From InterAksyon (Sep 12): Duterte orders US special forces out of southern Philippines
President Rodrigo Duterte ratcheted up his feud with the United States on Monday, ordering all American special forces out of the southern Philippines where they have been advising local troops battling Muslim extremists.
Duterte's order came a week after he called US President Barack Obama "a son of a whore", causing Obama to cancel their scheduled bilateral meeting at a summit in Laos.
The Filipino leader, the first to hail from Mindanao and who claims Muslim ancestry, has been stepping up efforts to bring peace to the southern Philippines, where decades-long insurgencies with Muslim and communist rebels have claimed more than 150,000 lives.
Last month, he restarted peace talks with the largest separatist group, the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which like others has been fighting since the 1970s for an independent Islamic state or autonomous rule.
US advisers in the area help train Filipino troops but are barred from engaging in combat except in self-defense.
Previously, about 500-600 US personnel rotated through the Mindanao region but in 2014, then-Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said this would be cut back to 200.
Duterte did not specify when or how many Americans would be expelled but said the Philippines’ alignment with the West was at the root of the persistent Muslim insurgency.
"These US special forces, they have to go in Mindanao," he told a gathering of government employees.
"The (Muslim) people will become more agitated. If they see an American, they will really kill him."
The US embassy could not be reached for comment.
The United States is Manila's main military ally and the Philippines' colonial ruler until 1946. In his speech, Duterte showed photographs and cited accounts of how US troops killed Muslims during America's occupation of the Philippines in the early-1900s to explain his decision.
Duterte's spokesman Ernesto Abella said that "the statement reflects (President Duterte's) new direction towards coursing an independent foreign policy".
Some US special forces have been killed in the southern Philippines since 2002, when Washington deployed soldiers to train and advise local units fighting Abu Sayyaf in Operation Enduring Freedom, part of its global anti-terror strategy.
At the height of that, some 1,200 Americans were in Zamboanga City and on Jolo and Basilan islands, both strongholds of Abu Sayyaf, which is known for its brutality and for earning huge sums of money from hostage-taking.
The US program was discontinued in the Philippines in 2015 but a small troop presence has remained for logistics and technical support. Washington has shifted much of its security focus in the Philippines towards the South China Sea.
On Monday, Duterte also hit out at Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for criticizing his bloody crackdown on crime that has claimed 3,000 lives in a little over two months.
"This Obama, when you accuse me of killing... let he who is without sin, cast the first stone," he said.
In a brief encounter in Laos, Obama urged the Filipino leader to conduct his crime war "the right way" and protect human rights, but Duterte has dismissed it as being none of America's business.
http://interaksyon.com/article/132354/duterte-orders-us-special-forces-out-of-southern-philippines
Duterte and his spokesperson are being a bit disingenuous.
ReplyDeleteWhen one examines propaganda statements issued over the past 5 years or so, it is really Moro-oriented Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) front organizations such as Suara Bangsamoro (Voice of the Moro People), Kawagib (Rights) Human Rights Center, Moro Christian People's Alliance (MCPA), and Liga ng Kabataan Moro (LKM-League of Moro Youth) along with other front groups that have focused on the Bud Bagsak and Bud Dahu incidents and railed against the US military presence in the southern Philippines.
While the MILF and MNLF address American colonial policies in their writings, the real target of their ire has been the policies of the Christian government in "Imperial" Manila who they view have repeatedly attempted to subjugate them and destroy their Muslim culture or sought to take away (landgrab) traditional Moro lands.
Truth be told, the US military presence in the Southern Philippines has generally been well-received by most thoughtful local residents. They have appreciated the economic development projects provided/coordinated by the US Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines as well as the moderating influence the US military presence had on the conduct of Philippine military operations.
Bottom line: The main problem confronting Moros in the Southern Philippines has not been the US military presence but rather has been the policies of the central government in Manila that have vacillated between benign neglect and economic exploitation. Isn't that the main motivating factor behind Duterte's push for federalism as the form of government for the Philippines?