War Now, Pay Later 

In choosing the wrong side yet again, President Arroyo may also be jeopardizing the country¹s future relations with an independent Iraq. Much more than Angelo dela Cruz¹s life is at stake. 

By Herbert Docena* 

IN A DILAPIDATED HOSPITAL IN BAGHDAD just before the war last year, I met a nurse who suddenly started crying uncontrollably when she learned I¹m a Filipino. She suddenly remembered her colleague ­ o­ne of the thousands of Filipino nurses who were hired by the Iraqi government in droves in the 70s. 

They had become very close and somehow, the torrent of memories with her old Pinoy friend became too much too bear and the tears just started flowing. 

I went back to Iraq for the third time last March and the reaction ­ when I told another Iraqi that I was Filipino ­ was markedly different: After asking whether the Philippines is part of the Coalition of the Willing, he threatened to kidnap me. 

He let me go. But his hostility towards those who are participating in the occupation of his country is widely shared ­ not limited to marginal elements in Iraqi society. While most Iraqis I met expressed horror at the tactic of kidnapping and beheading hostages, majority of them ­ as confirmed by formal surveys ­ agree with Angelo dela Cruz's abductors demands. 

According to a recent survey commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority itself, a staggering 92% of Iraqis view all occupation forces ­ including our soldiers ­ as occupiers not as liberators. Up to 55% of would actually feel safer if all of the foreign troops leave. 

Our soldiers are, quite simply, not welcome in the Iraqis'  own country. For many of the Iraqis I met, the foreign contingents in Iraq ­ even if they¹re building schools or attending to the sick ­ are helping the United States more than they are helping the Iraqis. No matter how often President Arroyo repeats ­ and how blindly the media conveys the official line ­ that the Filipino troops in Iraq are o­n a humanitarian mission, the Iraqis clearly do not view them as such. Instead, a dominant majority of them see our troops ­ and unfortunately, our workers as well ­ as accomplices to an occupation that has already killed over 10,000 innocent Iraqis. This majority ­ and not just the hostage-takers ­ are the o­nes to whom the President will be giving in by pulling out the Filipino troops. 

If those who demand that our troops go home are terrorists, as Vice President Noli de Castro implied, then almost all of the Iraqis are terrorists ­ and mighty proud of it. Iraqis resisting the occupation in various ways see themselves as terrorists o­nly in the same way that Andres Bonifacio or Apolinario Mabini would have identified themselves as such. In characterizing those who want our troops withdrawn as terrorists, the Arroyo government is parroting the US choice of labels, thereby betraying through which lens the government sees the people that they claim to be helping. While the Iraqis may not all agree o­n the same tactics, their ultimate objective of ending the occupation and regaining their independence is seen not as terrorism but as a war for national liberation. 

And in that war, they just might win. Politically, the United States has lost the o­ne thing that could have allowed them to continue the occupation: legitimacy. Having squandered the Iraqis gratitude and relief at Saddam¹s removal, the US could no longer count o­n Iraqis to consent to their continued stay. According to the same survey, as many as 81% of Iraqis now have no confidence in the occupation forces. While the resistance's military capacity looks pathetic beside the world's sole superpower, even Pentagon officials have now been quoted as saying that the "insurgency" could not be defeated militarily because it has widespread support and popular backing. No less than the influential RAND Corporation, a prestigious think-tank whose analyses and recommendations are closely heeded by US officials, has urged Washington to admit that it is facing a full-blown nationalist insurgency. 

"What the Americans can't understand is that this is a revolution," another Iraqi I interviewed told me. "Everyone is involved. Those who can't fight will give money. Those who can't give money will give medicine. Those who can't give medicine will give food. Those who can't give food will give blood." 

 Should the Iraqi resistance prevail, President Arroyo would o­nce again have gambled the national interest o­n the wrong side. She sold the war to the public by promising that support for the war would translate to thousands of job opportunities as the country is given a share in what analysts consider the biggest post-war reconstruction business opportunity since World War II. 

That, however, was predicated o­n the success of the US¹ war aims in Iraq ­ something which has become less and less tenable by the day. Should the resistance succeed in driving out the coalition forces from their country, how would the Iraqis remember us Filipinos during those trying times? What would the foreign policy be of a truly sovereign Iraqi government ­ not o­ne installed by the US ­ towards the Philippines? 

The stakes are large and the consequences far-reaching but the plight of our OFWs in that scenario is illustrative. Like dela Cruz, our workers will o­nce again bear the brunt: What are the chances that the Iraqis, looking back to the dark days of the occupation, would welcome our workers with open arms? 

Somewhere in the collective memory of Iraqis is a list of those who were o­n their side. What are the chances that the Iraqis would forget our governments' collaboration with the US-led occupation and its eagerness to profit from the Iraqis' subjugation? 

After almost two decades of separation, the nurse I met still remembers her friendship with her Filipino colleague. Betrayal, however, is much harder to forget.  

* Herbert Docena is a Filipino analyst with the Bangkok-based policy research institute Focus o­n the Global South (www.focusweb.org). He conducted research in Iraq as part of the Baghdad-based Iraq International Occupation Watch Center (www.occupationwatch.org).