Mindanao is focus of US for Southeast Asia peace and stability
By RODNEY JALECO, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau | 10/02/2008 1:03 PM
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WASHINGTON D.C. - The eyes of the United States are increasingly focused on Muslim Mindanao which could be a vital cog to America’s ability to build on the peace and stability of the Southeast Asian region.
“Recent developments have highlighted the difficulty and importance of achieving a lasting peace in Mindanao,” Scot Marciel, America’s top envoy to the Southeast Asian region told a forum here last week.
Marciel is Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He is also US Ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His remarks were given before a conference of the Center for Strategic International Studies that explored US-Southeast Asia relations.
“The ASEAN region is of crucial importance to the United States,” he stressed.
He said the US has two primary interests in the region – for Southeast Asian nations to remain strong, stable, free and prosperous; and for them to remain “good partners” in regional and global issues ranging from addressing climate change to containing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
He cited ASEAN’s role in convincing Burma’s junta to accept much-needed international aid after a devastating cyclone and the contribution of various Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, to peacekeeping operations around the world.
US economic and military assistance to Southeast Asia grew from $534 million in 2007 to $668 million this year. ASEAN groups original members Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines, and additions Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. They have a combined population of over 575 million and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than $3.4 trillion.
Focus on terrorism and trans-border militant threats
Marciel points out the Philippines and Thailand are the only two Southeast Asian countries that have mutual defense pacts with the US.
“The Philippines,” Marciel noted, “has improved its economic performance and made substantial progress fighting terrorists who threaten it.”
“The US has supported this counter-terror work but first and foremost this is a Philippine effort,” he stressed.
“The southern Philippines currently constitutes a main focus of US concern regarding terrorism and trans-border militant threats, with American diplomats darkly referring to the region as the ‘new Afghanistan’,” Dr. Peter Chalk wrote in the “CTC Sentinel” – a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center based at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York.
With an area of nearly 95,000 square kilometers, it is bigger than the Netherlands, Ireland or neighboring Taiwan. But US attention is concentrated on the island’s western provinces, particularly the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Sulu, Basilan and parts of Central Mindanao have been cradles of Islamic extremism in the country.
“The thrust of foreign military assistance to Manila has been directed toward vitiating the operational tempo of the Abu Sayyaf Group – an effort that has met with some relatively significant results,” Dr. Chalk averred.
“The US clearly views the ASG as posing a direct threat to a highly important ally in Southeast Asia,” he said.
However, he also suggested there may be higher strategic stakes for the US. The Arroyo administration, he said, “constitutes one of the most ardent supporters of President Bush’s global war on terrorism that…remains crucial to legitimating US basing options in the wider Asia-Pacific.”
After the Philippine Senate voted to boot out US military bases in the country, the prolonged deployment of American forces has become a contentious issue especially among militant groups.
There are reportedly less than a thousand US troops – about a third of them from the Florida-based Special Operations Command – spread out in Mindanao, Sulu and Basilan. They have built their own facilities at Camp Navarro, headquarters of the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP); and the Philippine Marines headquarters at Camp Bautista in Jolo, Sulu.
Although the Philippine Constitution bars them from engaging in direct combat, reports indicate they do move as a unit or in company of Filipino troops in conflict areas.
“The emergence of a concerted jihadist beachhead in Mindanao would not only negatively impact the general stability of the Philippines and its neighbors, but it would place under pressure existing bilateral and multilateral relations that are emerging as a key component of Washington’s post 9-11 national and international security strategy,” Dr. Chalk wrote on the CTC Sentinel.
“Soft power” vs extremist threat
The recent collapse of the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is a cause for concern.
“We are not serving as intermediaries or getting into details,” Ambassador Marciel declared, “that’s for the Philippines to do, but we are doing what we can to encourage both sides to reach an agreement that can make a big difference for the future of the country.”
The US has been funneling much of its aid to the Philippines to the strife-torn areas of Mindanao. Starting in 2005, 60 percent of US Development Assistance (DA) and Economic Support Funding (ESF) have gone to Mindanao, initially to build on the peace generated by the peace pact with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The US was reportedly poised to extend the same level of assistance for the MILF had a final peace accord been signed in Kuala Lampur this year.
Dr. Chalk pointed to the increasing use of “soft power” that can address the challenges of poverty and unemployment in Mindanao conflict areas.
Development Assistance to the Philippines is projected to grow from about $15.5 million in 2007 to nearly $57 million by next year. Money for Child Survival and Health (CSH) programs is projected to add another $20 million.
In contrast, the State Department requests for the Philippine military have been declining. It sought only $11.1 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) this year until the US Congress came to the Philippine military’s rescue and voted to maintain the 2007 level of military aid, allocating $29.6 million in FMF this year.
But for 2009, the State Department is seeking just $15 million in FMF for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Total State Department requests for assistance to the Philippines is $99.2 million for 2009.
Human rights, freedom imperatives
Congress wrote a condition for the AFP to get the last $2 million in its FMF allocation to a State Department certification that it had complied with United Nations recommendations against extra-judicial killings and the assurance US military aid is not used against President Arroyo’s political opponents.
In March 2007, the Senate foreign relations committee held a historic hearing, listening to the testimony of Filipino religious and human rights activists. They told the panel, chaired by California Senator Barbara Boxer, that more than 800 religious, lay people, journalists, labor leaders and peasant organizers have been killed under a “culture of impunity”, allegedly by members of the Philippine military and police.
AFP officials have denied the allegations and emphasized the military no policy of targeting civilians.
The Filipino delegation sought to tie US military aid to the Arroyo’s administration adherence to human rights.
“One constant, whether talking old issues or new, bilateral or regional, has been our work in Asia to support freedom and human rights,” Ambassador Marciel said.
“Issues of liberty and democracy are part of our engagement in the region. Sometimes other countries are not thrilled by this, but most understand it is part of who we are,” he stressed.
America’s chief envoy to ASEAN adds, “I sense a growing demand for human rights and democracy in the region, and countries responding to it. The US tries to play a supporting role.”
Dr. Chalk noted that a large chunk of US military aid goes to support the Philippine Defense Reform (PDR) agenda. “There are signs defense reform within the AFP is being institutionalized and taking on the type of self-sustaining character.”
He said the AFP’s “honorable warrior” initiative is showing signs of “inculcating an ethos of military professionalism”.
“This innovative program singles out members of the armed forces deployed in Mindanao who have served with distinction and who have been active in promoting action against human rights abuses, graft, embezzlement and other questionable practices,” Dr. Chalk wrote.
“We have a good story to tell,” stressed Ambassador Marciel.
“The form of our engagement sometimes changes as new issues arise, but the strength of it does not. We are very committed to the region, and we see great opportunities. We plan to be a good partner for Southeast Asia for a long time to come,” he concluded.
