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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Turkey: Best US Partner in Afghanistan By Antonio C. Abaya September 20, 2001 It would be the height of stupidity to send Philippine combat troops to join a US-led military strike into Afghanistan. Much as I deplore and condemn the carnage that Muslim terrorists inflicted on thousands of mostly unarmed American civilians, I also believe that deploying Filipino soldiers in the alien and inhospitable environment of Afghanistan, to wage a special kind of warfare for which they have absolutely no training, is sheer madness. (Let us not forget that the last time this country sent troops overseas � 630 soldiers to East Timor last year � the AFP forgot to give them money, food and fuel for the two vehicles they brought along, whereupon the stumblebum Filipinos promptly became charity wards of the Australian Army. Nakakahiya talaga!). The most meaningful contributions that the Philippines can make to this new global campaign against terrorism are a) to obliterate the Abu Sayyaf bandits, and b) to plug the holes in our porous maritime border with Malaysia so as to deny entry to Osama bin Laden�s jihad warriors who may now be scampering to get out of harm�s way in Afghanistan. But for the Philippines to become a successful contributor to this campaign, its poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly motivated armed forces need to be upgraded with both intensive training in special warfare and sophisticated equipment such as electronic listening devices to track cell phone conversations and pilotless aircraft fitted with infra-red cameras. More about that in future articles. Not only its rank-and-file but especially its commanding generals need to be educated in the techniques of commando operations. Recent hostage situations abroad � such as the Japanese embassy in Lima (Peru), the hospital in Ratchanburi (Thailand), the Freeport mining kidnapping in Irian Jaya (Indonesia), and the Entebbe rescue of Air France passengers in Uganda in the 1970s � tell us that the rescue of hostages is best accomplished by small groups of commandos, crawling undetected to within smelling distance of the prey, and striking before the crack of dawn when everyone else is asleep. Sending an invasion force of 6,000 troops against a band of bandits only a few scores strong, announcing it in media beforehand, and presaging the arrival of infantry with a noisy bombardment, from a safe distance, by 105mm howitzers, helicopter gunships, naval artillery and OV-10 aircraft� indulges the fantasies of Little Napoleons playing war, but is a sure way of scattering away the intended targets long before a sniper can get an Abu bandit in the cross hairs of his sniperscope. And yet this is exactly what was done in the Sipadan hostage situation in 2000 and the Dos Palmas kidnapping in 2001, by General, later Defense Secretary, Angelo Reyes, who should get a patent on his novel military strategy. My point is, if this is the sum total of the AFP�s martial wisdom, and it looks like it is, then they will be slaughtered by the Taliban even before they can dig their first latrine. ***** Even the Americans realize that a military strike into Afghanistan will involve largely special forces waging unconventional warfare at very close quarters. Carpet-bombing of mud huts will not root out the Taliban or Osama�s phantom army; it will merely cause a lot of civilian casualties which will surely erode the moral high ground on which they now stand. Even pressuring the Pakistani government to give them a base in Pakistan from which to launch strikes into Afghanistan would be folly. Public opinion in Pakistan is heavily on the side of Osama and the Taliban. If the government of Gen Musharraf were to be so foolish as to cave in to US pressure, in exchange for several billion dollars aid, it will most likely be overthrown by a popular uprising and replaced with an Islamic fundamentalist regime similar to those in Iran, Sudan and, yes, Afghanistan. Such a development would destabilize neighboring India, home to 120 million Muslims, and embolden fundamentalist minorities in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Keep in mind that the fundamentalist movement in the Philippines draws its inspiration, not from the Islamic scholar Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan or from the ayatollahs of Iran, but from ideologues in Pakistan through a religious movement called Tableeg, which claims hundreds of thousands of followers in Mindanao and Sulu. ***** The Americans, as well as Pakistan and affected countries, would be better off if they were to establish their base instead in the northeast corner of Afghanistan controlled by the anti-Taliban opposition called the Northern Alliance, as I have been suggesting in my radio program for the past four days. There at least their entry would be genuinely welcomed, and there they can plant the seeds of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, liberated from the most barbarous and obscurantist regime since Attila the Hun. (I realize that I will now draw flak from politically correct bleeding-heart liberals who will castigate me for being unduly harsh on the Huns, but I am guessing that most of the long-suffering Afghan people will be glad to be rid of a government the apex of whose political wisdom consists in requiring all men to wear beards, denying all girls and women even the most basic education, and dynamiting 2,000-year old limestone Buddha statues which it considers offensive to Islam). For the Americans, access to that base would require overflying Chinese territory on a direct route from their Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. (Not from Clark or Subic, so both congenital pro- and anti-Americans can save their adrenalin). Will the Chinese allow the Americans use of their air space after the recent Hainan incident? There is a good chance that they can be convinced to do so. About five days ago, the BBC carried a news story that Chinese police had arrested five Pakistanis in a hotel in Macao. It was reported that the arresting party, some of whom were shown armed with submachine guns, found documents that indicate that the Pakistanis planned to bomb American targets in Hong Kong if and when the US attacks Afghanistan. So now we all know there will be a second strike, almost certainly not only in Hong Kong, and the Chinese government knows that Chinese lives and Chinese property are part of the anticipated collateral damage in such a Hong Kong bombing. Additionally, for the past decade or so, the Muslim Uighur minority in China�s westernmost province of Xinjang have been restless and are believed responsible for a spate of bombings there, almost certainly the result of fundamentalist influence from nearby Afghanistan. It is therefore to China�s national interest to actively participate in the anti-terrorism coalition. ***** If and when the Americans strike into Afghanistan, their best possible allies will be, not the British or the French or the stumblebum Filipinos, but the Turks, partners in NATO and the biggest foreign contingent, next to the Americans, in the UN �police action� in Korea in the 1950s. The Turks have a well-earned reputation for being fierce soldiers, a tradition that goes back to the Janissaries in the Byzantine Empire or perhaps even earlier. Most important, the Turks are familiar with the harsh mountainous, treeless terrain of Afghanistan, which is very similar to that of Anatolia in Eastern Turkey where they have been fighting Kurdish separatists for years. Additionally, like most Afghans, the Turks are Muslims, and they are also ethnically and linguistically related to the many Turkic tribes in the region: the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Turkmens, the Uighurs, etc.. In short, the Turks can blend and ingratiate themselves into the native population to a degree impossible for the Americans and Western Europeans to replicate. Ideally, the Americans� role should be only to destroy the T-60 and T-71 tanks, the Katyusha rockets and other Soviet-made hardware inherited by the Taliban from the retreating Soviets in 1989, using Apache helicopter gunships and A-10 tankbusters. Afghanistan being landlocked, surrounded by neighbors who have closed their borders, and devoid of any war industries, the Talibs would have no way of replacing wrecked equipment and spent ammunition. The playing, or killing, field thus leveled, the warriors of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, reinforced by Turkish commandos, can thus engage the Talibs in close quarter, hand-to-hand fighting, away from population centers. But will the Turks agree to be the Americans� pointmen in Afghanistan? That will be for the diplomats to work out. There are at least two compelling reasons for the Turks to agree. One, the Turks have been trying hard to be accepted as full members in the European Union, but have been rebuffed time and again, blocked by their rivals, the Greeks, as well as by lingering European suspicions of Muslims that go back to the Moorish conquest and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th to the 15th centuries, the Crusades against the Saracens in the Holy Land from 1099 to 1270, to as recent as 1683 when the Ottoman Turks almost captured Vienna. Serbian hostility to the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, illustrated in many grisly massacres in the last five years, is traced to a major defeat suffered by the Serbs, who considered and still consider themselves the gate-keepers of European civilization, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1389 in Kosovo. If the Turks play a major role in a successful anti-terrorism campaign, especially in Afghanistan, they will earn brownie points as �good Muslims� and will be accepted into the European Union, especially if the Americans endorse their next application. Two, the Turkish economy is in very bad shape, marked by high inflation, low investment rate and a wobbly currency. Again, if Turkey plays a major role in a victorious campaign in Afghanistan, it will be rewarded not only with EU membership, but also with investments, debt write-offs and other remuneration. All this does not mean a problem-free relationship. Like all Muslim countries, Turkey is plagued by an active fundamentalist movement, represented, in Turkey�s case, by the Welfare Party, which holds about 22% of the seats in parliament. On the other hand, Turkey, more than any other Muslim country, also has a well established tradition of secularism, begun by the founder of the modern Turkish state, the legendary Kemal Ataturk, in the 1920s and protected by the most enduring institution in Turkish society, the Army. ***** This article appeared in the October 8, 2001 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |