THE United States’ role in Oplan Exodus that killed an international terrorist but led to the worst massacre of Philippine troops in recent history must be established if we are to understand and put closure to this national tragedy brought upon us by this incompetent president.
A report by the respected Los Angeles Times on the episode, published September 2015 or after months of investigative work, depicts our government and the military as puppets that US special forces de facto directed as part of its international war on terror.
According to the LA Times report, US special forces trained the police commandos, gave them high-tech equipment, “ferried them around” using aircraft flown by US contractors, pinpointed where Marwan was hiding, provided photographic aerial maps to the site, and even provided “real time” intelligence while the operation was being undertaken using drones.
Indeed, Zulkifli bin Hir, aka “Marwan,” a Malaysian, wasn’t really high in the Philippine police and military’s order of battle, as he was believed to have been given refuge by the MILF for his huge financial donation to the insurgents, but only on condition that he didn’t undertake his terrorist activities in Mindanao.
It was the US who designated him as “HV1” (high value target no.1) here as an international terrorist linked to its archenemy Al-Qaeda, with the FBI putting a $5 million bounty on his head; this was mainly because he was believed to have supplied the bombs in the 2002 Bali attack, and had trained Islamic terrorists around the world in bomb warfare. The US also wanted to prove that nobody can escape the long arm of its law: Marwan was indicted in August 2007 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Former police colonel Getulio Napeñas, then commander of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force that undertook the mission, testified in the Senate hearings on the massacre last year:
One of the Americans ordered (Army 6th Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Edmundo) Pangilinan to fire the artillery. However, Pangilinan refused and told him “Do not dictate to me what to do. I am the commander here!”
Why would an American dare order an army general to fire artillery if he had no commanding role in the operation?
There were several pieces of evidence of US involvement in the operation disclosed in the Senate hearings: testimonies of a local mayor and an SAF trooper that they saw drones circling the battle field, Napenas’ disclosure that there were six Americans at the operation’s command post, and his explanation that a Federal Bureau of Investigation officer was waiting at General Santos City airport to whom a SAF officer gave Marwan’s severed finger right after the operation, for DNA testing in an FBI laboratory in the US.
There was in fact photo evidence of US involvement: Newspaper photos of Caucasians tending to and loading the wounded on a helicopter on the day of the massacre. The chopper’s markings are clearly visible. Why didn’t the Senate establish who or what agency or what country operated this helicopter? Like meek colonial subjects, the Senate and the press shirked away from finding out why that helicopter was there pre-positioned for the operation.
How can we pretend to be a sovereign nation when Oplan Exodus was almost entirely an American operation, from which it swiftly distanced itself from when it resulted in 44 of our elite police troops massacred?
It is the American role in the Mamasapano operation that explains what had been a mystery to me. This is something that can’t be discussed, for some flimsy national-security reason, only in closed executive sessions in the Senate. The nation, the loved ones and relatives of the massacred SAF 44, deserve to know the truth.
Where could this President — who had never really shown himself to be really decisive and courageous — find the guts to pretend to command Oplan Exodus, even asking his close friend Police Chief Alan Purisima – in spite of Purisima’s having been sacked a month before — to be his “executive officer?”
From the Americans, who assured him that, short of having American boots on the ground, they were on top of Oplan Exodus. The Americans probably told him: “We’ll do all the work. Just be in Zamboanga City to congratulate your troops for a job well done.”
As the operation unraveled, Aquino was still probably hoping for the American military to somehow turn things around. After all, the Americans saved his mother at the last minute in 1989, when US Phantom jets swooped from Clark Air Base to force down the RAM rebels’ T28 Trojans (the so-called “Tora-Toras”) that were bombing Malacanang, and thereby defeating that coup that had nearly won.
This time around, of course, no US fighters swooped down on Mamasapano. The kind of drones the US sent were unarmed.
This president could be guilty not only of criminal negligence but treason, for letting a foreign power undertake a military operation within our country, one that resulted in 44 SAF troopers massacred. n
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