ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / June 2, 2008) - US peace and development efforts in the Philippines is gaining ground and making progress in the fight against terrorism.
US Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who visited Manila on Monday was in Zamboanga City over the weekend and met with US soldiers training local troops here, according to the American Forces Press Service of the US Department of Defense.
It said Mullen saw firsthand how the US inter-agency fight is making progress in the Philippines.
Mullen was at the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City where a bomb attack last week damaged the office of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and a Filipino military mutual fund near the Edwin Andrews Air Force base.
Filipino and US military officials briefed Mullen about the security situation in the southern region, where security are battling al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group and the Indonesian militant Jemaah Islamiya, blamed for May 29 bombing here that killed three people and injured more than a dozen more.
Mullen later met with US soldiers who are part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines and saw how the USAID is helping the Philippine government battle an insurgency.
The report quoted Mullen and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates as saying US civilian agencies, such as the USAID are important assets in the effort to combat terrorism and both have testified before US Congress on the need for more people and money for these agencies.
The US is helping Manila defeat terrorism and preventing the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya from recruiting members in Mindanao.
“What has become very evident to me as it should be to you here is security is a necessary condition, but security is not going to get you across home plate. You’ve got to be able to create an economic underpinning. You’ve got to have good governance. You’ve got to have the rule of law -- all these things that start to sustain themselves,” Mullen said.
Mullen said the US is helping the Philippine military address a “classic insurgency,” noting that in doing so, it’s as important to build a school, rebuild a bridge or host a medical clinic as it is to kill an extremist.
“I’ve come to believe that we’re never going to capture them all, [and] we’re never going to kill them all,” he said. “It’s going to be the people who take back their territory - the people that get fed up with it.”
USAID spends $50 million to $60 million a year in the Philippines, with 60 percent coming to this impoverished area while the US military aid is pegged at roughly $5 million to $6 million a year, the report said.
It said USAID works with Philippine national and local leaders to develop projects that benefit all the people. The agency has financed digging wells, building roads, rebuilding bridges and constructing schools.
The agency is financing improvements to the airports at Tawi-Tawi and in Sulu – both of which also benefit the Philippine armed forces.
USAID works with the Joint Special Operation Task Force - Philippines in scheduling medical, dental and veterinary exercises that provide health care to thousands of people. They also work with Navy Seabees who deploy to the islands to build schools and medical clinics. The agency also acts as a bridge for nongovernmental organizations that, for whatever reason, don’t want to work directly with the military.
But USAID is stretched, Mullen was quoted by the report as saying, adding, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the US took a “peace dividend.” While the US military was cut 35 to 40 percent, civilian agencies also were slashed. USAID went from 15,000 employees worldwide to 4,000.
“The US government is not set up for the wars of the 21st century,” Mullen said. “It doesn’t reflect the expeditionary world we’re living in. We haven’t recruited, hired, promoted, trained, and educated the people in our civilian agencies for the kind of expeditionary requirements and rotations that we are actually doing right now.”
Both Gates and Mullen have testified that the State Department needs 1,000 more employees and $1 billion more in budget.
USAID, State Department programs that help nations build governance and security assistance to help nations build military capabilities are crucial to the fight in the Philippines and go together in many other poorer nations that face the same problems. The civilian departments need to grow; they need more people, and those people need to deploy at a moment’s notice, Mullen said.
“Until we can do that, the military will pick up the slack, because we can,” Mullen said.
The report said the capability to help nations build good governance is not a core mission for the US Department of Defense, but it is something the State Department can and does do. Building infrastructure is a mission USAID has done since it started in 1961.
It said officials at the Joint Special Operation Task Force – Philippines and the US embassy in Manila would like to see the group get commanders’ emergency relief program funds.
“We had an incident where Abu Sayyaf burned down homes in central Mindanao, Lee McClenny, the US Embassy spokesman said. “If we’d had CERP funds, we could have helped rebuild those houses and made a huge statement against the terrorists.”
It said Mullen listened to the words of the civilian and military leaders on the ground – “where the rubber meets the road,” he said and promised to take their concerns back to Washington.
“The days where a single service, a single department, a single anything can make things happen are behind us,” Mullen said. “It’s got to be integrated, and it’s got to be all of us doing this together.”
Mullen did not speak to the Philippine media and the local military also refused to give details of his visit here. Mullen arrived in Zamboanga City with Philippine military chief Gen. Alexander Yano from Singapore where they attended an Asia security conference. Mullen and Yano held a closed conference in Manila on Monday. (Mindanao Examiner)
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