Forward base

The high-precision operation on an Abu Sayyaf camp in Parang, Sulu in the southern Philippines on February 2, which purportedly killed bandit leader Gumbahali Jumdail and a number of his fellows, was said to have employed satellite-guided bombs received from the US under a confidential military assistance project. 

And there’s more where the sophisticated munitions came from, per a Philippine military document acquired by the AP. The additional firepower to be supplied by a US defence contractor will come with training, equipment upgrades to allow the Philippine military’s ageing OV-10 turboprops to deploy the bombs, and two test runs, the AP report said.

Despite the officials’ statements, issued under cover of anonymity, Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin skirted questions on the bombs and only said that the technology provided by US forces had allowed the Philippine military to learn life-saving skills and to avoid casualties usually incurred in ground assaults.

Complementing his boss’ tone, Major General Jose Villarete, commander of the 3rd Air Division in Zamboanga City in Mindanao, told the Inquirer on March 22 that only “four smart pilots using old aircraft”, and not smart bombs, were used in the attack on the bandit redoubt. His denial was accompanied by a request to “please credit our air force”.

The spokesperson of the armed forces, Colonel Arnulfo Burgos Jr, said that the Philippine military “neither confirms nor denies the existence of such munitions”, taking a leaf from the US’s official neither-confirm-nor-deny stance.

The annual training exercises are in themselves one of what Herbert Docena, a former researcher with Focus on the Global South, has listed as the five “components” of the new and different “base” that the US has supposedly been building in the Philippines.

The other four, according to Docena, are the establishment of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines with headquarters in Zamboanga but purportedly operating all over Mindanao; the establishment of “cooperative security locations”, which are either privately or technically owned by the host government but are made available to the US military when the need arises; the regular arrival of US warships and their temporary but regular stationing in various ports nationwide; and the US military’s full access to Philippine airspace, airfields and ports, as well as sea lanes.

As Docena has noted, the large-scale deployment of US troops in the Philippines commenced in February 2002, the purported aim being to help search for members of Abu Sayyaf, which the US government pronounces as linked to al-Qaeda. (Indeed, some Abu Sayyaf leaders, since neutralised, carried dollar-denominated bounties on their heads, as did the two foreigners supposedly killed along with Jumdail in the February 2 assault – the Malaysian Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, and the Singaporean Muhamda Ali, alias Mauwiya Anjala, both purported members of the regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.)

The US’s continuing presence is now a foregone conclusion, President Benigno Aquino III having expressed in an interview with Agence France Presse an enthusiastic although somewhat tempered welcome: “We will have more of the same. Their ships can come and be replenished, but our Constitution will not allow any permanent berthing here in any form. There might be increases in terms of personnel, but it will have to be very clear on when they come in and go out. They cannot be here permanently.”