An eye for an eye - Sketches

An Army officer in the presidential guards used to regale reporters with stories about going to battle in Mindanao against the Moro National Liberation Front. The lush rainforest can be a tropical hell for a soldier. He trudges up mountainous terrain without trails, looking out not only for an ambush or sniper fire but also for disease-carrying mosquitoes, leeches in creeks and snakes. The humidity can be suffocating.

For courage before a patrol or offensive, the officer said he and his comrades ate the pickled ears of dead MNLF members, washed down with beer or some of the local wines. I've never been able to confirm this story, but American soldiers in the 1900s wrote of finding severed hands being pickled in jars of fermenting wine in Northern Luzon. And Mike Tyson did bite off the ear of Evander Holyfield (although Tyson spat it out).

I guess if you can eat the ears of your enemies, you can be capable of anything. But why the grisly rite? Several soldiers who fought in Mindanao told me that when fighting Muslim rebels, you have to be ready for gruesome combat. The brutality is duly recorded in history books, when kris-armed juramentados embarked on suicide missions to chop up Spaniards who tried to Christianize Mindanao, and then the Americans who tried to "pacify" the Muslims.

Violence begets violence, and the Muslims' enemies often responded in kind, stuffing severed Muslim heads in the bellies of pigs, for example.

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Now the atrocities are back, on prime time news and CNN. You've seen the video footage of that dead soldier on a stretcher, his eyes gouged out (was that an eyeball dangling?). Muslim rebels also have a seeming penchant for decapitation. We should probably be thankful that the heads are not shrunk in brine then displayed on stakes as trophies at rebel camps, as northern headhunters used to do.

There is a surreal quality to these reports. The procession of body bags, the legs blown off by land mines seem unreal, like scenes from a Vietnam War movie -- more so because some of the military hardware is Vietnam War vintage. How can all this be possible in the age of cyberspace, in the age of rumor mongering via text messaging?

We are confused because we don't know what the Abu Sayyaf really wants. This group will not be satisfied merely with the release of Islamic terrorist Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. It doesn't want an autonomous Muslim region or even secession.

The closest I can make of its leaders' pronouncements is that they want to turn the Philippines into a fundamentalist Islamic state like Afghanistan or Libya, even if it takes several lifetimes to achieve. While embarked on this quixotic quest, they rape, kidnap, slaughter, pillage -- whatever it takes to sow terror in Mindanao.

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There are those who predict that the next global conflict will be sparked by clashing religious beliefs. But the Abu Sayyaf is not a good example of Islam, and I would like to believe right-thinking Muslims would never condone this group's activities. If any global conflict will emerge due to religion, it can only be between the forces of extremism and the saner manifestations of faith.

The danger at this point is to meet extremism with more of the same, brutality with brutality -- literally an eye for a gouged eye. In the jungles of Mindanao, it is easy to descend into what Joseph Conrad described as the heart of darkness. Will our soldiers start eating Muslim ears for breakfast?

Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado sounded pathetic when he grumbled yesterday that there are rules even in war: "Walang pugutan, walang tanggalan ng mata (No decapitation, no eye-gouging)."

The Abu Sayyaf will simply laugh that off. These terrorists are not human. Mercado will do better by giving the same admonition to his troops.

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BUZZ: AFP members should be heartened that the nation's highest official enjoys playing soldier boy. President Erap visited his troops in Mindanao in full military regalia, with a "commander-in-chief" nameplate, to boot. If you're wondering why the President, who has slimmed down in recent months, looked heavier in military costume, it's because underneath the uniform was a bullet-proof vest.