US Troops Winning Hearts And Minds Of Muslims In Southern RP

U.S. soldiers guard Monday 26 Feb 2007 the Muslim enclave of Mariki in Zamboanga City in the southern Philippines, where American and Filipino soldiers held a medical mission. A soldier was also spotted playing with a child and a Muslim boy shows a poster of wanted Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya distributed by soldiers. And Celso Lobregat, the mayor of Zamboanga City, looks at a match with photos of wanted terrorists. (Mindanao Examiner Photo)

ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 26 Feb) – More than 850 mostly poor Muslims benefited Monday from a joint RP-U.S. medical mission on a remote and dangerous coastal village in Zamboanga City in the southern Philippines.

The medical outreach in the Muslim enclave of Mariki was part of the Balikatan 2007, the codename of the joint military exercise between the Philippines and the United States.

"It was really a very warm welcome and we are happy to serve the Filipinos. This is a joint project between the Armed Forces and the U.S. military and part of the Balikatan 2007," the spokesman of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, U.S. Air Force Major John Redfield, told the Mindanao Examiner.

Security was tight during the entire medical mission in Mariki, previously used as escape route of criminal gangs and Abu Sayyaf militants operating in Zamboanga.U.S. soldiers were spotted talking with villagers. Children were playing with American troops.

"They are big, just like in the movies and they looked like characters from G.I. Joe. They are kind and gave us free medicines," a 12-year old boy, Usman Hashim, said.

Hashim was referring to the G.I. Joe, the animated television series famous among children in Zamboanga.

Thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops began the training Feb. 18 in Jolo island and is aimed at enhancing combat capabilities of troops, but this year's exercises will concentrate more on humanitarian activities to win the hearts and minds of many Muslims on Sulu Archipelago and on the main island of Mindanao, where the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya are actively operating.

And this would be followed with similar anti-terror trainings in Tawi-Tawi island near the Sabah border and continued in central Mindanao island.

Philippine troops are battling the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya militants in the troubled southern region. The groups were blamed for the string of bombings in the Philippines and Indonesia that had already killed scores of people the past years. (Mindanao Examiner)