Last in a 3-part
series
(Editor's note: In this concluding essay, journalist Criselda Yabes examines the mistakes that were made during the attack in Zamboanga City, which she visited as the conflict entered its third week. On Saturday, the military announced that the siege was over.)
The siege in Zamboanga City has shown that Mindanao has ceased to be grasped as a whole, as a single issue for the Muslims. For every peace paper signed, another one will have to follow with a breakaway group, and then another if we keep failing to understand the pieces that have broken over the years, centuries even if you’d like to go that far back.
Misuari was one piece of that process. He cannot be removed from the picture, to be viewed under the range of a strategy if President Benigno Aquino wants peace so badly for Mindanao.
Aquino may also want to have a better choice of generals. Zamboanga, for one thing, is the headquarters of the Western Mindanao command, which could have called on its forces to cut off Malik’s entry into the city. It had five Marine battalions in Sulu, six Army battalions in Basilan, elite units thereabouts of the Scout Rangers and Light Reaction Company, and an Army division north of the peninsula.
Yet, quick decisions made in this ‘war’ dissolved into a level of tactics, according to accounts from troops on the ground. The military had to wing it as the days wore on; the last thing it needed was having a commander-in-chief send in his buddy, the Secretary of Interior and Local Governments, wasting time on PowerPoint presentations on the situation.
The President chose a military
solution when he arrived on the fifth day of the crisis, and there was no
turning back from that. Otherwise his weakness of buckling down and that of his
military could have opened a wider catastrophe. At his beckoning, forces were
brought in from other parts of the country, from northern Mindanao, from Luzon,
from Bicol and the Visayas whereas in the critical early days, the military had
to grope, pulling in a platoon here, getting drivers and cooks and retired
soldiers there. Forces in Sulu and Basilan had to stay put, in case of a
swelling of the tide in favor of the rebels.If he knew his mettle, a three-star general running the Western Mindanao Command should have known what to do, either preemptively or nipping it in the bud. As much as I could indulge in hindsight, the other face of this is removing Misuari from his piece of Mindanao, destroying his armory, and seeing him for what he is. But that would have to come at a price, here in Zamboanga. That means another generation of children of war, a renewed cycle of anger, as Musa the Muslim teacher in the evacuation camp pointed out.
How long will it take for Zamboanga to heal? Will my friends find the courage to leave their homes after the military proclaimed that the siege was over, fearful and traumatized and paranoid of every conspiratorial rumor they hear? Will the face of a Muslim, such as Musa’s, suffer a backlash? And will the Tausugs too see that they have been victims of their own people?
“Remember our schoolmates?” Mayor Beng asked me when I went to see her in her temporary office by refugee center. She was in my younger sister’s high school batch in Pilar College, a girls’ school right by the seaside boulevard into which the refugees have spilled out from the evacuation camp, given tents to set up by the shore. “We grew up with them in the ‘70s, they’re professionals now” – and I know what she meant by this: the Muslims, they can’t all be the same.
“Zamboanga is your home,” she spoke to the rebels as an imaginary audience. “Your children grew up here, you built your house here, don’t make this city a staging ground for your warfare.’ Right then I had a sad suspicion that Zamboanga will put up a wall. This has gone too far. It has pushed them to the brink.
We grew up trying to be normal from the spillover of the war in Sulu in the ‘70s, the common occurrences of violence, kidnappings, killings, bomb explosions in bazaars and movie houses. Trying so hard we danced to disco music, made out with our boyfriends, hung out at the Pasonanca Park.
Mayor Beng’s mother was our neighbor in Santa Maria near the Air Force base, where signs of daily routine were picking up as the siege entered its third week. Sari-sari stories were open, traffic was moving in this part of town regarded as the suburb. I remember she had the most vibrant collection of orchids in her garden and others had followed. Zamboanga, our City of Flowers.
There had to be an end. Did it have to happen, like a boil waiting to burst?
Two of my high school classmates managed to sneak out and meet me in my hotel, whose German chef I’m told had told catered meals to the President during his nine-day stay at the military headquarters. The people of Zamboanga didn’t want Aquino to leave, not until they were sure it was done and they could carry on again. In the early days when no action was taken, they were cursing him. On the balcony we smoked to relieve tension and talked about the inanities of a soap opera they’ve been watching to get their minds off the sound of firing in the distance, but just the same they rushed home five hours before the curfew at 8 p.m.
I left my city on a C-130 cargo plane. Across the Air Force base is a bungalow where we used to live when I was little. We would hear the repetitive roar of the planes and helicopters, getting used to the pace of the city which, during those tumultuous years in the ‘70s, suddenly had a wave of refugees seeking shelter. Muslims of that generation had seen the burning of Jolo, an event censored by the Martial Law press; it took me well into my years as a journalist to find out what really happened.
This time around, I know what happened in Zamboanga. The bugles mourned at the military honors for an Army officer and two policemen whose caskets stood on the tarmac for a send-off. One by one they were lifted into the cavern of the plane, each one draped with the Philippine flag. I didn’t expect to be on a flight with dead soldiers, their steel coffins beside me by a borderline of bags and boxes.
I have struggled to write this piece despite what I have learned of Mindanao as a result of my childhood, and why I kept coming back to it. Believing in a far-fetched promise of hope, all these things came down to the sight of the caskets in the dark as the plane’s giant door closed: senselessness. – YA, GMA News
Part 1 - In the shadow of Fort Pilar, anger and pain in Rio Hondo
Part 2 - Misuari's journey: From the burning of Jolo to the siege in Zamboanga
Raised in Zamboanga City, CRISELDA YABES is the author of the novel 'Below the Crying Mountain,' on the rebellion in the south in the 1970s. Published by the University of the Philippines Press, it was nominated for the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize. Her latest book, 'Peace Warriors,' which followed the military in Mindanao, won the National Book Award last year.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/328688/news/specialreports/the-battle-for-zamboanga-what-went-wrong
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