| Abu Sayyaf: Why the AFP Failed By Antonio C. Abaya January 31, 2002 When the Abu Sayyaf bandits abducted some 21 persons, including about a dozen Caucasian tourists, from the Malaysian resort island of Sipadan in April 2000 and then transferred them to their lairs in Sulu and later Basilan, the response of the Philippine military, under the command of then AFP Chief-of-Staff Gen. Angelo Reyes, was to send an invasion force of 6,000 troops accompanied by 105mm howitzers, Simba APCs, helicopter gunships, OV-10 Bronco light bombers, navy patrol boats and the kitchen sink from GHQ Camp Aguinaldo, in pursuit of a force of less than a hundred scoundrels. When the same bandit group kidnapped another dozen or so people, including three Americans (one of whom they later beheaded) from the Palawan resort of Dos Palmas the next year, and moved them to their hideouts in Basilan, the response of the Philippine military, under the direction of Secretary of National Defense Angelo Reyes, was to send another invasion force of 6,000 accompanied, as before, by 105mm howitzers, Simba APCs, helicopter gunships, light bombers, navy patrol boats and the kitchen sink, to run after the kidnappers who obviously had not been terrified by their first brush with the AFP. Angelo Reyes should get a patent on his unique method for dealing with hostage situations lest somebody else be dumb enough to copy it in future Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom operations. Anyone with some common sense knows that hostage situations are best dealt with by relatively small groups of commandos (now called special forces) who stealthily crawl up to their prey without announcing their presence and who strike usually in the wee hours before dawn when everyone else is asleep. Not by an invasion force of 6,000, noisily preceded by artillery barrages, naval gunfire and air strikes from safe distances while the infantry are dragging their feet five kilometers away from their quarry. Such unprofessional tactics merely allow Little Napoleons to play at war and to pose for macho pictures, but they do not solve the problem. ***** About five years ago, when Melanesian separatists in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya hostaged some 30 employees of the Freeport Mining Co. and hid them under the thick jungle canopy while they negotiated with the government, the Indonesian military did not send an invasion army of 6,000 troops accompanied by artillery, APCs, helicopter gunships, light bombers, naval patrol boats and kitchen sinks. Instead they sent one solitary Israeli-made pilotless airplane or drone to crisscross the jungle, taking infra-red photographs of the terrain. The body heat from 30 hostages and an equal number of hostage-takers clearly registered in the infra-red photos. Having thus established the exact coordinates of their prey, the Indonesians quietly dropped less than 200 paratroopers around them, capturing or killing most of the separatists and rescuing all hostages unharmed. The paras were led in their jump by their commander, Gen. Prabowo, then CO of Indonesia�s special forces and son-in-law of then President Suharto. Only about two years ago, ten teen-aged Myanmarese rebels seized a hospital in the Thai border town of Ratchanburi, taking hostage more than 200 patients, nurses and medical staff, in an effort to pressure the Myanmar government into releasing some of their comrades from detention. In the next four or five days, while the Thai government was negotiating with the rebels, some 300 (not 6,000) Thai commandos took up positions around the hospital. At 3 o�clock one morning, while everyone else was asleep, the commandos stormed the building, freeing all hostages unharmed and killing (some say, summarily executing) all the rebels. No bullshit about human rights in Thailand. Halfway around the world in Peru in December 1996, Marxist guerillas of the Tupac Amaru group seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, hostaging more than 200 high government officials and foreign diplomats and their spouses who were guests in a reception celebrating the birthday of the Japanese Emperor. While negotiations were dragging on for more than three months, President Alberto Fujimori secretly hired professional miners to dig a tunnel from outside the residence walls to the building itself, in particular to a room on the ground floor which military intelligence had determined to be unoccupied by the hostage-takers or their hostages. At a given signal one mid-afternoon, presumably while everyone else was having a siesta, Peruvian commandos blasted a hole through the floor and crawled up from the tunnel and into the building, all 140 of them - 6,000 would not have fitted into the tunnel or into the mansion itself - catching the hostage-takers as well as the hostages completely by surprise. Fifteen minutes later, all guerillas were dead, as were one hostage and three commandos. And who can forget the daring Entebbe Rescue in June 1976? An Air France jetliner was hijacked on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris by Palestinian terrorists aided by four German anarchists from the Baader Meinhof Gang. Forced to land in Tunisia where non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers were released, the plane was finally flown to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, with more than 100 Jews. While an Israeli businessman stalled for time on the phone with his personal friend, Ugandan President Idi Amin, some 200 (not 6,000) commandos from the Golani Brigade of the Israeli Army rehearsed their rescue plan in the Negev Desert, using a mock-up of the terminal building (which fortunately had been built by an Israeli company which still had the engineering plans) and timing their tactical movements with stop watches. Their faces blackened by TV make-up artists who had been yanked from their studios without being told where they were going, the commandos flew seven and a half hours in four C-130 Hercules transports, without fighter escorts, and landed at Entebbe Airport just past midnight. They had commandeered someone�s Mercedes limo and spray-painted it black in-flight to make it look like Amin�s own limo, so that when they disembarked at Entebbe they appeared to be Amin�s presidential party arriving from somewhere. The ruse allowed them to approach the terminal building without arousing suspicion from the Ugandan guards, but only up to a point. In the ensuing room-by-room battle, which lasted all of 45 minutes, the Israelis killed all the Arab and German hijackers, (meticulously photographing and finger-printing their cadavers), rescued all hostages except three who were caught in the crossfire, and suffered only one fatality: their commander, Col. Yonathan Netanyahu, elder brother of a future prime minister and on-leave from his graduate studies in philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. They then flew another seven and a half hours back to Israel. Without fighter escorts. ***** Can the AFP duplicate any of the above successful rescue operations? Sadly, no. In their present state, the Philippine military are poorly led, poorly motivated, poorly trained and poor equipped, and they do not have the guts for close-quarter combat. The arrival of American trainors should help narrow that yawning gap. Those who nitpick over sovereignty issues should try air-dropping thousands of copies of the Constitution on the Abu Sayyaf and see if that terrifies them into submission. ***** This article appeared in the February 18, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles in acabaya.blogspot.com. Tony on YouTube in www.tapatt.org. To subscribe, send a blank email with the subject heading Subscribe. To unsubscribe, send a blank email with the subject heading Unsubscribe. . |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |