RP pullout from Iraq no surety vs terrorists

Filipino Christians and Muslims united in supplication Saturday for the life of Angelo de la Cruz. Power of prayer brought quick national relief. Angelo’s Iraqi abductors delayed his beheading with their new deadline for RP to recall its peace-keeping forces. But after the last amen also came quick recriminations. "Angelo’s blood will be on President Arroyo’s hands if she doesn’t comply," cried a militant at a Manila vigil for the compatriot. It echoed an earlier reproach by a defeated presidential candidate that RP policemen should not be in Iraq in the first place.

The finger-pointing is understandable. A man’s life is at stake, and it is his government’s duty to do everything it can to save him. But the blame is misplaced. Angelo is a civilian, a trucker merely following orders of his Saudi boss to deliver oil to Iraq. His captors from the Khaled Ibn al-Walid Brigade had committed terrorism by taking hostage a noncombatant. It is they who must answer for Angelo’s safety. They may be fighting for a cause that divides the world between champions of Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein’s ouster and critics of the US-led invasion. Still, their "fight for liberation", whether nationalist or in this case Islamist, gives them no right in civilized society to vent frustrations on a civilian.

The government is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. On one hand, it had banned any deployment of workers to Iraq until the smoke clears. On the other, Arab employers have been recruiting Filipinos into surrounding lands, then sending them to profitable sorties to Iraq. On one hand, it aims to create millions of jobs so that Filipinos need not risk life and limb or leave families for overseas placement. On the other, there’s no telling how many workers will still venture abroad even if jobs were aplenty at home. On one hand, it committed to the UN a 51-man civic and medical unit up to August 20, and they are being asked to stay by villagers they have helped. On the other, it is now faced with a July 20-deadline to withdraw in exchange for one man’s freedom. But it is clear: the devil is terrorism, and the deep blue is the prospect of more assaults on Filipinos if the government succumbs to this one.

There is no guarantee that terrorist abductions of Filipinos will stop with the repatriation of the peace-keepers. The Islamic Army of Iraq, the shadow hierarchy of the so-called freedom fighters, had held and killed an American, an Italian, a Lebanese and a Korean, all of whose governments took part in Saddam’s downfall. A separate band from Angelo’s captors is holding two men from Bulgaria, which has sent a platoon along with the Polish contingent. Yet they had freed two Turks and two Pakistanis unharmed, for the simple reason that they are Muslim. It didn’t matter that Turkey and Pakistan had helped dislodge the Taliban from Afghanistan and subsequently hunt for Osama bin Laden, the leader of all Islamist terrorists. China, which had opposed the invasion, is now raking in the main share of the new Iraqi consumer market. But its citizens too are prone to attacks.

The only thing sure about the jihadis is that they can kill at will. In Khobar in May, the throats of 18 civilians, including three Filipinos, were slit by Saudi jihadis who attacked an oil-related complex. Their crime, if it could be called such, was to have been working in a land where militants want the US military and their own monarch out. It only means that, even with no RP civic-medical missionaries, terrorists would attack any of the 4,000 Filipinos regularly sent on deliveries to Iraq, or the 750,000 others working in Saudi Arabia, and the close to a million more in other Arab lands. Why, the retreating Khobar attackers also fired automatic rifles at a schoolhouse for expat kids.

Conversely, any sign of government weakness is viewed by terrorists as opportunity. Army withdrawal from captured Moro separatist camps in Mindanao led to the Rizal Day 2000 bombings in Manila. Ransom payments for abducted priests in Basilan and Sulu only emboldened Abu Sayyaf bandits to kidnap vacationing foreigners in Sabah and Palawan, and entire grade-school classes as well.

Withdrawal of the 51 Filipino policemen from Iraq is a tempting option; it will take only half a planeload to do it. But what if the attacks continue? Will local militants and defeated candidates then blame the government for not creating the million jobs fast enough to end the exodus of Filipino workers? Where will the blaming stop? Will parents also be faulted for not being rich enough so offspring can inherit blue-chip stocks and thus not have to work abroad or at all?

The government thankfully has been on its toes for Angelo. No less than the labor secretary is looking into his family’s psycho-spiritual counselling. The Cabinet oversight committee on internal security has been meeting everyday to monitor events. A retired general is in the Middle East to oversee talks for Angelo’s release. All RP embassies in the region are under orders to assist. President Arroyo has asked four Arab countries to mediate. If the government decides to give in to the captors’ ploy, Filipinos of all faiths will have to unite in prayer again as they brace for more attacks at home and abroad.

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A second PNP general is now presenting a new birth certificate to show that he was born a year later than his old one states. The one-year difference will not only stop his retirement by July, but also enable him to stay in his influential post. The first general to present a similar new birth record was suspected to have faked it.

In truth there is a thriving racket in bogus certificates. Officials at the Bureaus of Internal Revenue, Customs and Immigration have been known to secure such new records from hometown civil registries. To cover their tracks, they then pay insiders at the National Statistics Office, some courts and even school registrars to alter other dates as well. The aim is to stay in office for another year or two – to steal, of course.

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Catch Linawin Natin, Mondays at 11 p.m., on IBC-13.

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