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FOCUS Researcher Wins Prix Du Jeune Auteur
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Our very own Aya Fabros received the PRIX DU JEUNE AUTEUR for her study on call center work. The Prix du Jeune Auteur is an annual award given by the French sociological journal, Sociologie du Travail, one of the leading academic journals on sociology of work, established by noted sociologists such as Alain Touraine and Jean-Daniel Reynaud. An article based on Aya’s thesis will be published in the journal’s next issue, while the full study will be tackled in her forthcoming book, Outsourced Selves.
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Home arrow Newsletter arrow FOP Feedback arrow US – A Renewed Hydra in Mindanao and Sulu*
US – A Renewed Hydra in Mindanao and Sulu* PDF Print E-mail
Julkipli Wadi

The closing of the US Bases in 1990 is, no doubt, one of the most symbolic victories of Filipinos against what used to be the last vestige of US imperialism in the Philippines. By voting to kick out the US Bases, the Senate displayed one of the rarest feats the country ever had since 1946. Unfortunately, that feat would probably not be repeated in the near future given the deterioration of the country's major political institutions. While that period of the '90s was placed in the pedestal of history owing largely to the heroic act of the Senate, a sober review of that period may give us a clearer idea why the US left Clark and Subic. And it may give us, too, the hint why the US simply left and rested for a while in the '90s but came back like a new hydra in Mindanao and Sulu and subsequently used many forms of engagement like military exercises, counter-terrorism trainings including camouflaged works masquerading as civic, humanitarian and medical missions which are more cunning and treacherous on Philippine sovereignty and on Moro struggle for self-determination.

On the eve of the US Bases' protest that time, the US government was actually in the process of redefining its traditional military posture the world over in favor of easier, swifter, and lethal forward presence engagement brought about by the demand of the so-called New World Order with the dawning of the post-Cold war. Aided by nature's fury of Mt. Pinatubo, the more the Pentagon developed a second thought whether to maintain old military bases in rather boring and isolated places of Luzon. These two developments are more than enough to explain why the US government did not really take a good fight to defend the retention of the US Bases then; for if the US was still interested in maintaining them, Washington would have moved heaven and earth to pressure the Philippine government to retain the US Bases. What is the wish of US government she is not able to get from the Philippines?

Was the 1990 an era of victory by Filipinos over the vestige of imperialism in the country? Yes, it was a victory but it was as temporary as it was inauspicious. No only that the animal is back 12 years after, now it is even given free accommodation and free lunch to whatever areas of the Philippines it wants to stay and to whatever resources in Mindanao and Sulu it wants to profile, map, oversee, exploit, and control. While the US Bases as military structure were immobile then, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) as a text – a virulent political text at that – allows American troops to be stationed in areas wherever they want. While there are supposedly scheduled and limited periods of their stay and there are supposedly strict Terms of Reference (TOR) to govern their movement, their engagement and their whereabouts, the Philippine government is oblivious of their continued and unchecked presence especially in down south. Instead of government assessing the presence of US troops and their continued stay and should closely monitor their movements following the Roman's dictum of the need to guard the guardians, what the country used to get is the usual dismissive behavior on the issue by the government as if it is not important as shown in the recent flippant remark of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, when he said: "the American troops come and go in this country – the soldiers all look alike so it's as if they never leave."

Many young students of Philippine politics may wonder why such a crass of values by Filipino leaders towards the United States. With out narrating the sad story of the Philippines under the hands of the US since the late 20th century, it is probably enough to reveal the source of this crassness recently. By riding on the wave of international terrorism which was an animal that the US was partly responsible in creating in Afghanistan in the '80s, the United States was in need of a new enemy knowing fully well that the Cold war was about to end and that the defeat of the erstwhile USSR was imminent. So that Islamic political fundamentalism was immediately resurrected as a global threat, which according to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) requires no less than a global response from the US and its allies. Mindanao having been known to have relatively similar precipitation of militant fundamentalism was immediately projected as the "second front" of US counter-terrorism in Southeast Asia after Afghanistan in Central Asia, a stigma that many regions and countries have to suffer since the 9/11 attack on New York and Washington.

Thus, the Philippines after a long hiatus of relative isolation from US interest reappeared in the radar screen of US foreign policy. Without wasting time and with the Philippine government salivating for US rapprochement, the Philippines was eventually befriended again and was promised anew with lots of economic and military assistance to be used particularly in Mindanao and Sulu. The arrangement is that renewed US assistance to the Philippines hinges on Philippine government's approval of economic, military, civic, and humanitarian engagement by the US in Mindanao and Sulu thereby leaving US troops a free hand whatever they do down there; or else, if the Philippine government inquire, question and possibly complain of what the US is doing, those assistance would correspondingly be tighten like a noose of control from the command centers of the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.

As Luzon became irrelevant in the new geopolitical and strategic posture of the US in the post-Cold War, Mindanao particularly Western Mindanao and Sulu Archipelago served as the suitable place to serve as a grazing ground for US troops. And the choice of Mindanao and Sulu is not accidental much less without any complication. With blood in the hands of the US especially in the Moroland after she maneuvered to dissolve Moro sovereignty and transferred it illegally to what became the Philippine Republic in 1946, the recent "second coming" of the US to Moro areas is an act of double jeopardy of the highest kind. After betraying the Moros and leaving them under her colonial stooge just like that, the US came back to Mindanao and Sulu as if she is coming for the first time without any sense of guilt and without doing any act of restitution, while subjecting the Moros anew to a bloated media war on international terrorism. By using terrorism as a pretext, the US is oblivious to the legitimate struggle of the Moros for self-determination a cause that is in fact intended to solve the mess that the US originally created in the Moroland. Like the way Moro traditional leaders were appeased in the early 20th century, the US government reached out anew to poor Moros and their leaders by throwing on them economic crumbs from time to time as a way to soften the ground and to make it easier for US troops to explore the resources of Mindanao particularly the Sulu Archipelago including the need to map the seabed of the Sulu Sea.

By having established outposts at Camp Navarro in Zamboanga City and in Luuk, Sulu, US forces now practically manned the most strategic area and sea lane in Southeast Asia that borders the Pacific Ocean, Celebes Sea, Malacca Strait, Sulu Sea and South China Sea. The US had actually wanted to station its warship in the Malacca Strait three or four years ago. However, the US failed to get her wish as Malaysia and Indonesia refused the said plan. But while she failed to control the Malacca Strait, the US succeeded in controlling the Sulu Sea and the latter proved to be more strategic since by controlling the Sulu Archipelago and her seas and other surrounding areas it is as if the US has already controlled the strategic gateway of Malacca Strait, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean and South China Sea.

Incidentally, many people because of their sheer naivety succumbed to the howl of the US that American troops are in Mindanao and Sulu simply to engage in counter-terrorism and to conduct humanitarian assistance and to countervail China's threat. In truth, these are simply pretext in lieu of larger US geo-political entrenchment in Southeast Asia and geo-strategic interest of the resources in Mindanao particularly in the Sulu Archipelago and the Sulu Sea. And now they should know! As the US long hid the main reason for stationing American troops in the Muslim South, the slip of her skirt was revealed three or four months ago when a multi-million dollar oil contract had been sealed between the Philippine government and Exxon Mobil, one of the largest oil companies in the US which provided for exploration and digging of oil in the Sulu Sea. With US troops overlooking from Malagutay in Zamboanga and in the mountain of Luuk, Sulu, the US oil exploration in Sulu and probably elsewhere in Mindanao is now under close watch from a global security guard without any cents spent by the Philippine government but whose bulk of proceeds and profits will flow not to the treasury of the Philippines but to US oil companies and American super elites depriving once again the Filipinos, the Moros and especially the people in the area of their natural resources.

* A brief paper delivered during the forum on "Bases of Continuing Conflict: A Forum on US Militarism and War," UP Manila Little Theater, P. Faura, Manila, September 15, 2008. The author is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, University of the Philippines.
 
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