By Herbert Docena
 
Rising just 700 meters high from the interior but visible from most parts of the island, the mountain called Bud Dahu looms like a distant memory over the island of Sulu in the southern Philippines. Once an active volcano, Bud Dahu¹s peak is now over-crowded with soaring trees of jackfruit, mangosteen and other tropical fruits you could hardly see the sky; bamboos, ferns, and shrubs have invaded every inch of its extremely fertile soil; the vegetation is so lush and so thick that it is almost impossible to walk through from rim to rim. It is as though nature has been trying its best to hide the past beneath the foliage.

It is unlikely that the American soldiers will pay a visit to Bud Dahu¹s peak. This month, about 250 more of them will join an undetermined number of GIs who have been in the island as early as February last year. The new batch is part of the more than 5,500 US soldiers who are coming to the Philippines in the latest and largest batch of the continuing and uninterrupted deployment of US troops to the country since the global ³war against terror² was launched after 9-11.