| In Philippine war on abductors, rebel opponents keep ducking
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
MANILA –– Incensed that a
ragtag band of Muslim rebels on a remote island in the southern Philippines would not stop
abducting foreigners, military commanders launched a full-scale assault that they pledged
would free the hostages and neutralize the guerrillas within a week.
That was nearly six weeks ago.
Although two French journalists
and a dozen Filipino evangelists who were being held by the Abu Sayyaf rebels managed to
flee during first few days of the bombardment on Jolo island, the military operation soon
bogged down, with soldiers unable to pinpoint the exact location of the guerrilla leaders
and their five remaining hostages, including an American who was captured when he
attempted to visit the rebels' lair.
On Wednesday, though,
Philippine generals finally received a battlefield report they could brag about: Three of
the hostages, who were kidnapped from a Malaysian resort in mid-September, were freed
after troops stumbled upon a group of about 30 rebels in a mangrove forest and engaged
them in a firefight.
However, the failure to quickly
free the hostages and capture the rebel leaders has raised questions about the military's
tactics. Instead of a surgical-strike rescue operation launched under the cover of
darkness, the armed forces have engaged in the tactical equivalent of walking through the
front door at high noon, pummeling rebel positions with mortars, air strikes and
machine-gun fire.
As a result, the guerrillas
have opted not to engage the soldiers but to go into hiding on Jolo, a mountainous island
covered by dense tropical vegetation. Whenever soldiers get close, the rebels venture
deeper into the jungle, taking their hostages with them.
"They're using
conventional warfare on a group of bandits," said Manuel Mogato, a military analyst
in Manila. "It doesn't make sense. They should have used special forces to surprise
the enemy. They shouldn't be indiscriminately firing at the Abu Sayyaf positions."
Armed forces officials say they
are doing all they can with the tools at their disposal. The poorly equipped military has
few reconnaissance aircraft to track the guerrillas. The air force uses vintage F-4
Phantom jets and UH-1H Huey helicopters from the Vietnam era, and the navy's patrol ships
cannot keep up with the rebels' high-performance speedboats.
The military commander on Jolo,
Brig. Gen. Narciso Abaya, has voiced his frustration with the cat-and-mouse game played by
the Abu Sayyaf, likening the conflict to a "boxing match where your opponent keeps
running."
Commanders boast that soldiers
have killed 136 Abu Sayyaf members and captured 124 of them since the assault began in
mid-September; 110 other rebels have surrendered.
"These people are tired of
running away from pursuing troops," said Col. Hilario Atendido, a military spokesman.
"They are hungry and scared and admitted they could no longer stand the pressure of
the government offensive."
The military's reports,
however, have not been independently verified. Abu Sayyaf spokesmen say the casualty and
defection figures are much lower.
Abu Sayyaf, which comprises
several rebel factions that claim to be fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in the
southern Philippines, rose to international notoriety after it kidnapped 21 people, all
but one of them non-Filipino, from a Malaysian diving resort on Easter Sunday. The rebels
held many of the foreign hostages until late August and early September, releasing them
only after receiving more than $15 million in ransom payments, much of it from the Libyan
government.
Suddenly flush with cash, Abu
Sayyaf's ranks swelled from around 500 to 5,000. Gem dealers and weapons traders flocked
to Jolo. The group--which the Philippine government considers a collection of bandits
rather than separatists--bought itself faster boats and stronger firepower.
In late August, the rebels
abandoned a promise to refrain from new kidnappings when they seized Jeffrey Schilling,
24, of Oakland, Calif., while he was trying to visit an Abu Sayyaf camp on Jolo. Two weeks
later, an Abu Sayyaf faction abducted three more people from another Malaysian diving
resort, using one of their new speedboats to outrun Philippine authorities.
The new kidnappings turned into
a major embarrassment for President Joseph Estrada, who reportedly had endorsed the ransom
approach to freeing the other hostages.
A week later, the military
assault began.
Military officials say the
bombardment caused most of the new Abu Sayyaf recruits to abandon the group and blend in
with the local population, leaving only a few hundred hard-core guerrillas in the jungle.
But those rebels remain elusive.
In addition to Schilling, the
rebels still are holding a Filipino resort worker who was seized on Easter.
"We believe it's only a
matter of time" until the remaining two hostages are released, Defense Secretary
Orlando Mercado said Wednesday.
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