Three weeks ago, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) stood on the verge of signing a breakthrough agreement that could have moved both sides closer to the closure of a three-decade-long war. The Moros, minority Muslims who have been marginalized since being incorporated into the country, have been fighting the central government for greater self-rule since the 1970s. Pushed to a stalemate, both sides have since 1976 struggled for a settlement through peace negotiations punctuated by bouts of bloodshed. Over 120,000 people have died.
With previous agreements having failed to end the conflict the latest deal, called the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), proposed the establishment of a "sub-state" for Moros in an "associative relationship" of "shared sovereignty" with the Philippines. This proposal falls short of the MILF's original goal of independence but is farther than anything the government had previously accepted. Though endorsed by both negotiating panels, the agreement drew widespread condemnation. Opponents saw the agreement as dismembering the country or as a ploy to extend the term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The government has since junked the agreement and both sides now totter on the precipice of full-scale fighting.
Between the MILF and the Philippine government has stood the United States. In light of the controversy generated by the MOA-AD, its role, interests, and strategy has come under renewed scrutiny. Is the United States abandoning a traditional ally in the Philippine government in order to support the Moro movement for self-determination?
Advancing U.S. Interests
U.S. involvement in the peace process between the two sides dates from 2003, ostensibly as part of the so-called global war on terror. U.S. officials have tagged Mindanao, the region in the southern Philippines where most Moros live, as the "next Afghanistan." It is where the Abu Sayyaf Group, designated a terrorist organization by Washington, operates. Members of the regional grouping Jemaah Islamiyah have also been reported to be training in or transiting through the region, supposedly with links to the MILF.
With the consent of both MILF and the Philippine government, the U.S. State Department deployed the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) to facilitate the peace talks. In the last five years, USIP staff met frequently with both negotiating panels, providing them technical expertise, engaging the public on the talks, and extending other forms of assistance to the process. Not unrelated to the USIP's work, as the institute makes clear, has been the expanding and deepening U.S. military presence in the country, including in Mindanao. Since 2001, the United States has quietly but steadily established new forms of U.S. military basing in the country through more frequent exercises and warship visits, assured access to facilities, and the stationing of U.S. Special Forces in the south. Alongside this has been the increased infusion of US development and humanitarian assistance to Mindanao, in the form of schools, roads, water wells, and other infrastructure.
In reporting on its work, the USIP openly boasts of its unique capacity to be "an instrument for advancing U.S. interests." The institute is special, according to its report, because while it can claim to be separate from the U.S. government, it plays a role in the U.S. government's internal division of labor that no other government agency can. Thanks to its "quasi-governmental" status, the institute supposedly succeeded in earning the confidence of local actors so much so that even members of the Philippine government panel reported inside information about cabinet discussions to them. The USIP "offered a new policy instrument of the U.S. government" which could be "incorporated more frequently into the toolkit of U.S. foreign policy," notes the report.
But what interests have the USIP, the U.S. military, and the other U.S. government agencies been advancing? Analysts have advanced two possibilities. The United States is now supporting moves toward the creation of a more autonomous – or even an independent – pro-U.S. Bangsamoro state as a hedge against a more pro-China Philippines. Or the United States has only been manipulating the peace talks to deliberately foment and prolong conflict between Filipinos and Moros in order to justify its intervention in Mindanao. Both assume common underlying geostrategic objectives: access to natural resources, including potential oil reserves, as well as military basing.
Selective support
The United States has had a very mixed set of attitudes toward self-determination. For instance, it has crushed or has sought to crush movements of self-determination in some places through invasion and occupation – the Philippines in the early 20th century, Iraq, and Afghanistan today. At the same time, the U.S. government has had no problems supporting or not actively opposing movements against regimes it doesn't like, such as Kosovars against the Serbian state, Tibetans against the Chinese state, and Kurds against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But if the U.S. government values the stability of a state and its support of U.S. goals, then it will oppose movements of self-determination and back Georgia over South Ossetia, Thailand over the Patani Malays of Southern Thailand, Indonesia over the West Papuans, Turkey over the Kurds, and Marcos over the Moros in the 1970s.
That last example is particularly instructive. From 1972-1976, when the poorly armed and poorly trained Moro fighters took on the might of Marcos' military, the United States provided the Philippine dictator with over $500 million in military assistance, helping tip the balance against the Moro fighters. Despite this, the Moros–poorly armed and trained–managed to bring the war to a stalemate and forced Marcos to the negotiating table.
Now the question is: which side is the United States on?
Whose side?
Last week, when a U.S. military-contracted helicopter went to evacuate injured fighters in an encounter in Basilan, they came to the assistance of Filipino soldiers–not Moro rebels. This week, in the latest proof that U.S. troops are not only "training" Filipino soldiers, American soldiers were spotted helping Filipino troops recover unexploded bombs during a lull in hostilities in North Cotabato.
Since 2002, 300-500 U.S. Special Forces have stayed on indefinitely in Mindanao to help Filipino troops in their day-to-day operations. Their target: the alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf, the more politicized factions of which continue to espouse the original goal of the MILF, which is Bangsamoro independence. On several occasions, members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the other Moro movement that has a peace agreement with the government, have been targeted in operations assisted by the United States. In at least one documented case, even Moro civilians, including children, were among those killed.
In short, the U.S. military is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Filipino soldiers, not Moro fighters. From 2002-2006 alone, the United States has given around $250 million not to the MILF but to the armed forces of the Philippines. This has been equivalent to nearly 10% of the Philippine military budget. On top of this, the $260 million worth of "development" aid that the United States has poured into Mindanao in the last six years is designed to legitimize the national government in the eyes of Muslims – and, hence, to douse support for Moro self-determination movements.
In other words, the United States has been quite clear in its support of the Philippine government. Does support for the new agreement between the Moros and the government in Manila signal a change in this policy?
Dumping an ally?
Although U.S. support for a Bangsamoro state is not inconceivable, the United States would only embrace this option if three conditions are met. First, the Philippine state can no longer be counted on to provide the United States what it needs. Second, a newly autonomous or an independent Bangsamoro state will turn out to be pro-U.S. And third, the potential benefits of abandoning an old ally in favor of a newly created one outweigh the potential costs.
Ever since the Philippine Senate voted to close down U.S. military bases in the country in 1992, the Philippines has emerged as an unpredictable ally of the United States. Since 1992, the United States has sought to recover its ability to use Philippine territory for its purposes. Yet only under the current Arroyo government has the United States managed to make significant inroads. President Arroyo has gone out of her way–arguably farther than her predecessors–to accommodate U.S. demands. Although she withdrew from the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, the Philippine contingent was small (a little over 100 soldiers) and she has more than made up for that withdrawal in other ways.
True, Arroyo has lately expanded relations with China. But with all the economic opportunities China offers so have many other pro-US allies. The Philippines may have welcomed $6.6 million in military assistance from China last year. But it's still unlikely to grant China what it gives the United States–a military presence on its territory–nor is it likely to promise China the removal of U.S. troops from the country. In any case, dropping the Philippines as an ally would likely ensure that the country falls into the Chinese embrace.
Finding new friends?
There is no shortage of Moros ready to outbid Filipinos in offering Bangsamoro territory and cooperation in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Indeed, the United States has been busy identifying, grooming, and financing Moro leaders–showering them with scholarship opportunities, bringing them to the United States, employing them, and funding their NGOs. As in other sites of U.S. political intervention, the work of USIP and other agencies in "strengthening intra-Moro communication and unity" is a deliberate political project to build relations with, build the capacity of, and build unity among those moderate pro-U.S. Moros in an attempt to make them better-resourced and more influential than the alternatives.
Similar to Moro leaders in the past who preferred being part of a separate colony or protectorate of the United States to being part of the Philippines, some Moro leaders today can be expected to justify supporting the United States–or at least, not antagonizing it–as a pragmatic policy for advancing Moro nationalist goals. For instance, neither the MNLF nor the MILF leaderships have categorically opposed the expanding U.S. military presence in Mindanao. After faintly making noise against U.S. military activities in Mindanao last February, for example, the MILF turned suddenly quiet after a visit from U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney. A number of influential Moros, many of whom have benefited from U.S. patronage, have unsurprisingly come out in support of U.S. military intervention in Mindanao.
However, assuming that they succeed in getting their own state with U.S. support, Moro elites would still want foreign patrons to preserve their power like other elites. But they would also need to win elections and otherwise retain legitimacy. Prolonging an alliance with the United States under these circumstances would become harder to sell to the Moro people, sensitized as they are to the plight of fellow Muslims from Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan who face U.S. military aggression.
A more likely outcome is a Bangsamoro like many other Muslim-majority countries, such as Indonesia or Malaysia, where support for U.S. foreign policy, while not impossible, has become a political liability that few politicians are willing to bear. Hence, betting on a pro-U.S. Bangsamoro state would be a risky gamble for Washington.
A risky gamble
Still, the United States might take such a gamble if it expects to gain more from the creation of a new state than it loses from dumping an old reliable ally. Consider the U.S. need for basing. Although the U.S. military presence has expanded for the first time to Mindanao in recent years, a quick look at the mapshows that this presence covers the entire country. In Mindanao, it extends even to areas that are not to be covered under the proposed Bangsamoro sub-state. The U.S. Special Forces' Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines' (JSOTF-P) headquarters, for instance, is in Zamboanga City, whose mayor Celso Lobregat has been at the forefront of opposition to the MOA-AD and has made no secret of his "wish" for the United States to build a permanent base in his city.
The JSOTF-P is not necessarily in Mindanao in preparation for the rise of a new Moro state. Rather, Mindanao is where the designated "terrorists" are – rather than, say, in Batanes, which is closer to Taiwan and mainland China. The JSOFT-P is assured of remaining – and could even choose to expand–in Zamboanga City with or without the consent of the Moros as long as the Philippine government agrees. The United States is not likely to abandon the Philippines for a pro-U.S. Bangsamoro state if it means giving up its control of or access to all the ports and facilities in Subic, Nueva Ecija, Batanes, Cebu, and General Santos City just to have bases in Mindanao.
It's plausible that the United States is just hedging its bets–not necessarily abandoning the Philippines now but just establishing a contingency plan in case the country moves closer to China. It's also possible that Washington is pitting Manila against the Moros so that they will outbid each other for U.S. support. But again, such a hedging strategy might backfire as Filipino elites, not sure of U.S. loyalty, lean more toward China. Also, the Moro fighters, realizing that Filipino soldiers are using U.S. bullets to kill them, could turn against Washington.
The larger interests
U.S. involvement in the peace talks and its openness to the solution posed by the MOA-AD could simply reflect a need for its Philippine ally to be stronger and more stable in order to advance U.S. interests more effectively. A Philippines bogged down fighting various separatist and communist movements is less able to participate in the "war on terror" and in containing China.
As such, only by addressing what the U.S. Institute of Peace dares to correctly describe as the Moros' "legitimate grievances" can the Philippines disarm the MILF, move on to other enemies, and become the stable reliable ally that the United States wants and needs. In so doing, the United States is also able to reward, co-opt and strengthen certain Moro elites who would otherwise be antagonistic to its objectives or who could lose out to those with more radical social and economic programs should war persist.
Faced with the possibilities of an antagonized pro-China Philippines or an independent Bangsamoro state with leaders who have uncertain loyalties, the U.S. strategy seems clear. A more stable Philippines–with a Mindanao that is "peaceful" and open for business and with pliant but less subordinated Moro elites at its helm–fits the overall U.S. geopolitical strategy for the region.
Herbert Docena (herbert@focusweb.org), a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, wrote Focus on the Global South’s special report on the U.S. military presence in the Philippines, “At the Door of All the East: The Philippines in U.S. Military Strategy.”
