ANALYSIS: Were slain troops sent to get the wrong man?
KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines – With strident calls for all-out war and equally loud appeals for sobriety and peace in the wake of last week’s clash in Al Barka, Basilan that cost the lives of 14 Special Forces troops and at least five fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, questions have begun to be asked about why the incident happened and why the soldiers were there in the first place.
The MILF accused the soldiers of instigating hostilities by encroaching on its “area of temporary stay” and deliberately targeting them for attack.
But the military said the troops were not after the MILF but one Haji Laksaw Dan Asnawi, one of those accused in the killing of 14 Marines, 10 of whom were also beheaded, in 2007, also in Al Barka, as well as one Nurhassan Jamiri. The military also claimed the fighting took place four kilometers from the MILF’s ATS.
Asnawi had, in fact, been arrested earlier for his alleged role in the Marine beheadings but escaped from jail in late 2009.
So who are Asnawi and Jamiri?
Asnawi is an MILF commander, one the rebel leadership earlier described as among their “best” in Basilan.
Jamiri, on the other hand, is a commander of the Abu Sayyaf.
Under the terms of a ceasefire agreement between the government and MILF, military or police units are not supposed to enter defined rebel territory without prior coordination. And , while the military insists the troops in Al Barka were on a “police” and not a military mission, the ceasefire agreement provides a mechanism for operations against crime suspects within MILF territory – the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group.
As subsequent developments indicate, even military commanders in Western Mindanao claim they did not know of the Al Barka operation until things started going badly wrong.
But granting Asnawi was the target of the Special Forces operation, it appears that, according to the report of the Independent Joint Fact-Finding Committee created by Malacanang to look into the July 12, 2007 Marine beheadings, the soldiers were going after the wrong man.
(Click here to read the full report)
“The dastardly and barbaric acts of beheading and mutilating the dead Marines were done by the Abu Sayyaf Group of Suaib Kalibon, Nurhasan Jamiri, Umair Indama and Buhari Jamiri,” the report said.
“This fact,” it said, “was clearly established by the testimony of the two eye witnesses, one a member of the BIAF-MILF and the other a civilian. Their accounts were beyond reproach as evidenced by their voluntary return of one M16 rifle with M203 GL which they recovered at the encounter site and their willingness to testify and risk their lives and the security of their families so that truth and justice will prevail.”
The report said the Abu Sayyaf beheaded the dead Marines when the MILF withdrew after a truce was negotiated.
Interestingly, Asnawi’s name is not mentioned in the report, which was signed by committee co-chairs Colonel Gilberto Jose Roa of the Judge Advocate General’s Office, and Salman Jawari of the Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities of the MILF, and Mary Ann Arnado of Bantay Ceasefire, and members Maranaw Danganan, Abbas Salung, Alex Mujahid, Analiza Ugay and Rexall Kaalim.
Even more telling, the report recommended that “representation be made to proper authorities so that the criminal information relative to the Guinanta incident filed against some MILF members, local politicians and law enforcements personalities leading to the issuance of the warrant of arrest be reviewed owing to the fact that some eye witnesses surfaced and positively identified the real culprits.”
The IJFFC pointed out that the incident “could have been avoided had there been proper coordination and strict adherence to the established mechanisms pursuant to the General Ceasefire Agreement by both parties thereby preventing the unnecessary loss of lives and properties and the displacement of the civilian constituents” in Al Barka.
At the same time, it also said the MILF violated the truce “when they opened fire at the unsuspecting Marines who entered Guinanta” in search of a kidnapped Italian priest.
In last week’s incident, the military’s failure to coordinate its movements was also cited as one of the reasons for the clash. Then again, as the military acknowledged, Asnawi, an MILF commander, was one of the operation’s targets.
Monday, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, a former soldier, told a television network that he would seek an inquiry into last Tuesday’s incident in Al Barka and suggested that among the things to be reviewed are the parameters of the government-MILF ceasefire agreement.
Citing past incidents, Trillanes said there was a failure of intelligence on the part of military officers and added there was a need to evaluate the number of troops sent on a mission.
