Zamboanga City: Home of The Military Gray

By: Zamboanga.com Editorial  -  September 14, 2002

Zamboanga City has the distinction of being the home of the Philippine Military's Southern Command (SouthComm) headquarters.  SouthComm gained its prominence during the martial law days of the Marcos regime.  Today, it is a pillar of strength for the defense of the country's southern territory.  It is were the strategies for defeating the Abu Sayyaf terrorists and their known Al-Qaeda operatives are being drawn up and honed for field application.  It is also the center for dissemination of information to the press about the results of their operations.

As a military force that has been constitutionally created for the defense of its democratic society, its existence is rooted in the notion that it is accountable to the very people it is supposed to defend.  This accountability is a constitutional fact and cannot be wavered.  The enlisted soldiers and officers of this institution have taken an oath to serve their country and its citizens, and uphold the law that they have sworn to abide by.

Phew!  With that preamble, we are curious to know why the reports from SouthComm do not add up to the numbers they blurt out to the media and the public?  It is disconcerting for the world, not just the locals, to see this sense of GRAY in the reports SouthComm's officials release to the media.  How can their claims be presented as factual when there are no shred of evidence submitted to substantiate what they say publicly?  This gray area is perceived as a cover-up for their inability to effectively accomplish their military objective.  The wider this gray area gets, the worse the public's (and the world's for that matter) trust on SouthComm and its leaders gets (please refer to paragraph 2 above for a refresher)!

Now, let us present you with an accountability chart below of what SouthComm has provided the media thus far on the number of Abu-Sayyaf terrorists they reportedly have eliminated (30+ as of 9/13/02) in the island of Jolo:

As you can see, we made the above chart to deliberately dramatize the physicality of SouthComm's reports to the media and the public.  It does not take an aspirin to know that the above representation is very painful for a learned mind to absorb!

It is basic military protocol to NOT claim anything to be true unless you have verification.  You cannot claim to have verification unless you have proof of claim.  If your enemy allegedly carried away their dead after being killed by your troops, it is not militarily or politically prudent to proclaim such a gray issue without proof.  It is the same rules of conduct your American counterparts use in not affirming the death of Osama bin Laden.  They try to be very calculating and precise in their delivery of factual news.  If a super power like the United States can practice the art of accuracy and refrain from presenting fluff, why can't the SouthComm officials hold their comments until the truth is at hand?  Could it be that there is more to read in between their statements?  Why don't we delve into that gray area and apply the same principles SouthComm does to its reports...

Pursuant to the claims SouthComm officials have made to date, their field soldiers have killed over thirty Abu-Sayyaf guerillas and correspondingly have suffered ten dead and over twenty-eight injured soldiers.  The numbers given for the affected soldiers are more tangible to the press and the curious world.  However, the numbers the SouthComm officials give for the Abu-Sayyaf are a lot more capricious and gray-filled than anything our black and white world can accept.  It bears further deliberation as to why they paint it that way.

The only way an enemy can remove its fallen comrades and be successful in running away from their opposing fighters is when they have the higher ground or the upper hand, and have pinned their opponents into a defensive position.  It is unthinkable that a live combatant can carry a dead comrade (let us for argument sake say the dead person is diminutive in height and weighs a scant one-hundred pounds) in the thick of the jungle, being hotly pursued by its enemy (if such is the case), and be successful in evading them completely without leaving any remnants or being killed in the process.  If this is so, as the gray reports imply, then SouthComm is telling us that their enemies are super-humans!  No wonder!  They might as well recruit Rambo!  Aren't these the same Filipino soldiers trained by the elite U.S. Special Forces on guerilla warfare for six-months?  What is going on?

Their military assault rifle, which is basically issued by the U.S., has a probable effective range of four hundred meters long-range, and about fifty to one-hundred meters up close.  It is not likely that a thick jungle environment, like the one in Jolo, will allow for a long-range encounter.  In that close-range battle scenario, a fleeing enemy cannot possibly have the time or the capacity to carry its dead and still be effective in escaping.  Try to picture a combatant in action, carrying a one-hundred pound back-pack, and maneuvering inside a thick jungle.  If two combatants are helping recover the dead bodies, then imagine two combatants doing the same thing with fifty-pound back-packs each.  Let's not forget that while they are in the process of retrieving their fallen comrades, they will be a serious liability to themselves and the others by not being able to respond effectively in a fire fight.  Another gray possibility could be that the soldiers just shoot down suspected guerillas as they patrol the jungle, but don't bother making verification of identity and just continue to move along.  If that is the case, then it is highly possible that they are killing innocent civilians who they perceive to look like the enemies, which would be easy to do in this island of Muslims.  If so, General Gray, can we call your aforementioned claimed/non-confirmed body count a massacre?

The only way for the Philippine Military to claim they have killed so many Abu-Sayyaf guerillas without a body-count confirmation is when they are holding a defensive position, as in an ambush on them by the guerillas.  Their only ability then would be to hold their defensive position until such a time that they feel the threat of the ambush is gone, and their only possible report on enemy casualty would be visual in context.  Their being holed in a defensive position would explain why the Abu Sayyaf were able to recover their dead and have enough time to escape the ambush scene without worries of being chased down and leaving behind no physical trace of their casualties.  This scenario does not paint a pretty black or white picture for the military.  It would mean that their troops are being overwhelmed by the smaller and superior enemy, causing disproportional casualties to them, and this cannot be reported to the press.  With over two thousand troops searching for the guerillas, that sort of field statistic would create such a stir in the abilities of the Philippine soldiers, and turn the color of battle from gray to red.

We hope the military officials from SouthComm can shed some light into this gray matter.

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