U.S. commander Blair requests more troops for the Philippines Wall Street Journal
April 11, 2002
By Greg Jaffe, Staff ReporterWASHINGTON -- The U.S. commander for military forces in the Pacific is pressing for 300 more American troops to be sent to the Philippines to bolster the fight against the militant Muslim group Abu Sayyaf.
Adm. Dennis Blair has argued that the soldiers -- all engineers and civil affairs experts -- are needed to build helicopter landing zones for the Philippine troops who are pursuing the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas and trying to win the release of American hostages as part of the continuing U.S.-led war on terrorism.
If the additional soldiers are deployed there, it would bring the total U.S. force in the Philippines to about 1,000. But the request is meeting some resistance from Manila, which is concerned that adding more troops to the current 660-soldier American force might spark additional protests from Filipino Muslims who make up about 8% of the country's 80 million people.
Earlier this week, Philippine police fired into the air to disperse demonstrators protesting against the U.S. during ceremonies attended by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to mark a World War II battle. No one was injured in the protests, which took place at the foot of a hill on Bataan peninsula at the mouth of Manila Bay.
The large number of U.S. troops flowing into the southern Philippines would likely give added fuel to Muslim critics in the Philippines and Indonesia, who have maintained that the U.S. wants to use Mindanao as a base for military operations across the region, particularly against Islamist groups in the Philippine South and Indonesia.
Ms. Arroyo has been insistent in recent weeks that U.S. forces are not engaging in any combat on Philippine soil and that the U.S. presence wouldn't grow substantially.
The new arrivals would undertake projects designed to improve the local economy and over the long term dilute support for the terrorist group in the very poor and remote region of the Philippines, which is dominated by Muslims. The troops would dig wells, improve roads in the region and upgrade decrepit port facilities to reduce the region's isolation from the rest of the Philippines, said a senior defense official.
Pentagon officials said it still wasn't clear whether there would be a decision on the deployment anytime soon. "We have not forwarded to the secretary final proposals or interim proposals for any kind of an increase. That's not to say it won't happen, but right now we're still at the talking and negotiating stages," Brig. Gen. John Rosa of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Pentagon reporters.
The current contingent of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines is providing training, weapons and planning expertise to Filipino troops battling the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on Basilan island. The Filipino troops are also trying to rescue missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham and a Filipino nurse.
Meanwhile, defense officials are weighing an invitation from Iraq to look into the disappearance of Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher, a Navy fighter pilot who was shot down over Iraq in 1991 during the Gulf War. The Iraqi overture stipulated that a U.S. news media team accompany the delegation and that it include the former head of the United Nations' Iraq weapons inspection team, who is now a vocal critic of U.S. Iraqi policy.
A U.S. defense official, however, said the Iraq offered few details about what kind of access the U.S. team might get to Iraqi facilities or how large the U.S. delegation could be. "It's not worth it if we are just going to get to go to the crash site again. We've already done that," this official said. He added that no decision about sending a team was imminent.