students; and Nestle Union president and KMU leader, Diosdado Fortuna. The KMU is the revolutionary workers union in the Philippines and stands for the May 1st Movement.

More than 168 leaders and activists remain missing.

The IAC delegation met with the mother of one of missing student leader, Sherlyn Cadapan. Sherlyn was abducted with another student leader, Karen Empeño, and 55-year-old activist Manuel Merino.

The young women, both in their early 20s, are students at the University of the Philippines (UP). The three were abducted on July 26, 2006. They were volunteers of the Alliance of Peasants in Bulacan, Philippines.

Six armed men forcibly entered the house where the students were staying. Merino, who was staying at a house nearby, came to help the two young women. All three were forced into a vehicle and driven away. The young women’s parents believe that troops of the 56th infantry Battalion in Bulacan were the ones who abducted the three activists.

The commander of the 7th Infantry Division, based where the abduction took place, told the family that the young women were members of the New Peoples Army, the armed wing of the resistance in the country. The family believes that such statements indicate the military knows the whereabouts of the three.

The mother of Sherlyn Cadapan told me at a demonstration against proposed changes to the Philippine Constitution that she will not stop until she finds her daughter.

Despite the wave of repression sweeping the country, the movement is strong. The abductions and assassinations have not stopped the people’s struggle for self determination and freedom from imperialist domination.

Despite a heavy police presence in preparation for the scheduled ASEAN conference here, the movement organized conferences for Jobs and Justice and against Global Terrorism, as well as demonstrations in the streets, which IAC representatives participated in.

Many of the people who attended these events told of family members missing or dead. But the history of the will of the Filipino people to resist domination is as long as imperialism’s aims in the region. It will be the Filipino people who will ultimately prevail, as seen by the courage and commitment here.

Copies of the IBON Foundation report can be ordered at leftbooks.com.

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Source: http://www.workers.org/2007/world/philippines-0118/

See also:    CIA-admits-US-exports-terror and
Killing Season in the Philippines (15+ articles on further militarization of our homeland and its brutal consequences to the common tao, during the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime -- in an era of media disinformation, our focus has essentially been to center on the "unspoken truth".- Global Research)

                       
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"Those who profess to favor freedom
and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without 
plowing up the ground;
they want rain without thunder and
lightning.
They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one
or it may be a physical one
or it may be both moral and physical
but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a
demand
It never did, and never will." – Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Lecturer, Author and Slave, 1817-1895)
(quoted in Fr.Salgado’s Philippine Economy: History and Analysis, 1985)

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Hi All,

The below link will show a short list of my past posts (out of 540 posts so far) which I consider as basic topics about us native (indio)/ Malay Filipinos. This link/listing, which may later expand, will always be presented at the bottom of each future post.  Just point-and-click at each listed item to open and read. 

Thank you for reading and sharing with others, especially those in our homeland.

- Bert

PLEASE POINT & CLICK THIS LINK:  

http://www.thefilipinomind.com/2013/08/primary-postsreadings-for-my-fellow.html