By Herbert Docena

SULU, PHILIPPINES: Around 5,500 United States soldiers are coming to the Philippines this February, the latest and reportedly the largest batch in the continuing and uninterrupted deployment of US troops to the country since the global "war against terror" was launched after 9-11. About 250 of them will join an undetermined number of US troops already in Sulu, an island in the southern Philippines where the Abu Sayyaf group supposedly fled to after being driven out of neighboring Basilan island where US troops were also previously deployed. If official pronouncements are to be believed, US troops are coming only to train Filipino soldiers, give away medicines, build schools, and even give veterinary services to pets.[1]

According to people who claim to have actually seen them in action, however, US troops who have been coming to the country are doing more than that. The target: not a "terrorist" group but legitimate liberation movements in the country.

In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted to close down what were once the largest US military installations in Asia, signalling an end to permanent US military presence in the Philippines. While there were regular US deployments to the country even after the closure of the bases, these were limited to small, short, and close-ended training exercises with Filipino soldiers as part of the Philippines' military alliance with the United States. From 1991 to 2000, not one US aircraft or warship came.[2]

Since 9-11, however, the US has maintained what former US Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardone has described as a "semi-continuous" presence in the country.[3] The word "semi" may be unnecessary since not a day has passed when not one US soldier is in the country; at any given day, between one to over 5,000 US troops are deployed somewhere in the archipelago. Not only has the duration of the "war games" been extended to as long as nine months; for the first time, they began being held in actual conflict areas with live enemies whom US troops are allowed to shoot in case they get fired at.  For the past for years, there have been about 17 to 24 training exercises annually;[4] this year, that number jumps up to 37.[5] Apart from the exercises, US troops are also engaged in different and overlapping humanitarian and civil  works programs under different names scattered all over the country. Aside from stationing troops, the US also began enjoying access to various ports, airports, depots, and other military infrastructure throughout the territory, under the Mutual Logistics and Servicing Agreement signed in November 2001.

At one level, US and Philippine officials justified the deployments as part of the global "war against terror." With the presence of the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and its alleged links with the Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qaeda, various US officials have repeatedly branded the Philippines as "the next Afghanistan" or a "doormat for terrorism in the region"[6] - a charge that Filipino officials both echo and deny depending on the circumstances. At the local level, however, officials have tended to downplay the "counter-terrorist" aims of the deployments and instead emphasize their accompanying civil or humanitarian projects.
 

The Philippine constitution prohibits the presence of foreign military troops in the country without a treaty. While the Supreme Court has qualified this and allowed the entry of foreign troops for military exercises, it bans their involvement in actual combat. The Mutual Defense Treaty and the Visiting Forces Agreement, which are often invoked to justify the US military presence, also do not allow participation in actual fighting.[7] So to legally justify and counter formidable domestic opposition to the US deployments, Filipino officials have consistently maintained that the troops keep coming for a variety of reasons - never to engage in war.

Involving about 1,300 US troops, including 160 Special Operations forces, the first and most controversial of the new type of post-9-11 "exercises" was held in Basilan, an island in the southern Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf was holding foreign, including American, hostages. It was the largest US deployment to Mindanao since the US war of pacification againts the Moros from 1901-1913.[8]

Tagged a "terrorist" group by the United States, dismissed as a bandit group by some, and suspected by others as a military creation, the Abu Sayyaf could not be understood accurately if not in the context of the long-running struggle by the Bangsamoro  against the central Philippine government.[9] The Bangsamoro, who are mostly Muslim people from the southernmost parts of what is now considered the Philippine nation-state, claim a national and historical identity distinct from that of the mostly Christian northern and central areas. Once ruled under independent sultanates prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the sixteenth century, the Bangsamoro were never fully ruled over by the Spanish throughout their three centuries of colonization. It is often said that the Spanish sold what they never really possessed to the Americans at the end of the nineteenth century.
 

What followed was a long - and still ongoing - attempt to subordinate the area and its people under the Philippine nation-state. Perhaps the most decisive of these efforts was a massive resettlement policy in which mostly Christian and mostly landless people from the north were encouraged to migrate to the south. Filipino landlords and elites, multinational corporations, and settlers claimed ownership of the lands that historically belonged to the Moros or the non-Muslim and non-Christian indigenous groups in the area. So successful has the long-running program been that in 1913, Muslims constituted 98% of the region's population and "owned" all of the lands prior to colonization. By the time the war broke out in the 1970s, they accounted for minority of the population but majority of the landless. They accounted for only 40% of the population and owned less than 17% of the lands, with over 80% of them landless. Today, the Muslim-majority areas are the poorest provinces in the country.

In the late 1960s, the Philippine military - widely believed to be supported by loggers and politicians - organized and financed paramilitary groups that massacred entire Muslim communities in order to drive them out from their lands. This finally sparked massive, organized resistance on the part of the Bangsamoros. In 1972, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) formally emerged, with widespread legitimacy and popularity among Muslims. War followed, but even with more than 100,000 dead, neither the government nor the MNLF won decisively.
 

A protracted period of negotiations ensued. The MNLF eventually gave up its goal of establishing an independent state by accepting a degree of autonomy under the Philippine government. Hawks in the military and other forces that had an interest in keeping control of the Bangsamoro consistently attempted to deprive the Moros what they had settled for. The peace talks dragged, and faltered. But in 1996, the MNLF and the government forged what they called - or hoped would be - a final peace agreement in which the MNLF would once and for all lay down its arms and the government would give real power to the Bangsamaro under Philippine territory.