Mamasapano Revisited

It is two months after the 25 January 2015 events in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. The hype and mass hysteria on the ‘SAF44’ is a bit less now. It may now be a good time to take another look at events of that fateful day.

It is now known that the plan and timing of ‘Oplan Exodus’ (the plan to capture Marwan, the Jemaah Islamiya bomb maker), was drafted together with US ‘advisers’ and approved by President Aquino. While people continue to debate about who is responsible for what, it seems that certain basic questions have been overlooked. e.g. : was it a sound plan? and did the SAF violate the GRP-MILF ceasefire?

Setting
Mamasapano is a small town in Maguindanao (with population just over 22,000 people), at the edge of the vast Liguasan marsh. During the rainy season, parts of the town become part of the marsh (including the site of the battle). The area is mostly flat, and it is crisscrossed by streams. In order to move 500 meters, one would usually need to cross about 3 streams, either by using makeshift bridges, by small boats, or by wading through them.

The MILF and BIFF have ‘camps’ (communities) near the edge of Mamasapano. While the politics of the two groups were different, there was no real animosity between them – the groups were separate but not mutually hostile. This makes sense: it is best to have a ‘live and let live’ attitude towards a heavily armed neighbor. (similarly, the AFP have an outpost in the area, and they also coexist with the MILF)
The two groups were separated by a couple of kilometers. Given the number of streams people would have to cross to traverse this distance, this would seem farther than it sounds..

Marwan made use of these conditions when he chose where to stay. His house was in this border area(between the MILF and BIFF camps), where neither the MILF, the BIFF, nor the municipal government exercised authority. On the third side was the Liguasan marsh, which was practically impassable. This meant that his house could only be approached from one direction.

SAF84 (PNP Special Action Force 84th Seaborne unit, with 37 men) and SAF55 (PNP Special Action Force 55th Special Action Company, with 36 men) passed through this strip of no-man’s land under cover of darkness. SAF84 proceeded to where Marwan was, in order to arrest him. SAF55 was left in a cornfield some 500 meters behind, as a ‘blocking force’. When SAF84 tried to arrest Marwan (at 4 am), a firefight broke out, with his armed escort. Marwan was killed,  Less than 30 minutes later, SAF55 was in battle with MILF soldiers at the cornfield.

People assume that the MILF fighters crossed numerous streams and fields in darkness, and correctly zeroed in on SAF55 in that fateful cornfield in record time. One explanation why they were so fast, could be that the fighters were praying together at the mosque and immediately went to the spot. But the question that nobody seems to ask is: how did they know where exactly to go? and how did they do it so fast? (the story of running together from the mosque does not explain the story of some MILF widows that their husbands were sleeping in their houses when they were awoken by gunfire.

I read a more plausable explanation in an article The Mourners of Mamasapano , written by Rappler. According to Nadia Kasim (one of the MILF widows):
The last she saw him alive was before dawn, when he left with the other rebels to avoid the fighting. It was what the rebels were ordered to do, what they always did at the sound of gunfire. Ever since the ceasefire, even before it, they were told to run with their guns when battle came to the community.
There was a gathering place, said an MILF leader. They were to remove themselves as targets and avoid involvement. The trouble, he said, was that the police beat them to it.

The men of the two other MILF units in the area had also responded to the gunfire by running to regroup positions outside their communities, giving further credence to the above account.

Thus, the MILF fighters were not running to intercept the SAF, but to regroup and  await further orders. The problem was, the SAF was already at the regroup location. And shot at them as they were running to it.

SAF Fired First
I think the SAF55 were the ones to fire first at the MILF fighters. The MILF fighters were in no position to do so; they were just a group rushing to their regroup point. Those ahead were few, and their orientation was to avoid combat.On the other hand, SAF55 were stationary, with all the time to position themselves to fire, while the MILF fighters were running towards them. The approaching MILF fighters were exposed as they ran, while the SAF men were sitting or crouching, hidden by the corn.

The SAF fired at the MILF because they thought the MILF were out to get them. The fact that there was a ceasefire was not in their minds. They thought that the MILF was in cahoots with Marwan, and were out to defend him. Cooperating with the MILF was not among the possibilities they considered

This brings us back to the plan that was drafted by the Americans and approved by President Aquino. While they realized that there was only one way in and out of Mamasapano if they went to Marwan’s hideout; they apparently assumed they could do this quietly.  Or, they naively assumed that the BIFF and MILF will not move against them. Or, they assumed that they could successfully block any response. The plan was terrible, with an extremely high chance of failure. To make matters worse, the SAF had no intention of respecting the ceasefire, and assumed that the MILF forces were hostile.
President Aquino is responsible for approving a mission with such a high chance of failure, at the time when the Bangsamoro Basic Law was being considered in Congress. The whole mess he finds himself in today is all his doing. Just telling Napenas to ‘coordinate’ would never have been enough; the AFP’s participation in the mission would not have helped. What would have helped would have been if Aquino himself coordinated with the MILF ceasefire committee (through the AFP) to restrain their forces during the operation.

Given the relatively narrow corridor between the MILF and BIFF areas, successfully avoiding both groups after they were alerted by the sounds of gunfire would have been difficult, to say the least. It didn’t help that SAF55 started the firefight with the MILF at such a terrible location. It is logical to expect the BIFF to approach them from the opposite direction, cutting off their retreat. SAF55 was trapped in an unintended ‘kill zone’ which they had chosen. (To be fair to them, I don’t think there was much of a choice – most positions there would have been as bad.).

The plan was terrible because it could only have succeeded if no shots were fired when they tried to arrest Marwan. It was bad because it assumed that the MILF was hostile, and the plan did not properly consider the ongoing ceasefire with the MILF.

Wouldn’t it have been risky to notify the MILF? Perhaps. But doing that would have been a lot less risky than not notifying them. With the ceasefire in place, the biggest risk in informing the MILF would have been that they would inform Marwan about the plan. But this is much less of a loss than that of losing so many men. The ‘time on target’ approach could have applied here – the MILF local commanders could have been notified by the MILF ceasefire committee just before the SAF operation.  That way, the SAF could simply have exited safely through the MILF community. Or, if they didn’t like to do that, they could have gone back the way they came in, but only fight the BIFF.

Conclusions
Now to go back to the two questions we posed in the beginning:
Was the plan for Oplan Exodus sound?
No. The plan had an extremely low likelihood of success. If by ‘success’ we mean killing Marwan, then it had a 50% chance of success. If success included doing so with minimal casualties, then its success was minimal.
It was wrong for President Aquino to approve a plan that would most likely result in unacceptable casualties.

The participation of Purisima is irrelevant to this question; what is much more relevant is that President Aquino approved a fatally flawed plan. He could have chosen to order changes that would have ensured success. Simply ordering Napenas to coordinate with the AFP was not enough; the correct thing for him was to inform the MILF himself.

Did SAF violate the ceasefire?
Yes. They fired first at elements of the MILF who were merely running to their regroup position. The excuse that the PNP is not a military organization does not hold water. They were fully armed government personnel who shot at a unit which was initially not hostile to them. Besides, the ceasefire was between the Philippine government (which included the PNP) and the MILF.
Calling the incident a ‘misencounter’ is being kind to the SAF. What SAF55 actually did was to ambush the MILF fighters.

It is the Philippine government which needs to demonstrate its reliability and good faith to the MILF. The Mamasapano attack was a grave violation of the ceasefire agreement; especially since it was sanctioned by President Aquino himself.

Those who continue to believe the anti-Moro hype that ‘SAF44’ was massacred by the MILF would probably regject the points I raised in this blog. Hopefully, at least some people would be objective enough take another look at the events in the light of the additional points brought up here.

Waterschappen

Today, 18 March 2015, is the election day for Netherlands’ ‘Waterschappen’ (Water Authorities). Waterschappen are elected bodies that administer water works in a given area of the country. The Netherlands is divided into 24 waterschappen (the country also has 16 provinces). The boundaries of the waterschappen are based on water drainage areas; they often cross provincial lines.

It seems that only the Netherlands and Belgium have elected waterschappen, which demonstrates the importance these countries give to water management. Waterschappen are the Netherlands’ oldest democratic institution; the first waterschap was formed in Utrecht in the year 1122. Waterschappen manage the many dikes, polders (reclaimed areas), canals, locks and other flood control infrastructure; as well as water purification and distribution, and some aspects of water transportation. Through the centuries, they have been good in fulfilling their tasks.

Historically, the Dutch had a lot more waterschappen than today. As late as 1850. there were 3500 of them. This is because they were formed to manage relatively small areas e.g. polders (reclaimed areas) where water had to be managed closely, at least in the past. Over the years, the waterschappen merged with each other, eventually resulting in the 24 waterschappen today.

During the 1500s, the King Philip II (of Spain) moved to abolish the waterschappen and centralize administration. The Dutch were horrified, fearing that their dikes etc will not be maintained properly, and they will fall victims of floods. This was a contributing factor in the Dutch revolt , which eventually led to their independence from Spain.

There are frequent discussions over the continued relevance of waterschappen. Every now and then, political parties would propose to abolish them. But, so far, none of these proposals have succeeded. This is probably because waterschappen continue to be relevant. Global warming has only increased threats like sea-level rise and floods.
Besides, it does not make sense to ‘fix’ something that has functioned so well through the centuries.

Capacity Building

‘Capacity Building’ is ‘in’ these days for international funding agencies (FAs), and through them, a lot of NGOs. Capacity building includes trainings on a wide range of topics; it also includes setting up organizations among the beneficiaries. The trainings and organizing are meant to ensure that the benefits of a program continue beyond the usual 3-year period.

Capacity building is quite popular among NGOs and FAs for slightly different reasons. For NGOs, capacity building is important especially when they initiate work in communities. There is a need to create a minimum level of acceptance for the program, and to develop local trainers, group leaders,  technical experts, etc. that are needed for the actual program.

FAs are particularly fond of capacity building.First, it is something that most NGOs ask help for. Second, it is relatively cheap; and it makes the FA look good – there is a lot to report about, even with a small budget. Third, capacity building, as an intermediate process, evades the question of having to measure durable improvement in the lives of beneficiaries. All that needs to be reported are the trainings given, meetings held, etc and not complicated things like ‘level of food security’. Actual improvements in beneficiaries’ lives are ‘kicked down the road’ – hopefully to be done by the NGOs or the communities themselves.
Fourth, capacity building programs are a particularly good way of inserting specific ‘ideological’ stresses of the FA (to satisfy their constituents, supporters). For example, some FAs require HIV-AIDS awareness trainings, even when these are totally irrelevant. For FAs supporting development NGOs, capacity building lets them avoid potential issues of corruption – i.e., that certain individuals or groups appropriate funds or materials for personal gain.

Effects
The emphasis on capacity building has meant that a relatively large number of people have been reached by these activities. It has undoubtedly also resulted in organizations of former beneficiaries who continue to be active long after the NGO had left them.
At the same time, the stress on capacity building has also resulted in a lot of communities that have been touched by various NGO programs, but do not enjoy any long-term benefits. There are a number of reasons why this happens: First, it is possible that the development problems of a community could not be adequately addressed within a 3-year time span. Or, the partial goals that were achieved may have proven not robust enough to overcome the deep-seated problems of a community. For example, giving financial literacy training, gender sensitivity training and organizing an association in a community would not be able to address widespread indebtedness of the people.

For NGOs that seek to improve the lives of poor people, the overemphasis on capacity building would push them to work with ever changing communities, instead of sticking out with communities until qualitative improvements in their lives are attained. After a three year program period, they are forced either to move on, or to remain in a community and give more trainings. If they opt to remain in the same communities, training-fatigue may ensue – with people losing interest in further trainings that do not improve their lives.
Real livelihood gains require substantial investments. FAs avoid doing so by simply going  on to new communities. Perhaps they hope that the necessary investments would be made by others, be it the government or private businesses.

After trainings on improved agricultural techniques, initial capital would be needed for trading, or to acquire farm machinery, or for debt-reduction programs (or various combinations of these). But these kinds of investments would require higher amounts of money (up to ten times more than the original budget), which FAs are usually unwiling to grant.

Integrators
To cope with the needs of communities beyond the ‘capacity building’ phase, NGOs need to take on an ‘integrator’ function. This means that they would initially seek funding for capacity building from FAs, but when these programs are over, they would stick to the communities and help them to acquire the investments that they need – sourcing them from other FAs, local government, national government agencies, mico-finance institutions, or even their own internal funds..

NGOs that are quite specific in terms of their target beneficiaries, e.g. a given ethnic community, or a given town or group of towns, are those most likely to take on an integrator function. Those of wider, or even national, scope would be less likely to do so. But since integrator NGOs tend to be smaller, they also have less caoacity to generate the resources that their communities really need.

Integrator NGOs that do well, have adopted communities for the long term. They have been creative in tweaking more sources of support to cater to the growing needs of the beneficiary community. Unfortunately, there are relatively few of them.