"The Investigation"
In Part 1 I discussed the disgusting atrocities committed against most of the Philippine Marines who died on July 10th, 2007, in an attack by the BIAF (Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the military wing of the MILF). Not only were ten out of fourteen bodies decapitated, but most of those had also had their genitals lopped off, and a few also had hands, arms, parts of the foot, and meat from the thighs carved out as well. Naturally most people in the Philippines were outraged and for a very short while it seemed as if then-President Gloria M.Arroyo would finally prove herself to be an effective leader and bring the perpetrators of those degenerate acts to heel.
In addition to the fourteen Marines and six BIAF guerillas who had been killed, one civilian also died that day and it was his death that would finally put a sock in the President's mouth. The entire July 10th incident took place in the municipality of Al Barka's Barangay Guinanta, on a dirt road running through Sitio Puhpuh. A nine vehichle convoy from the Marine 1st Brigade was pinned down when one of the vehicles, a dumptruck on loan from the Isabela City Government, became mired in a section of the road that had turned to mud, as July is the height of the Mindanowan Monsoon, or rainy season. Immediately opposite the immobilised dumptruck was a gentle rise about 2 and a half meters high. Atop the rise, sitting 30 meters back from the road was the rear of a one floor village mosque, across from which sat the small, non-descript home of the mosque's 86 year old cleric, Imam Haji Matarul Hakim Alkanul, and his large family.
The next morning, as per an agreement reached between Local Monitoring Team Representative Sattar Ali, co-incidentally a high ranking BIAF officer himself, and the Marine's Major Mirandang Macatoun at Marine 1st Brigade Headquarters, the BIAF elements that had attacked the convoy set about searching for six Marines who still remained unaccounted for at that point. In doing so the remains were all recovered, most having been mutilated just like the remains of other Marines that had been retrieved much earlier. In addition to them the BIAF had discovered the 86 year old cleric hogtied with a red nylon rope, lying face down in the mud behind his mosque, shot in the head and his neck partially severed by a blunted sharp implement. That patch of land happened to have been held by the Marines all during the previous day's engagement and in fact had been the last position vacated by the Marines before they withdrew out of the sitio and then the barangay.
Of course the BIAF screamed bloody murder with the partyline being that the Marines atop the hill had hogtied the elderly man to keep him for...well the "what" has never been articulated by the MILF/BIAF or its defenders. The same narrative holds that he was brutally killed by the Marines in retaliation for the atrocities committed against the fallen Marines. The problem with that seemingly sensible "explanation" is that the Marines left that hill by 530PM and reported that the fallen Marines were unmolested when they rendezvoused at Magcawa Elementary School. The atrocities committed against the Marines still hadn't occurred! The MILF then flipped its script and suggested that the Imam had been brutally murdered by the Marines first and that it was his corpse that inspired the mass attack of at least 300 BIA against 112 Marines. The problem with that nonsense is that the Imam was only discovered on the morning of July 11th. IF the BIAF had been aware that he had been dead then why did they leave him lying face down in the mud overnight? Islam dictates that a corpse must be interred before the sun sets on that same day of death and above all else, a corpse is to be treated with the utmost respect. Of course with the BIAF at least (cough), that is reserved for Muslims alone. The last alibi, that the BIAF discovered an elderly cleric hogtied and mutilated, lying face down in the mud before 9AM on July 10th but didn't remove him from where they had found him until 7AM July 11th is just stupid. Nobody but a fool would believe such a thing EVEN IF they believed that the Marines, while waiting around for one of their vehicles to be towed just decided out of boredom to hogtie and mutilate an 86 year old man. Granted, the Philippine Military does have a rather gruesome track record (albeit for plausible scenarios such as covering operative errors or in extra-judicially neutralising- and yes, even torturing some of them- there was a Manila-based news team embedded with them and the cameras were rolling. Yet the MILF/BIAF and its several million syncophants managed to take that one single death, a death caused by the BIAF itself, and put the Government on the defencive when it was the BIAF initiated the entire affair. On Basilan, an island where no officially recognised MILF/BIAF camps exist, more than a kilometer from the 114 Base Command's 3rd Brigade's outter perimeter begins, 300-plus BIAF guerillas swarmed 115 men (including the newsteam) and after killing fourteen of them- an act the MILF freely admits to- then clearly were responsible for mutilating ten of the bodies...Yet it was the apathy of Filipino non-Muslims that truly permitted its own Government to quickly lose sight of the real picture.
President Arroyo catered to public sentiment by vowing to launch a five thousand man attack against the BIAF positions in Al Barka only to pull the plug at the last minute. Having scheduled this massive undertaking for July 31st, even shifting assets to staging grounds, on July 27th she agreed to MILF demands and signed an addendum to the July 23rd agreement that created the aforementioned Joint Independent Fact Finding Committee, or JIFFC. The Addendum, amazingly, barred both sides from issuing "inflammatory statements." On the surface the phrasing is innocuous but "inflammatory" is one of those subjective terms intended to shut down discourse. If for example, the Government stated that it was investigating reports that the Islamic cleric who prepared the elderly Imam's body for burial had claimed to have found clear indications that the deceased had been killed within the last 12 hours (per rigor mortis), this was declared as inflammatory by the MILF, etc. Even an even more innocuous statement about the confrontation's timetable that clearly showed that the Marines could not have possibly had the opportunity to kill him- without saying a word about the BIAF- was likewise deemed inflammatory and so naturally, only the MILF/BIAF then managed to get its message out there, how can the MILF be expected to rein in its army of dedicated (but officially unconnected) NGOs and Filipino Muslim students, all of whom went on the offencive. The Philippine Government, outside its official spokespeople, doesn't have very many people defending it.
Then, the same day that the addendum was signed, July 27th, President Arroyo "reluctantly" gave the Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) three more days to "investigate" the incident in its parallel investigation. The CCCH was (and remains) the strongest facet in a four pronged Ceasefire support system. The Local Monitoring Team to which BIAF officer Sattar Ali belonged was a second facet, with the IMT (International Monitoring Team) and Ad Hoc Joint Advisory Group, or AHJAG, making up the rest of the support system. The CCCH itself is made up of two facets, one from the military, the other from the MILF/BIAF. Of course with half of the CCCH being composed of MILF/BIAF members it was inevitable that those three short days would turn into weeks of insufferable delays until even the Philippine Military lost its motivation and let the entire affair slip onto a back burner.
Although the entity, known as the Joint Independent Fact Finding Committee, or JIFFC, was to have three members from the military, three from the MILF/BIAF, and three from the bi-laterally approved NGO- that evtually ended up becoming the MILF sock puppet Bantay Ceasefire (Ceasefire Watch). Of the nine slots, six went to the opposition. I need to digress for a moment by saying that if you doubt that the NGO Bantay Ceasefire is an MILF partisan organisation try scouring its umpteenth media releases and incident reports as I have over the course of several years and try to find a single one that defended the military WHILE castigating the MILF or its military wing, the BIAF. Ostensibly an "independent" NGO the organisation has never found the MILF/BIAF to be at fault in any of its numerous investigations into the MILF/BIAF and AFP clashes that it has pretended to investigate.
Bantay Ceasefire founder and Chairperson, attorney Mary Ann Anado, is spending her life working through the Filipino version of White Liberal Guilt. Any Mindanowan Christian advocating for the MILF MoA-AD and its succesor, the "State:sub-State Assymetrical Government" is seriously deluded. The MILF are quite open in stating that within their envisioned "autonomous" Muslim territory, all residents will be ruled with an "Islamic character." What most non-Muslim Filipinos do not understand is that the Christian minority within that theoretical MILF-controlled territory will be relegated to a social class known as "al Dhimmi." Dhimmi are treated as subhuman. At best one could hope that the MILF would refine its vision and produce a system akin to that of the largest champion, the nation of Malaysia. Malaysia is a nation where Christians are imprisoned for even facilitating in the conversion of a Muslim but that is child's play for the convert themself since Islam mandates death for such things. Let us just say that life for Christians in any MILF controlled territory will be anything but attractive. More worrying? The MILF has its own Shari'a Court, or Islamically-based court, ans for nearly two decades now. It has administered capital punishment and has done so liberally but moreover has forbade affectations like tobacco smoking, alcohol, and fidicuary instruments that charge interest since all violate Islamic Law. Yet Mary Ann Anado is by far the most steadfast of Christians in supporting such a travesty. With Bantay Ceasefore and the MILF outnumbering the Government members of the JIFFC were outnumber by two to one in the Committee, with an even more dismal position in the JIFFC Secretariat.
As for the substance of the investigation itself- the MILF/BIAF's basic rationale, just as with the October 18th, 2011 tragedy- is that the military brought it upon itself because it entered an MILF-controlled territory without first co-ordination that entry via the CCCH or at least using one of the other three ceasefire support mechanisms:
1) AHJAG, the Ad Hoc Joint Assistance Group, meant to allow the Government to pursue criminal elements within MILF/BIAF-controlled territory
2) IMT, or International Monitoring Team, a third party mechanism led by Malaysian military personnel (no bias there, right? COUGH) but including other foreign governmental personnel as well
3) LMT, or Local Monitoring Teams, five person entities with again, Government, MILF/BIAF, and NGO members but with extencive local knowledge, experience, and connections.
If ONLY the Philippine Military hadn't rushed headlong into the MILF/BIAF's territory without letting it know first...EXCEPT THAT...In reality there are no recognised MILF/BIAF camps on Basilan. During the first phase of the MILF Peace Process, from 1997 to 2000 the Government inspected MILF/BIAF camps and officially declared them as ATSs, or Areas of Temporary Stay. All ATSs are on Mainland Mindanao. Whether or not a municipality on Basilan holds an MILF/BIAf camp, if it isn't an ATS the Government security forces CAN not only enter such towns and their barangays, but can enter BIAF camps at will although that will never happen under ordinary circumnstances simply because the BIAF will often use it as a pretext to attack AFP elements, but only if the BIAF believes it holds the upper hand in terms of manpower and firepower...as it did on July 10th, 2007...as it did on October 18th, 2011, and literally dozens of times before, after, and in between those dates. While it would have been sensible to go through the rigamorole of going through the CCCH to vet the operation on one level, if you are conducting a Search and Rescue operation for someone that has been kidnapped by the BIAF, you cannot notify the BIAF that you will be doing so, much less notify the BIAF of the date and time.
Then, the MILF,as noted earlier, jumped right onto the murder and attempted decapitation of the only civilian casualty, 86 year Imam Haji Matanul Hakim Alkanul. To boost their version of events they leaned on Al Barka's Mayor Karam Jakilan to produce some eyewitnesses concerning the Imam and his sad demise. Two witnesses suddenly surfaced:
1) Neneng Alkanul, 18 year old daughter of the dead cleric
2) sub-Kumander Asid Salih, Commander of the BIAF 114 Base Command's 2nd Brigade
Nenebg Alkanul said that she, her mother and other sisters had been inside their house, across from the father's mosque, and facing the road when the AFP Marine convoy passed by. Shortly thereafter Neneng saw two Marines approach her elderly father and ask for his assistance in dislodging the dumptruck that had gotten bogged down in the muddy road. According to Neneng her father agreed to help the Marines only to find himself used as a pack animal unloading ammunition and equipment out of the rear of the immobolised dumptruck. Neneng had walked across the yard to the mosque to watch the men struggling to free the truck but turned to go home after a small group of Marines had positioned themselves defencively at the rear of the mosque...and then...all of a sudden, a shot rang out causing her to run full speed into her house.
Sub-Kumander Asid Salih had been in Al Barka's Barangay Guinanta for a meeting at a madrassah (Islamic grammr/elementary school) with fourty-four of his guerillas and a contingent from the 3rd Brigade when he also heard that single gunshot. Scrambling he and his men quickly took positions along side the BIAF 3rd Brigade, the element with operational control over Barangay Guinanta. Not longer after that says Salih, the Imam approached him and they engaged in a short conversation although Salih has bever bothered to elaborate over what had been discussed, nor did the biased JIFFC bother to press him on the issue.
Interestingly, neither witness ever claimed to have seen the Imam with the Marines directly behind the mosque (where the man's body would later be discovered. Salih claims to have seen the Imam helping the Marines dislodge the dumptruck- corroborating the Imam's daughter Neneng's claim, and yet, unbeknost to either sub-Kumander Salih OR Neneng Alkanul there had been an embedded journalist and his camera team with the Marine convoy. The camera team filmed the effort to free the dumptruck from its commencement until the shortly after the sniper killed Sergeant Bautista, the first to have been killed that day, and kept right on filming through most of the battle. Not only was the Imam never seen in the footage, neither was any other civilian to be seen.
The main jist of the investigation was culpability in the mutilation and dismembering of ten of the fourteen Marined killed that day. The MILF predictably denied that the BIAF would do such a thing because Islam forbids it (that sure convinces me!). Due to a rash of beheadings by Abu Sayyaf many in the Government and the MILF-to say nothing of the public in general- automatically correlate any decapitation, indeed any barbaric act in Basilan with the Abu Sayyaf. The problem with that is that the MNLF/BMA has done these things all through the 1970s up until the present, as has the MILF/BIAF since its inception in 1977, literally dozens of times although not on so large a scale and in the case of the MILF/BIAF at least, the last known decapitation and mutilation had transpired four and a half years before. Sadly, in the age of television the average memory is stunted and four and a half years may as well be four and a half centuries as far as the general public is concerned.
In its own defence the BIAF luckily had Mayor Karam Jakilan of Al Barka along with his counterpart in the neighboring municipality of Tipo Tipo, Mayor Taher Esmael who together produced two witnesses:
1) Nasser Atao, BIAF, 3rd Brigade
2) Ajan "Jul" Sapii, a BIAF irregular and a close friend of Atao
After the BIAF had withdrawn and regrouped within the 3rd Brigade camp, just over one kilometer away from the remnants of the convoy, the JIFFC says, in reference to both these witnesses, that Nasser Atao realised he had "lost something" and somehow made his way back to the site of that day's fighting. No mention is made of how Ajan "Jul" Sapii ended up at what was left of the convoy and indeed the only mention of Sapii is that the JIFFC deems him "honest" and "beyond reproach." Very admirable qualities indeed but what did Mr.Sapii do to deserve the great confidence of the JIFFC? Their 14pp report tells us quite simply that Sapii "turned in an M16 rifle and an M203 grenade launcher that he had "recovered" at the smoldering wreckage of the Marine convoy. The JIFFC stresses the man is honest because it is only his and BIAF guerilla Nasser Atao's word of honour that "proves" that the gross mutilations and decapitations that took place were not committed by the MILF/BIAF, but by the Abu Sayyaf. The committee's report says that this honest man corroborates the more sculpted "testimony" of Nasser Atao. Indeed, if one actually reads the report they will find that Sapii admits that he did not see the Abu Sayyaf doing anything. All we really have is a BIAF guerilla (Nasser Atao) telling us that the BIAF didn't commit this atrocity.
What really happened?
Back at the BIAF 3rd Brigade camp Nasser Atao did in fact realise that he had "lost something" on the battle field. That something" though was his uncle, Ustadz Aris Andis, another guerilla. Turning to Sapii who by the way had been in the thick of the fighting as well, he asked for a ride back to what was left of the convoy on Sapii's motorcycle. Arriving back on the scene of the still burning dumptruck and the single M35 truck that had first attempted to tow the dumptruck out of the mud, Sapii was able to scavenge TWO M16s and TWO M203s. For those that aren't aware, the M203 is a symbiotic grenade launcher that is attached underneath the M16. Although technically a separate weapon in real world applications, if you capture and M16 with an M203 attached to it you are only credited with a single capture. This is a salient point because the JIFFC, fully aware of what I have just explained, claimed that Sapii is beyond reproach in his testimony because: He is a civilian...without asking how he even managed to acquire an M16 and M203. Most civilians look at dead bodies, smoldering military vehicles, and heavy weaponry and run the other way. Yet, Sapii takes two M16/M203s off of dead Marines, agrees to return ONE M16/M203 and we are supposed to admire his integrity?
Then, when one realises Sappi never saw Abu Sayyaf do anything and is only being used as a bait and switch with Nasser Atao who DOES claim to have witnessed four Abu Sayyaf, including two factional leaders:
1) Puruji Indama
2) Nurhassan Kallilut Jamiri
who, according to Atao's official narrative were bending over dead bodies and mutilating them using a "pirak," a traditional Yakan bladed weapon as ten Abu Sayyaf guerillas milled about playing pocket pool. Believing the men to be desecrating BIAF remains, including that of his missing uncle, Atao walked directly up to the four and it was only then that he saw they had been mutilating Marines instead. Truly the best the BIAF has to offer Nasser Atao "lectured" (Suuuuuure) the Abu Sayyaf leaders about how such desecration of fallen enemies is "haram," or prohibited by the Qur'an. According to Atao, the Abu Sayyaf didn't cotton to his message and one even wheeled around and drew down his M14 as if to shoot Atao but alas, our hero survived and after rejoining Mr.Sapii, who by this time had collected his war trophies, began the short drive back to 3rd Brigade camp where, co-ncidentally, his uncle turned up alive and well.
Now, according to both the JIFFC Report as well as to the CCH AND the MILF Central Committee Reports, it was only at 7AM the next morning, July 11th, that the BIAF first became aware of the atrocities committed against the fallen Marines. Weren't Nasser Atao and Jul Sappi aware of the atrocities at 630PM the night before? Would they really NOT report what they had seen knowing quite well that since the kills had already been credited to the BIAF with the MILF officially accepting responsibility for them? In other words, these two men, Atao undeniably being a BIAF guerilla who had taken part in that day's fighting, allow Abu Sayyaf to commit atrocities that would be pinned on him and his fellow BIAF? Of course he would have immediately spoken to someone about it either way having just almost having been shot. After all, didn't he just risk his life simply pointing out to the Abu Sayyaf that they shouldn't be doing that? Yet we are to believe that he then returned to camp and didn't make the BIAF leadership aware.
Of course Abu Sayyaf never came near those Marines. The BIAF committed those terrible deeds and that has always been known by the military and more than a few Government lackeys. Bowing to strategic objectives the military has allowed the MILF/BIAF to pull the wool over the eyes of Filipinos. It is funny, in a sick sort of way how the MILF/BIAF declares with a straight face that after three hundred BIAF and one hundred and sixty Marines (including the fourty-two at Magcawa Elementary School along with nine policemen) were still milling around that fourteen Abu Sayyaf including four factional leaders somehow managed to infiltrate the site and commit these acts AND THEN manage to slip away just as undetected! Moreover, conversely speaking, why should we believe Abu Sayyaf butchered Marines but did NOT butcher the 86 year old Imam? IF Abu Sayyaf was able to infiltrate the site in clandestine fashion they could have certainly managed to hogtie and murder the elderly cleric. Of course the BIAF murdered the elderly Imam as well. Sub-Kumander Salih ignorantly admitted that the Imam had been peeved enough to approach him at the height of the fighting. According to several BIAF guerillas the Imam demanded that Salih and the 3rd Brigade's sub-Kumander Limaya immiediately stop fighting and pull back, angered over the BIAF's decision to attack the Marines directly opposite his home and mosque.
In the end the MILF was able to obtain so many extensions and delays that the incident rapidly receded from public consciousness. Three weeks later there would be fifteen Marines killed in another BIAF attack that was the military's fault (according to the sparkling clean MILF). Still, one hundred and nine arrest warrants had been taken out against a host of BIAF members, most of whom happened to conveniently be named "John Doe" )I didn't know "John Doe" was a popular name amongst Muslims as well!). One whose name DID appear was a man who never fired a single bullet that day, sub-Kumander Ustadz Haji Asnawi Hassan "Laksaw" Addan Salah, known to pals as Abu Mazen but to the rest of us unlucky wretches as sub-Kumander Dan Laksaw Ansawi, the 114 Base Command's second in command. While not a prime target of the investigation Asnawi earned himself a warrant none the less.
Fast forward to the Autumn of 2009. Sattar Ali? The Local Monitoring Team Representative who just happened to also be a BIAF sub-Kumander? He went down in a hail of Marine bullets after occupying a town on Basilan, in a firefight that managed to kill another five Marines. Sub-Kumander Asnawi decided to treat one of his four wives to a trip to Saudi Arabis so that she might fufill the obligation incumbent upon all adult Muslims and undertake a pilgramage (al Haj) to the cities of Mecca and Medina. Boarding a Manila-bound plane at Zamboanga City's airport the couple readied themselves for the firsr leg of what should have been a long voyage when a joint detachment of soldiers and PNP SAF (Philippine National Police Special Action Force) runined Mr. And Mrs.Asnawi's day as well as their trip by arresting the sub-Kumander on a warrant for the Al Barka incident. Bundled off the plane Asnawi was returned to Basilan where he was lodged in the provincial jail in Isabela.
I will continue with the third and last part in this "Prequel" entry on the October 18th, 2011 Al Barka incident.
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