The recent successes of the AFP in pushing back the Maute group and retaking most of Marawi has been exciting and has led many to speculate that the battle could soon be over.
“It won’t take any more a month. It will take days na lang siguro or weeks,” Western Mindanao Command commanding general Maj. Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr. said in a press briefing in Marawi.
He said the city would be liberated from Islamic State (IS)-affiliated criminals in “10 days or two weeks.”
“That’s our timeline,” he said.
10 days or two weeks? That's great. Slow and steady always wins the race and the AFP doesn't want to get too excited and distracted by arbitrary deadlines because that would be absolutely careless. Get the job done by picking off each terrorist one by one and just know that victory is right around the corner. Setting exact dates would lower morale especially if these target dates are not met as was the case back in June when the government said it would all be over in three days.
We don't want a repeat of that.
“It could be over at the end of this month,” Lorenzana said.
“That’s what the people on the ground told me,” he told reporters later in an ambush interview. “So I trust them… They were the ones who told us matatapos na sa katapusan.”
How did the people on the ground tell Lorenzana that the battle could be over at the end of the month when they were previously quoted as saying it would take another 10-14 days?
In Eastern Samar on Thursday, Duterte again admitted that the government underestimated the capabilities of the Maute terrorists.
“Actually, it is the SAF, the Special Action Force, which were organized to meet urban terrorism. Nabigla lang talaga tayo doon (We were caught off-guard). We knew that they were stacking arms. We knew that there were arms going around and passing around. But we never realized the extent of their ordnance and bombs, explosives and guns and ammunition,” he said in remarks marking the 116th anniversary of the encounter between Filipinos and American troops in Balangiga.
“Today, we are still fighting but I hope that by the end of the month, we’d be able to resolve the issue,” the President said.
Because the September 30th deadline was not met the AFP is now asking for an extension.
Security forces have asked for an extension after failing to meet the announced September 30 deadline to retake Marawi City from ISIS-inspired local terror groups.
Last week, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced that the security crisis in Marawi “could be over at the end of this month.”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines, however, said that the clearing operations may take 10 to 15 more days.
"We will ask for some leeway... Maganda naman 'yung usad ng operations," Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez, Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) commander, said in a television interview. Westmincom is the area command in charge of Marawi operations.
How
more ridiculous could
the AFP get? Ask for an extension? What if Duterte said, "Sorry but you failed for the last time. No more extensions." Will the war stop? Will everyone just
pack up and go home? The
notion of asking for an extension is absolutely
ridiculous
. This
is not a term paper, this is war! The
AFP must fight to the finish.
Not only was Duterte wrong about the fighting ending by the end of September but he is also lying about being caught off guard. As he admits in the next sentence the government knew the terrorists were stacking arms! So what if they did not know the exact extent or the specifics of Maute's ordnance? They KNEW Maute was stacking arms and nothing was done because, as Duterte has previously admitted, of the soft stance on terrorism due to the peace process with the MILF.
Duterte cannot get his stories straight about anything. Remember why the Marawi siege started?
Well forget about all that! That's not what happened at all. A botched attempt to arrest Abu Sayaf leader Isnilon Hapilon is not what led to the Marawi attack and subsequent extended battle. It was actually drugs that caused the whole thing. Specifically the attempt to arrest a drug lord.
President Rodrigo Duterte claimed on Tuesday, September 26, that the war in Marawi was ignited by an arrest warrant for a drug lord in the southern Philippine city.
"The Marawi war was ignited by the service of a summons and a warrant of arrest for one of the drug lords there. There was a firefight, and that started the rebellion," Duterte said in a speech past 8 pm on Tuesday.
"And I was really aghast to know that until now they have so many bullets, ordnance, and everything, that the fight is still going on," he added in his speech during the 56th anniversary of the Philippine Constitution Association at the Manila Hotel.
What is the name of the drug lord? Why was the AFP and not the PNP attempting to arrest a drug lord? Duterte is aghast to know they have so many bullets and ordnance? When he has already admitted that he knew they were stacking arms? The craziest thing about this speech is not all the brazen lies but the fact that he gave it at the 56th anniversary of the Philippine Constituion Association! This is the man who said he wold not listen to Congress or the Supreme Court if they contradicted his martial law order! This is the man who has sought to abolish the CHR, a constitutionally mandated bureaucracy. This is the man who said, "
They keep on talking about the Constitution. That's nothing to me, actually. Do not give me that piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything to me at all." This is the man who said in 2015 that he wanted to impose martial law, declare a revolutionary government, and write a whole new constitution in order to set up a whole new system. Why is he speaking to a group whose website says:
We are what we make of our Constitution. When we respect and obey the Constitution, we respect and honor the sovereign people. When we trifle with or desecrate the Constitution, we betray our nation and we become traitors to our people.
As the AFP continues its push through Marawi they will have to contend with other conflicts in Mindanao.
The Army here on Monday said it had prevented the execution of a terror plot to conduct bombings targeting heavily populated areas in North Cotabato with the arrest of a student of the late Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, and the recovery of bomb-making materials and high-powered firearms in his hideout.
Lt. Col. Gerry Besana, head of the 6th Infantry Division Civil-Military Operations Battalion, said the arrest of Muslimin Ladtugan, a bomb expert belonging to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), prevented what military officials said was a string of bombings meant to divert military focus away from continuing operations against Islamic State (IS) followers in Marawi City and Maguindanao province.
This incident underscores just how foolish it is to say the battle is almost over. Marawi is not where the battle lies. The real battle lies in the hearts and minds of all the ISLAMIC community in Mindanao. The battle has been raging for centuries and it will not be over in 3 days. What is happening in Marawi is a much larger symptom, the cause which is ISLAM.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has called for a kind of assessment that would go beyond the physical needs of affected residents in the war-torn Marawi City, as the government embarks on preparations to rehabilitate the conflict-stricken area in Mindanao.
At a gala dinner at Manila Hotel on Thursday, Lorenzana noted that spiritual and moral recovery is “even more” important than the physical rehabilitation of the city.
”As we are in the process of rehabilitating and reconstructing the physical aspects of war-torn Marawi City, it is even more important to assess the spiritual and moral recovery of the people,” Lorenza said.
“It is only when the people have morally recovered that we can finally say that Marawi has risen again,” he added.
Lorenza pointed out that social and spiritual recovery essential in countering the spread of radicalism and violent extremism in the area.
“Let us make sure that we will win the war against the extremism by winning the hearts and minds of the people,” he said.
Lorenzna is out of his head. Spiritual and moral recovery? Marawi and Mindanao have been plunged into chaos and conflict because of ISLAM. There is no morality or spirituality in Mindanao and there never was. Islam is a religion of violence and horror and it has transformed the region into a place full of honour killings, gang conflicts, terror, and criminality of all sorts.
"On the first day, we weren't too bothered because it was just gunshots. Marawi has always been very chaotic: family feuds or fights over women and money. They're called 'rido' (honour killings). When it's a 'rido', the police don't bother following up."
Mindanao is a patchwork of local magnates: the former Davao Mayor and now President Rodrigo Duterte is a classic example. For nearly two decades, he ruled his city firmly, creating a rare haven of peace and prosperity. As Manila's authority fluctuated; men (and women) such as Duterte were literally the law in their respective bailiwicks. However, if you were to drive just a few miles from Davao, the "Pax Duterte” totally evaporates.
On the one hand, there is an “alphabet soup” of Muslim groups –from the MNLF to the MILF. Indeed, the Maute were an MILF splinter group led by Abdullah Maute, founder of a so-called “Islamic State” in Lanao. If that wasn't complicated enough, Mindanao is also a major theatre of operations for the Communist fighters, the NPA. It's a confusing blur of religion, ideology, separatism and criminality.
Marawi is an enigma for many in the Philippines. Besides it being predominantly Muslim, there are a number of urban legends that reinforce the city’s exceptionalism. Its inhabitants are said to be fiercely independent and generally resistant to authority.
Talking to locals has led me to see the conflict not as some huge civilizational show-down – ISIS attacking the Catholic Philippines – but more as an ultra-violent gangland conflict that has assumed a religious agenda.
http://news.abs-cbn.com/blogs/opinions/08/21/17/shattered-lives-marawis-refugees
Read this testimony from a former Marawi hostage.
Acopio confirmed military reports that hostages were asked to enter abandoned houses to collect arms, ammunition, and jewellery.
"Si Omar mismo nagsasabi na lahat ng bahay dito sa Marawi ay may baril at bala(Omar himself said all houses in Marawi have guns and bullets)," Acopio remembered Omar Maute saying. True enough, the hostages often had 'good harvests' from the abandoned houses.
He also made friends with the foreign fighters whom he sometimes served as interpreter, and child warriors who liked him and treated him like a big brother.
Acopio said the children made the fiercest fighters in Marawi and they liked to watch ISIS propaganda videos, including the beheading of hostages. He said they have been clearly brainwashed to fight for the radical ideology they're too young to even understand.
"It's disgusting," he told them once but the children defended the violence.
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/183510-maute-hostage-lordvin-acopio-marawi
Every house filled with guns and ammunition, honour killings, family feuds, criminality, chaos, children who enjoy watching ISIS beheading videos; there is absolutely no spirituality or morality to recover in Marawi because there never was any. Or maybe Lorenzana means he wants to restore Marawi to exactly how it was before the siege. Only the most soulless and heartless would wish such a dreadful thing.
The spiritual and moral heart of Marawi is not the only thing Lorenzna is clueless about.
“The Marawi is a class by itself because we have not yet found out how they got in, a lot of them coming from other places, from outside the Philippines, from Malaysia, Indonesia, from Jolo, Sulu, Basilan and other places in Mindanao,” Lorenzana said during a press conference on the recently concluded Tempest Wind drill.
He said he did not expect the Maute members to be big in numbers.
“I estimated at the start of the conflict that there [were] about 250 terrorists there. It turned out there may be more close to a thousand of them that are being killed every day as if the number of people fighting us does not stop,” he said.
He said they are going to intensify their intelligence effort with assistance from the United States and other countries.
“So we are going to intensify our intelligence efforts, we are trying to upgrade our technical capabilities with the help of the US and other countries [that] are capable of those technical capabilities,” he said.
Undoubtedly the people are eating this story up. "We were caught off-guard but now we are addressing the problem the best we can," says the government. "Yeah they were caught off-guard and they are doing the best they can now," echoes the government supporter not realising that the government admits they knew and that they did not know in almost the same breath. "We were caught off-guard?" If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.
It's good that Lorenzana says the Philippines will intensify their intelligence efforts with the help of the USA but only if the Philippines will actually listen to what the USA has to tell them. The Philippines had intelligence reports from Indonesia and Malaysia about ISIS but they totally ignored those reports.
Like a dutiful husband to an unfaithful wife or a big brother to his weak and ignorant little brother the USA has continued to give weapons and money to the Philippines in the face of the ungrateful Duterte who has publicly said "Goodbye America" because he wants an alliance with China and Russia. You don't know what you got until it's gone and it seems as if Duterte and the Philippines have to learn that lesson the hard way.
A significant drawdown of U.S. troops in troubled areas of the southern Philippines early this decade may have helped the Islamic State (IS) infiltrate local Muslim extremist groups, the nation’s defense chief said Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana made the assessment as he pushed for a stronger partnership with the United States, noting that at the height of joint efforts to combat terrorism from 2002 to 2010, hundreds of American soldiers were on the ground on a rotating basis in the country’s south as part of Washington’s global terrorism fight.
The Americans later pulled back to just dozens of advisers after assisting Filipino troops fight local Abu Sayyaf militants, the IS forerunner in the south, who were involved in kidnappings of foreigners for ransom.
“Because of that drawdown, maybe we were blindsided and that this is the time the other threat groups came in that are already ISIS-inspired people,” Lorenzana told reporters, referring to another acronym of the Islamic State.
The Philippine army is unprepared for a long term fight with any enemy and the support of the USA is crucial to success in the war against ISLAMIC terrorism in Mindanao.
“We have no preparedness whatsoever. That’s a fact,” Enrile told reporters after scrutinizing for two hours the DND's P158.86-billion proposed 2016 budget.
“Mr. Secretary, I’m telling you, the amount of your budget is minuscule to the needs of this country. You better work it and tell Malacañang, this is not enough,” Enrile told Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin.
The senator also compared the department's budget to that of their counterparts in the region.
“In 15 years, with our...funding compared to [that of our] neighbors, what kind of credible defense would that be to us? You have to remember they are also spending money and you are also spending small funds. Sila advanced na, tayo hindi pa. Are we really absolutely committed to safeguard [the country and] mounting territorial defense?” he said.
Enrile said that with the Bangsamoro Basic Law, "we are surrendering almost the whole sink [sic]." He added, "What they have conceded to the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] is actually an act of surrender."
Enrile added, however, that while "the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf can be handled by ground forces," external threats and "looming changes, the remapping of the world" can only by handled by "sophisticated armed forces of the Philippines."
Enrile also advised the DND to secure an alliance with the United States.
“America is challenging China in the West Philippine Sea not because of the Philippines but because of free trade, freedom of seas, that is the one that is stabilizing the economy and security of the present world,” he said.
In an interview after the budget hearing, the senator said that the US will remain the world's most powerful country this century.
This
article is from 2015. How
prophetic. And how sad that, like Cassandra, nobody listened
. 155 AFP soldiers dead after four months of fighting all because they were not prepared to handle a situation like the one in which they are currently embroiled. We can only pray it will all be over soon.
Let's say by October 15th.
