May 3,2008:
For the first three months of the
year, eight NPA bases have been found and destroyed, and 300 of the communist rebels
have been killed or captured, or surrendered. The army sees the NPA using more
extortion to raise money, otherwise they will not be able to maintain their
current strength of about 5,000 armed members. That's down 80 percent from a
decade ago. The collapse of communism in the early 1990s, and the NPA being
declared a terrorist organization after September 11, 2001, has hurt. But the NPA
will not go away quietly. The hard core are determined to survive, no matter
the cost to the country. The government expects the NPA to eventually collapse
in the next two or three years, with the remnants becoming politically
motivated bandits.
In the
south, over a thousand armed MILF members moved into an area containing many
Christian farms and villages, and forced several hundred Christians off their
property. The MILF believes the land belongs to Moslems. The Moslem minority in
the south resents Christians moving in, something that has been happening with
increasing frequency since World War II. But the movement of Christians south
has been going on for centuries.
May 2,
2008: So far this year, three of 28 most
wanted Islamic terrorists have been captured. Most of these men are foreigners,
seeking sanctuary in Moslem areas of the southern Philippines. Local Islamic
terrorist group Abu Sayyaf have lost six percent of their strength so far this
year, with only about 380 members still active.
May 1,
2008: Some 300 troops attacked a major
Abu Sayyaf camp on Jolo. Captured documents indicated that about 200 Abu Sayyaf
and a dozen Jemaah Islamiah (and Indonesian Islamic terrorist group) members. Abu
Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon was wounded in the operation, and his adult son
was killed. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for Isnilon Hapilon. The
camp contained a bomb making workshop. The location of the camp was discovered via
a tip from local villagers who had heard rebels excitedly talk of a major
terror operation being planned.
April 26,
2008: In the last two days, clashes with NPA rebels left four soldiers dead and
two captured. The NPA will try to exchange the soldiers for jailed NPA men. The
NPA has tried this before, without success.
April 23,
2008: An example of the corruption that cripples the economy and government
effectiveness, is the crackdown on false claims by the 9,000 U.S. military
veterans living in the Philippines. In the late 1990s, Filipino medical
providers discovered that it was easy to scam the U.S. military health care insurance
system (Tricare) with false claims. The U.S. had shut down its major Filipino bases
in the early 1990s, along with the base hospitals which had provided much of
the care for U.S. veterans living in the Philippines. Then, between 1998 and
2003, health claims by these veterans increased 20 times, but the number of
retirees stayed the same. The fraud was worst in 2003, when about two-thirds of
the $62 million paid out to Filipino health providers by Tricare was
fraudulent. Cracking down on the fraud proved difficult, again because of local
corruption, especially in the legal system. Most of the veterans are Filipino-Americans
who returned to the old country to retire, and live better because of the lower
cost-of-living. Many of these vets went native and cooperated with the health
insurance scammers, for a cut of the proceeds. This attitude makes all sorts of
foreign aid, even military aid, less effective. Any military operations with,
or by, the Philippines has to deal with the debilitating effects of corruption.