Somebody goofed at the DFA, and we ‘abstained’ in the UN from our own Resolution – sanamagan!

We have a brilliant, idealistic and tireless Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Bert Romulo, and battalions of bright guys and girls (oh well, mature women) in our foreign ministry, but too frequently, in the clutches, somebody drops the ball and our country finds itself embarrassed by a totally incomprehensible diplomatic boo-boo.

This is precisely what happened last August 11, in the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, at its meeting in the UN headquarters in Geneva.

Our delegate to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Enrique "Ricky" Manalo, "abstained" when it came to a vote in a showdown meeting to decide on whether to condone or condemn Israel for its "military operations in Lebanon" which, the majority asserted "constitute gross and systematic human rights violations of the Lebanese people."

For instance, the Resolution specifically condemned "the indiscriminate and massive Israeli air strikes, particularly on the village of Qana on 30 July 2006, and the targeting of United Nations peacekeepers at the UN observer post in southern Lebanon on 25 July 2006."

The Resolution "noted with concern" the "environmental degredation caused by Israeli strikes against power plants and their adverse impact on health," and further condemned "the massive bombardment of Lebanese civilian populations," etc.

Finally, the Resolution called upon "the international community urgently to provide the Government of Lebanon with humanitarian and financial assistance to enable it to deal with the worsening humanitarian disaster, rehabilitation of victims, return of displaced persons and restoration of the essential infrastructure."

Would you believe? Ambassador Manalo joined seven other countries in "abstaining" – when, by golly, Manalo himself and the Philippine Government had only three days earlier been one of the 23 countries which had requested the "summoning of a special session of the Human Rights Council to consider the gross violations of human rights by Israel in Lebanon including the massacre in Qana, targeting of civilians and destruction of vital civilian infrastructure."!

Why this amazing volte face and switcheroo in sentiment within less than three days?

When Foreign Affairs Secretary Romulo, who was in Myanmar (Burma) on an official visit, along with DFA Undersecretary for Policy, Usec Linda Basilio, was informed of the "abstention," he blew his top.

Why had nobody consulted him, or Policy Usec Basilio? It turns out that some lower level "Director" in the DFA, acting unilaterally, had rang up Ambassador Manalo to instruct our puzzled envoy to abstain. Susmariosep: Is this how our foreign policy is conducted, by impulse from the lower ranks – or by, perish the thought, malicious interference?

Secretary Romulo has now issued a strongly-worded directive that all such matters must be approved by him, by Basilio, and his office before anything as serious as that change is made.

Yet, didn’t common sense dictate such consultation earlier? There’s a useful device called the cellphone or mobile phone, with appropriate scrambler (although, what the heck, in this age of spy satellites, anybody can listen in anyway).

At a three-hour meeting yesterday morning with Secretary Romulo and our Undersecretary for Special Concerns (meaning among other things, Middle East "troubleshooter"), Ambassador Rafael E. Seguis, this writer tried to pry out of the two the name of the "Director" who had meddled, but they discreetly kept the identity (or even sex) of the meddler confidential.

It seems the meddling Director had lamely explained that he/she had been worried – according to the culprit’s alibi – about Israel cracking down on the 40,000 OFWs working either legitimately or TNT in Israel.

This, alas, is not too foolish or silly a concern: and exposes the weakness in our international position. As long as we have more than eight million Filipinos laboring in the diaspora, and remain over-dependent on the some $12 or more billion they send home in wages to their families back here, we will be hostage to fortune. We will be fearful of offending any state, no matter how villainous some of its acts may be, which gainfully employs our OFWs.

If you ask me, the meddlesome DFA Director ought to be cashiered or failing that (owing to civil service) sent to man some distant outpost in the boonies – dare I say Tawi-Tawi – and barred from being appointed for ten years to any overseas assignment.

I’m not eager to absolve Manalo (who’s the son of our friend, the late Ambassador Armando Manalo) for his not immediately protesting the unexpected "order" to abstain and appealing to DFA Secretary Romulo or higher authority, even though Brother Bert was away from Manila, visiting Burma’s Generals-cum-Dictators in their new capital in the wilderness, called Lay Pithaw.

I know, I know: protocol "forbids" it – but an embarrassing U-turn on a Resolution we ourselves earlier proposed is even worse than a blunder. It is a disheartening sign that we have wishbone where our backbone ought to be.

We hail our OFWs – in somewhat hyperbolic, even hypocritic fashion – as "heroes" and "heroines", but we only want their money. (As do their hungry families, since our leaders have defaulted on their pledge to make our nation prosperous and strong). However, we must never barter national honor to appease employer-states as if we were a nation of mendicants.

This is easier said, critics may carp, on a full stomach and in a comfortably air-conditioned office. But principle is principle, even when it is being eroded by chronic corrosion.

* * *

It was Brother Bert Romulo who had invited me, impromptu, to yesterday’s breakfast in the EDSA Plaza, in order that Undersecretary Seguis could clarify the status of our OFWs in Lebanon.

Seguis, who returned from Beirut and Damascus less than a week ago, is the man who engineered the evacuation of more than 6,000 OFWs from Lebanon during the 34-day "war."

In sum, Secretary Romulo pointed out, some 11,000 OFWs have left war-torn Lebanon and come home – the other 5,000 by their own means. Seguis was in the area, commuting back and forth between Damascus (Syria) and Beirut from July 19 to August 25. He had to travel by car over a roundabout route that took almost seven hours each trip – when, in the old pre-war days, we used to make the same trip by road in less than two hours. The Israelis have destroyed the international airport, and their air strikes had ripped up all the highways and bridges through the Bekaa Valley to "interdict" any rocket re-supplies or armaments coming from Syria to their mortal foes, the militant Shiite Hezbollah.

Seguis, who knows the Middle East intimately, having been an Ambassador to most of the Arab capitals over his long career, told me that 10,000 OFWs are left in Lebanon, but outside of groups of 20 to 25 lately, they don’t wish to leave since they remain gainfully employed in that country. The fragile status of the "ceasefire" which is being imperiled by a number of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) incursions, doesn’t discouraged them.

The IDF argues that until and unless an effective United Nations force is in place to form a buffer between the Litani River and the Israeli border in Southern Lebanon – to keep the Hezbollah out – their troops, tanks, and aircraft will continue to be at combat-ready, and if necessary punch in to prevent weapons and rockets being re-supplied the "murderous" Hezbollah guerrillas.

Even as hundreds of Italian peacekeepers began arriving the other day (in Tyre) to back up the 500 French troopers already there and the original 2,000-member UNIFIL Force, it appears that their mandate does not include "disarming" the Hezbollah. What then are the blue-helmeted or blue-bereted UN international troopers authorized to do? March up and down, flags flying, their bands playing rousing tunes, just to show they’re there?

If they’re only decorative, you can be sure the "war" will flare up again – and the UN force (or farce), with a 1,000 Indonesian contingent poised to join them, will be caught in the crossfire – or in the deliberate cross-hairs of the relentless IDF which is raring to have another go at Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah.

The Hezbollah, now trying to demonstrate they’re "rebuilding" Lebanon, are bragging that once again, as they allegedly did in May 2000, they defeated the Israeli military – and are being cheered by the Arab Street even in predominantly Sunni (thereby anti-Shia) nations.

Usec Seguis, who served under shot and shell for nine months as our temporary Ambassador to Baghdad – our patchwork Embassy having been kicked out of the protected Green Zone after La Presidenta abandoned the US led "Coalition of the Willing" – knows full well the implications of another IDF-Hezbollah round of fighting. Therefore, he doesn’t recommend that anybody think of dispatching any new OFWs to Lebanon, not even considering the seductive talk of the Lebanese "hiring" some 100,000 Filipino engineers and construction workers.

Considering the geopolitics of the region, the Lebanese will be compelled to hire Syrian workers, rather than other foreigners – perhaps welcoming back many of the one million Syrians who fled back across their border when the fighting erupted.

On second thought, I think the term "welcome" is not appropriate. The Lebanese don’t want any more Syrians – northern Lebanon, from the Bekaa Valley down, was occupied for 22 years by Syrian troops and armor until UN Resolution in 2004 mandated that the Syrians "leave" Lebanon (a decision made by the Security Council at the crest of a wave of indignation at Syria being implicated in the car-bomb assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who had angrily berated their "imperial" bullying of Lebanon).

The same Resolution, just as the newest one, Resolution 1701 directs today, called for the disarming and disbandment of the Hezbollah. This was never done by anybody, neither by the Lebanese government nor the UN itself.

And the "ceasefire" Resolution doesn’t say who’ll implement the disarming of the Hezbollah today. Therefore, the problem of "endless war" will probably remain. Poor Lebanon. Trapped between its own Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and the ruthless Israelis. A nation trapped by geography, and its own seductive natural wealth – a cockpit for more than a century of warring tribes, rival militias, and covetous outsiders.

* * *

As for the UN’s Secretary General Kofi Annan believing Syrian President Beshar al-Asad’s pledge that Syria would not re-arm or re-supply the Hezbollah, it’s like a naive fellow who believes a mother who swears she will deny her crying infant her breast.

Bashar (sometimes spelled Bashir) Asad, at the age of 34, had replaced his father, Hafiz, when the latter died in June 2000, after more than 27 years of totalitarian rule. Many hoped that Bashar would be more moderate than his dictatorial dad. Yet, how could he? The irregular manner in which he had been elevated to power to succeed Hafiz was a harbinger of worse to come. The Syrian Constitution required that a President be at least 40 years old, while Bashar was only 34 – but the law was quickly amended (faster than Cha-Cha). Bashar was then "elected" President by an amazing 97.2 percent of the vote in an uncontested election. What was amazing is that he did not get 100 percent, since there was no opponent. When daddy had overthrown the previous monarchy, his regime vowed that hereditary monarchy was gone forever – yet, Bashar succeeded him as if Syria were a family fiefdom under a dynasty.

It was much-touted that Bashar would be a Western-trained "reformer," but he had, in reality, only been two years in Britain when he was called home after his elder brother, Basil, the real heir-apparent, and a racing buff, drove his car at full tilt into a bridge railing in 1994.

As "crown prince," Papa Hafiz assigned the young Bashar, as a sort of on-the-job-training, to supervise the "ruling" of Lebanon, with the rank of full colonel in the Republican Guard.

A Western-educated "reformer"? No way. Bashar soon began cracking down on dissidents in Syria, the very critics he had earlier encouraged to come out and air their views. They had foolishly believed he intended to implement a more democratic lifestyle, but their folly was soon squelched in the torture chambers and behind prison bars. He did release more than 600 political prisoners arrested by his late father, most of them Islamists, but the prisons were soon full with his own roster of enemies of the state.

As for the press, he once declared in Al-Safir on July 16, 2001: "I am amazed by the insistence of those who are influenced by what is going on in Western society, and especially American society, that the press is the ‘fourth governing authority’. How can the press be a fourth governing branch in our backward Third World, where the leader does not share the rule with others!"

Of course not. In his inauguration address, he had stated, "We are in dire need of constructive criticism . . ." but it shortly dawned on everybody that to be constructive you had to be pro-Bashar. There are limits, he warned, and Syria must have "democracy Syrian style."

As the old, dashing Bung Karno of Indonesia used to perorate, "Demokrasi Terpimpin" (Guided Democracy). Poor Annan. If he expects Bashar to keep his hands off Lebanon, remember – old habits die hard.