 |
 |
| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Civil War? By Antonio C. Abaya Written June 21, 2006 For Standard Today June 22 issue No one can blame the public for being confused. First Defense Secretary Cruz told defense ministers gathered in Singapore that the Philippine military would defeat the communist insurgency in �six to ten years� (See my article Defeating the NPA, June 06). Now Cruz� own commander-in-chief, President Arroyo, said during a government meeting in Isabela that �a six- to 10 year timetable is too long for me.� (Standard Today, June 12). She wants the communists defeated �in one or two years,� at least in the critical areas, such as Northern Luzon, Central Luzon and Southern Luzon, as if insurgency could be confined by invisible regional boundaries.. Then National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was quoted as saying that five years was more like it. President Arroyo may not realize it, but the impression that these openly discordant voices are giving is that of a government that does not know what it is doing, and of senior officials not talking to each other and not agreeing on a game plan at the highest level. Is this any way to run a government? But at least President Arroyo realizes that a purely military solution to the insurgency is not viable. She has ordered one billion pesos released to purchase new equipment for the AFP-PNP, as well as P75 billion to �spark investment and development in the next three years in North Luzon, where the insurgency remains a major headache.� (Inquirer, June 17.) �The fight against the Left remains the glue that binds all our fiscal and economic reforms,� President Arroyo emphasized. But can she pull it off? That remains to be seen. It would help to see how our neighbors defeated their communist insurgencies. Indonesia did not have a communist insurgency like ours. The Parti Komunis Indonesia (PKI) did not have to go to the hills to try to seize state power. Under President Sukarno�s permissive style (which was like President Ramos� consensual style of signing �peace agreements� with everyone who had a grievance), the PKI had grown to become the largest communist party in the world outside the Soviet Union and the People�s Republic of China. In September 1965, feeling that their moment had come, PKI militants attacked a building at Halim Air Base, outside Jakarta, where the top brass of the Indonesian military, ABRI (Angkatan Bersanjata Republik Indonesia) were holding a command conference, and raked the conference room with machine-gun fire. They were confident that they had killed everyone. But one general, Army Gen. Hary Nasution, managed to escape through a window, only slightly wounded, and he went on to rally the ABRI in a counter-coup against the PKI, deposing President-for-life Sukarno in favor of Col., later Gen., Suharto who was named president in 1967. Between 1965 and 1972, the Indonesian military went on an anti-communist rampage, summarily executing some 300,000 communists, suspected communists and perceived sympathizers. Some estimates put the casualty toll at over a million. This has since become known as the Indonesian Solution to communist insurgency. In what was then known as Malaya, the Malayan Communist Party waged guerilla war against the British colonial government in the early 1950s, which continued even after Malaysia and Singapore were granted their independence in 1957. In a series of four articles that appeared in the August 07 to 10, 1989 issues of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Larry Henares described how the communist insurgency was defeated in Malaysia-Singapore. These articles are specially remarkable because at that time, Henares was writing a regular column in the Inquirer and was very supportive of the communist movement here for the sole reason that he shared their bristling hatred of Americans and all things American. (Some 20 people, including Larry himself, have told me that Larry often quotes my column in his radio program. So let me return the compliment and quote Larry here.} Larry�s articles were based on an internal memorandum from within the CIA (which, ironically, Larry despised intensely), written in October 1988 by someone code-named JSSI, who argued that �adherence to the rule of law does not mean that the government must in any way relinquish recourse to stern policy instruments or the use of appropriate force � including deadly force.� Sir Robert Thompson, who crafted the British response to communist insurgency, followed five principles, which Larry quoted from the CIA memo: One: The government must have a clear political aim. Two: The government must function in accordance with the law. Three: The government must have an over-all counter-insurgency plan which encompasses security measures, military operations, political objectives, social and economic measures, and administrative policy. Those three principles are almost motherhood statements. But the fourth principle was probably the key to Sir Robert�s success, and I quote it here in bold face to emphasize it: Four: The government must give first priority to identifying and defeating the political subversives, not the guerillas. The communist front organizations and the civil apparatus are the ultimate threats to the nation. Five: When the insurgency has reached the stage of substantial military operations, the government must secure its base areas first, even if this means relinquishing some remote areas for a time to the insurgents. Larry said Amen to the fourth principle by writing: �Unless the communist subversive political organizations in the towns and villages (are) broken and eliminated, the insurgent guerilla units will not be defeated�..Front groups and umbrella organizations provide the insurgents with links to the populace. These links must be broken�.and broken with finality.� But how? Larry did not say. And Sir Robert was smug and supercilious when he stated as his second principle, that the government must function in accordance with the law. But that was possible and easy in the 1950s only because the British wrote the law, to suit their own ends and to push their own advantage. In particular, the Internal Security Act (ISA), which Larry did not mention even once in his four articles. The ISA gave the British colonial government the legal and constitutional right to arrest and throw in jail, indefinitely and without trial, anyone suspected of being a �subversive,� whether or not he or she actually bore arms against the government, and whether or not he or she was a card-carrying member of the Malayan Communist Party. The ISA was inherited by the Malaysian and Singapore governments upon independence in 1957 and was effectively used by them to finish off the communist insurgents who had been effectively weakened earlier by the British, by having their front organizations dismantled through the ISA. Can President Arroyo pull it off here, in two, five, six or ten years? Highly unlikely. In the first place, there is no ISA in the Philippines. Having one legislated through Congress is also unlikely, given the presence of communist and pro-communist legislators (which would not have been allowed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) as well as their allies among trapo oppositionists, who share their anti-Gloria biases.. Not to mention predictable opposition from media, the clergy and civil society, either out of sympathy for the communist cause, or because of a hangover of American-style liberalism (which was not a limiting factor in Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore). Even during his dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos allowed communist front organizations (e.g. Bayan, KMU, etc) to openly organize, propagandize and destabilize, though he also allowed his military to assassinate some of the fronts� leaders and kidnap and torture others. Even at his worst, Marcos never achieved the methodical thoroughness of the Indonesians, the Malaysians or the Singaporeans. Dismantling the communist front organizations here through an ISA would require throwing in jail tens of thousands of militants and activists from Bayan, Bayan Muna, LFS, Gabriela, Sanlakas, Migrante, ACT, COURAGE, KM, KMU, KMP, etc,an entire alphabet soup of local, regional and national formations, for whom there would not be enough space in our jails, having been allowed to proliferate like tilapias through decades of Pinoy laxity and permissiveness.. It would also require shutting down newspapers, radio stations and TV channels that give favorable publicity to communists and pro-communists. This would also raise predictable howls of protests from the usual suspects. The Philippines is the only non-communist country with a raging communist insurgency, where communists and pro-communists are routinely made media celebrities, congressmen, senior government bureaucrats, newspaper columnists, TV hosts and presidents of state universities. Unbelievable. But the biggest reason why the communist insurgency cannot be stamped out by President Arroyo in two, five, six or ten years, even with an ISA, is because she does not have the credibility and the moral ascendancy to do so. Any move she makes in this direction would be openly hooted down, even by non-communists, as just another gimmick on her part to stay in power beyond 2010. Communism has long been a dead issue in the rest of the world, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991. It continues to fester only in such mentally challenged places as Nepal and the Philippines. The Nepalese can blame lack of sufficient oxygen. What�s our excuse? Any Indonesian Solution to our insurgency would be condemned world-wide and would result in a major constriction of aid, trade and investment inflows. The Philippines would become a pariah state. Considering that 1.7 million voters voted for communist party-list candidates in 2004, any move now by the present government to suppress their front organizations with an ISA could trigger a civil war. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of those 1.7 million supporters have only the foggiest notion of what dialectical materialism is all about. They are merely reacting to conditions of poverty, hopelessness, social injustice and poor governance. They can be won over by charismatic leadership, as Magsaysay showed in the 1950s. It is the small hard core of mostly UP intellectuals whose brains have been addled by persistent hallucinations about a Theoretical Ideal that has no empirical basis in reality, who have created this mega-mess and are probably beyond redemption.. Now, more than at any time since 1946, any attempt to solve the communist insurgency must start, not with one billion pesos worth of military hardware, but with the premise that the only way to defeat an Idea would be to offer a Better Idea. Unfortunately, no one in the present government has the necessary combination of moral ascendancy, intestinal fortitude and intellectual depth to conceptualize and articulate that Better Idea. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org. Current articles in tonyabaya.multiply.com and tapatt.yahoogroups.com OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |