The kidnapping

A month or so before I arrived in Sulu, three International Committee of the Red Cross workers were kidnapped on the island. The Red Cross wanted to believe that it was seen as a neutral party in the southern Philippines. ASG — militant Islamic terrorists responsible for some of the Philippines’ worst violence — begged to differ. Once the Red Cross group left the gates of their camp, Camp Bautista, ASG kidnapped them and held them for ransom.

Of the three workers, one was Swiss, one Italian, one Filipina. ASG had played this game before, and they knew that European hostages fetch a much higher price than Filipinos. So they released the Filipino and held the European hostages for months in the jungle. The Philippine Marines conducted multiple operations to retrieve the two hostages, usually incurring a few casualties each time. They failed each time to bring the hostages back. And after every mission and firefight, the ASG would fade into the jungle mists like ghosts.

Then, one day, word came to us that the first hostage had broken out from behind enemy lines. Shortly thereafter, the second one got away, as well. There were no details about these escapes, but it was clear to anyone paying the least bit attention that someone had paid ransoms on their behalf. The ASG are too well-armed and too well-schooled in kidnap-and-ransom to let two weary European relief workers escape so easily.

If I can point to one moment in my deployment when things took a turn for the worse, this would be it. The next month was a nightmare. More attacks, more threats of attacks, more IEDs reported, more IEDs found. How did this happen? All signs pointed to one thing: the ransom payments enabled ASG to buy supplies they needed to continue their violence. Those payments may have rescued two European lives, but they had put countless others — Filipino and American — at risk.

The ransom had another unintended consequence. The Filipino forces were now operating with a chip on their shoulder. The AFP Marines had not been able to liberate the hostages during the months they were held, a fact which badly bruised their egos. Armies differ from country to country, but soldiers share a great deal in common. One of the things they share is a deep commitment to the idea of honor. The failed raids to rescue the hostages were a hit to the AFP Marines’ honor. If everyone believed ransom had freed the Europeans, that meant the AFP was weak and feckless. They couldn’t even police their own backyard.

The AFP couldn’t live with that reputation. When they had an opportunity to restore their reputation, they took it. That day was September 20, 2009; it’s known around the world as as Eid al-Fitr, the feast that brings the holy month of Ramadan to an end.

A laughable operation
We were sitting in an all-plywood meeting room when someone mentioned that the AFP Marines were going to carry out an operation on the feast of Eid to capture the masterminds behind the Red Cross kidnapping. When I heard the plan, I broke out laughing. It was a ridiculous proposition. Sure, the AFP Marines ought to conduct a large-scale operation led by a majority Christian military against a Muslim minority, on one of the holiest days in the Muslim calendar. I shouldn’t have been the only one laughing, because everyone in that room should have recognized that this was a self-evidently stupid idea. But there I was, laughing my ass off, all by myself.

Resuming composure, I told the commander exactly what any conscientious person in my job ought to tell him, “Well, we obviously have to stop that operation. Even if they get the bad guys, there’s no way the community will understand the timing and context of a large military engagement on Eid.”

“The Phil commander says he’s got a guy inside the bad guys’ camp, and the only day the bad guys will be there is on Eid.”

“So? Let the bad guys live another day. The AFP botches these operations all the time, and there’s no way this doesn’t feed into every bit of propaganda the bad guys are telling the Muslim community. Even if the AFP gets the bad guys, they still lose.”

“We’ll support the Phils in whatever way they ask.” (The conversation turns classified at this point, but suffice it to say, it didn’t get better.)

I left that meeting with a mission: get this operation canceled, or at the very least postponed. I walked down to the office of Major Abduhadi, a Philippine Army civil affairs major I worked with every day. He and I were close; he was avuncular and attentive, the kind of guy you could open up to about matters large and small. He was ethnically Tausug, from Sulu, a Muslim and was deeply invested in helping his people. I loved that dude.

“You know what Joint Task Force Comet is planning for Eid, right?”

“Yes, Sgt. Richmond.”

“We have to stop this thing. It’s wrong, tactically, strategically. Shit, ethically.”

“I know, Sgt. Richmond.” He was downcast.

Major Abduhadi was resigned in a way that told me he’d already fought this fight within JTF Comet, as I had within my own organization, and had been overruled. Over the next week, he and I took every opportunity to dissuade our superiors from conducting the operation. The major was a Muslim in a Christian military. I was a PSYOP sergeant in a task force that believed we could muscle our way in and out of anything. We were both outsiders, fighting for the right cause, and losing the bureaucratic battle within militaries that still believed these conflicts were about body counts and turf.

'Have they no regard for our religion?'
I remember awaking to celebratory gunshots just before dawn on September 20, 2009. The call to prayer went out over the loudspeakers close to Camp Bautista, inviting all Muslims to bring their month-long fast to a close, to feast together, to celebrate Eid al-Fitr as a community of believers.

I walked out of my room into the muggy Sulu morning to see planes flying over Camp Bautista on their way to Indanan to drop their payloads. Soon thereafter, the Philippine attack helicopter spun up their rotors and lifted up from our camp to begin their strafing runs. Immediately my phone lit up with texts from our partners in the community.

“Sir, why is the AFP attacking the Muslims?”

“Why on Eid? Why attack on Eid? Have they no regard for our religion?”

“No Muslim would fight on Eid! Why do they attack us on our holy day?”

There was nothing I could say. I texted back trite answers, attempting in vain to defend an operation I’d fought against.

I went into the tactical operations center to watch the operation play out. Predictably, the AFP Marines had become bogged down in the jungle. They would be three hours late to the objective. So what did the AFP leadership decide to do? Double down on aerial firepower. They just kept pounding the mountainside with bombs, all the while the Muslims looked up from their prayer rugs, saw the aircraft, rotors and machine guns, and grew steadily angrier. In a word, the community radicalized. I could feel it in the air. And if I had been kneeling in that mosque, I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Had they attacked our base on Christmas, I would have taken it personally because of the symbolic timing of the operation. The Tausugs were no different in how they saw the Eid operation.

It didn’t take long before the Tausugs fought back with a vengeance. It’s important to keep in mind that the Tausugs were not defending the Red Cross kidnappers, the ASG. No, they weren’t broadly sympathetic with ASG’s Islamist vision of society. This was different. This operation had thrust the Tausugs back into the existential battles of the ’70s and ’80s against the Christian military. And make no mistake, Tausugs are warriors.

Reports started coming in from multiple outposts. Incoming small arms fire. Mortars.

Then came the threats. Sulu, once a key stronghold of a rebel group called the Moro National Liberation Front, has many camps of reintegrated rebels, pacified by a long period of peace negotiations with Manila. As the Philippine military attacked their target area, a bomb from one of the planes reportedly went off course and landed within the perimeter of a re-integree camp and hurt some people. The re-integree group took up their arms as they believed the military was attacking them. ASG wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to rally their supporters in the midst of this chaos. Reports from our friends in the community said that ASG was recruiting enough troops to overrun our camp once and for all.

Code Black

The first AFP casualties started to roll in. Our task force commander officially declared a Code Black, which means that you’re under imminent threat of a base being overrun. U.S. forces manned the guard towers and gates, side by side with the Filipinos, not yet understanding the depth of what was going on.

My team’s role in a Code Black was to guard our U.S. Air Force forward surgical team (FST). The FST were mostly reservists, and they were a solid medical team. They had already moved to the small Philippine military medical hospital to try to keep some of the casualties alive. My team provided security outside the hospital, which sat next to a poorly guarded perimeter wall.

The sun was setting. The threats were becoming more frequent. My contacts in neighboring communities began texting us more dire warnings: “There are 100 Abu Sayyaf massing here in Latih. They say they’re coming your way.”

I wasn’t keeping track of the number of casualties coming into the medical center. I just kept walking back and forth from the wall to my guys. The AFP had begun stacking dead Philippine Marines’ bodies in the carport where the ambulance was usually parked. They’d run out of room in the med center.

The bodies were ashen, exsanguinated. One guy had lost an arm, the other a leg just above the knee. Both dead. The last dude who lay by himself had been eviscerated. I walked back to Lugo and Lees. “Hey, there’re dead guys in the carport. Go spend 5 minutes looking at them and tell me what you learned. I’ve got your post.”

Let me offer a break in the action to say one thing: no team leader ever had a better crew than Tory Lugo and Dillon Lees. They were good soldiers, wiser than their tender years (21 and 22, respectively), and good men. One of the greatest honors of my life is that the U.S. Army allowed me to take them to war and bring them home.

Lugo and Lees hurried back to me. “Rich, why the fuck did no one put tourniquets on those two guys?”

“It looks like we’ve taught the Phils as much about combat medicine as we have about fighting a counterinsurgency.” None of us laughed.

Soon a large open-bed truck pulled into base. Someone called to us to help unload bodies. Lugo, Lees and I walked to the front of the medical center and almost choked on the smell of burned flesh and uniforms.

The truck full of Scout Marines had been caught in an ambush in Indanan. A Molotov cocktail was tossed into the bed of the truck where the Marines had been shooting at their attackers. The bodies were burnt to a crisp, and not the least bit recognizable. I lent the camp commandant my headlamp as he climbed into the back of the truck to find his younger brother who had died in the attack. They both were Muslim, Tausug, their family from Sulu. The stray light from my headlamp reflected off his tears as he searched and searched, and finally found his brother among the dead. We stacked his body with the others in the carport.

Sumber : http://www.rappler.com/views/imho/10...ed-philippines

sebenarnya ini cerita tentang tewasnya 2 personil SF US di filipina yg dianggap sia-sia karena kesalahan keputusan dari militer filipina. tp yg jadi sorotan ane adalah betapa buruknya keputusan komandan pasukan joint operation filipina yang mengambil keputusan terlalu "berani" tanpa memperhitungkan implikasinya terhadap pandangan warga kepada pasukan pemerintah. yg dalam hal ini sudah diberi peringatan oleh petugas psyop US untuk membatalkan misi. (latar belakang sepertinya karena "pinoy pride" yg terluka akibat semua operasi penyelamatan sandera palang merah gagal).

sorotan tentang tewasnya 44 anggota PNP SAF juga membuktikan ketidakmampuan mereka dalam hal reinforcement pasukan (tidak adanya bantuan dan pasukan pendukung dalam belasan jam).

topik diskusi: sebenarnya bagaimana kemampuan filipina dalam melakukan operasi2 militer dan kemampuan militer mereka secara menyeluruh?? mengingat warganya selalu merasa mereka "well experience"