"It's been 10 months since the war broke out in Marawi. Every building was destroyed. Every wall riddled with bullets. Many lives were altered. Many fled to safety. There was relentless fighting. I was pregnant then. I was so afraid of the gunfire. We kept moving from place to place not knowing where we would end up."
So begins the harrowing true story of a young pregnant woman who evacuated Marawi during the siege last year. Eventually her baby was born, inspiring her with hope for the future. Hope that in the midst of death and destruction life will carrie on. Hope that maybe her child will live a better life than she ever did. Hope that in just a few months McDonald's will film her for a commercial promoting National Breakfast Day and give her a free sandwich.
Recently, McDonald’s and veteran journalist Atom Araullo visited an evacuation shelter in Marawi, where Atom conversed with evacuee mothers and listened to their everyday struggles—stories that echoed their hopes for their children. They shared how despite their pains, they drew inspiration from their “baby bakwits”, the collective term for the babies born and raised in the evacuation (bakwit in the vernacular) centers.
These mothers, along with thousands of evacuees living in the tents of Bakwit Village, Marawi, woke up to the gift of a McDonald’s breakfast, as the famous chain distributed free Longgadesal breakfast sandwiches in celebration of National Breakfast Day.
What could be more condescending, heartless, and cynical than using war to promote your fast food restaurant? General Smedley Butler famously said "
War is a Racket" and now with McDonald's in on the scheme who can but nod in agreement with him?
What's a bit strange about all this is not that the government didn't know how footage filmed in Marawi would be used.
The government can't be expected to know everything. They still don't know how the Marawi siege happened or how so many foreign terrorists gained entry to the country. What is a bit strange is that permits were given to film in Marawi when the clearing operations are not yet finished.
Ok maybe that's not so strange. The area is almost clear and it's not unusual to film in a war zone. Even if it is to promote an international fast food chain restaurant. But here is something that really, truly is strange.
"We will never beg for any help. Sometimes, it could mean really the dignity of the people," he said.
Well maybe this isn't strange either. It's just hypocritical. Perhaps the Philippines didn't literally get on its knees and beg for help during the Marawi siege or in the ensuing aftermath of the war against ISIS-Philippines. Maybe Duterte or Lorenzana politely asked or accepted an offer of assistance from the USA. And Australia. And China. And Russia.
There is no other country with military operations in the Philippines on the scale of the USA. It seems the public is still very much in the dark about Operation Pacific Eagle.
While China and
Russia donated military hardware, neither played a direct role in supporting the Philippine
government’s counterterrorism mission.
DoD officials
stated that as with all U.S. military operations in the Philippines, OPE-P is conducted at the request of the Philippine government.
The country's top cop said that the NPA stepped up the operation of its Sparu unit to prove that they are a "force to reckon with."
The unit, according to Dela Rosa, mostly operates in Mindanao particularly in Region X (Northern Mindanao), Region XI (Davao Region), Region XII (Soccsksargen) and Region XIII (Caraga). Its primary task is to "liquidate" its enemies, which include policemen and soldiers.
Here is an official scorecard for anyone keeping score:
In response to this rising threat the PNP has directed retired officers to train active duty officers to hunt down the SPARU.
PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa said that the primary lesson that the group of former police officials will impart to the younger set of police personnel is how to protect and defend themselves against the SPARU or the NPA’s special partisan armed regional unit.
At a press briefing on Thursday, Dela Rosa said that the PNP has an ongoing reorientation of policemen on the field as part of, “anti-SPARU operations so we would not end up victims of SPARU operations.”
Correction. These retired officers have been commissioned to teach active duty officers how to protect and defend themselves from, not hunt down and kill, these assassins. The NPA is none too pleased with this news and thinks it's the beginning of a new scenario to be played out.
"The PNP's plan to have a group of 'seasoned retired police officers' to train PNP field personnel on 'anti-sparrow' operations sound shady, to say the least," it said.
The CPP recalled that in the late 1980s, the PNP and Armed Forces of the Philippines used the "anti-sparrow" operations to set up so-called "secret marshalls," which were used to attack activists, especially among the urban poor groups, allegedly resulting in numerous cases of summary executions.
Perhaps the CPP did not pay attention to the fact that the anti-SPARU training will be defensive. With the revival of the SPARU will the country also see a revival of the DDS?
Journalist Jun Ledesma has claimed that Duterte is right and wrong about the DDS. They were formed to fight the NPA SPARU units but they did not actually exist.
Four days after, Jun Pala showed up at the coffee shop of Maguindanao Hotel, a watering hole of media men in Davao. In whisper, he told me that Colonel Tan-Gatue requested him to announce that a “Davao Death Squad” had been organized to counter the vicious NPA liquidation squads called Sparrows.
I was curious what it was all about so I again accompanied Pala to the INP headquarters. It was there where I learned that DDS was nothing but a phantom force. DDS were ghosts as well as other phantom forces conceptualized by Tan-Gatue to match the many front organizations of the NPAs. It was to scare the NPA sparrows and their mass base as well, he explained. A week later, I heard Pala announcing in is program about another group called “Christian Soldiers for Democracy”.
The third phalanx was the more visible “Contra Force”, this time with Pala himself as the head. His headquarters was located in one of the abandoned stalls at Maderazo Fruit stand. In this venue, Pala received cash donations from various quarters, mostly grateful Chinese businessmen. In retrospect, DDS was actually a successful ghost force. Since its inception, the NPA hit squads had slowed down.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1028628
How a non-existent ghost squad was able to stop a real life assassin squad is something you would have to ask God because it is He who deals in miracles. But if you aren't the type to believe in God or ghosts then I recommend the following report which offers a completely different scenario on the DDS:
Local activists say death squad killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children in Davao City started sometime in the mid-1990s, during Duterte’s second term as mayor. The group that claimed to be responsible for the killings was called Suluguon sa Katawhan or “Servants of the People,” among other names, but soon the media in Davao City began referring to it the Davao Death Squad (DDS).
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao#page
Amidst the news that thousands of NPA soldiers have been surrendering and feted by Duterte the NPA has insisted that it's all a sham.
“Deceiving and forcing people to pose as NPA surrenderees. To come up with big numbers, the AFP employs deception, threats and violence to force people pose as surrenderees,” the CPP said in a statement issued on Thursday.
The CPP made the remark in response to the military’s claim that more than 4,000 armed members and supporters of the NPA have surrendered to authorities since January.
“They must end this practice of Red-tagging and making people pose as NPA members in violation of their rights. Such practice endangers the lives of people by deliberately blurring the lines between armed combatants and civilians,” it also said.
NPA members and supporters who turned themselves in to the government last year had been divided into groups to join President Rodrigo Duterte for dinner, and tour around Manila in recent months.
“Over the past few months, Duterte himself and the entire military and defense establishment have spent hundreds of millions of pesos to stage Malacañang dinners with the President, tours around Luneta and other cheap gimmickry,” the CPP said.
The communist group also accused the AFP that some of the funds for the surrenderees went to the pockets of military officers on the field.
“According to our sources, funds from Duterte’s discretionary and intelligence funds are automatically downloaded to the ATM accounts of brigade and battalion commanders depending on the number of ‘NPA surrenderees’ they report. Thus, military field units are in a frenzy of conducting psywar operations to hold ‘surrender activities’,” the CPP said.
If there really are thousands of NPA surrenderees then of course the CPP would be upset and do whatever it took to refute or debunk these actions. Accusing the AFP of engaging in a psywar by faking surrenderees is not unfounded. Just a few paragraphs ago we found out the DDS and other organisations were alleged psywars against the SPARU. With the AFP receiving American assistance it would not be unlikely that they have been advised to engage in psywar by faking NPA surrenders since the Pentagon engages in such practices.
The charge becomes even more meritorious in light of the case of six young people accused of being NPA members
The University of the Philippines masscom graduate and her five supposed comrades in the New People’s Army (NPA), who had been detained after what the military said was a gunfight in Negros Oriental on March 3, had tested negative for gunpowder burns.
Results of paraffin tests made by the Negros Oriental Provincial Crime Laboratory cast doubt on the military’s claim that Myles Albasin and her five companions were captured after a clash in the town of Mabinay between soldiers and an NPA group.
Whatever the case, real srurrednerees or not but especially if real, it would be highly ridiculous for the government to allow former NPA terrorists to join the AFP or the PNP.
He added that the request of the above-mentioned rebels, who are qualified to join the military, are being considered and evaluated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
Accepting former rebels is not new in the PNP.
“In fact, we have a lot of former New People’s Army members who joined the police force after their surrender,” Dela Rosa said in a briefing over the weekend.
Literal terrorists in the AFP and the PNP! Letting snakes into the henhouse!
Voices are being raised calling Duterte back to the table with the CPP.
But he has no plans to do so now or in the immediate future.
The Defense chief also pointed out that he did not think that peace negotiations under the Duterte administration would work right from the start.
“No I did not think, a lot of us, the defense community did not think it would work and also lot of civilians did not think it would work,” Lorenzana said.
Lorenzana rightly didn't think releasing prisoners to negotiate with the CPP would work but Duterte did it anyway because no one can stop him from doing what he pleases. And now it's war. Or is it? Is it a war against terrorism when you fete the terrorists, give them free trips to Hong Kong, and allow them entry into the police and military? Is it a war against communism when the political party that runs the country is drinking deeply from the wells of communist China? Is Joseph Heller writing this script?
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