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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (9814)	9/18/2000 8:30:18 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

It should be pointed out that the French journalists that are being held hostage went to the Abu Sayyaf camp voluntarily, despite numerous warnings. The same situation prevails with the 12 Filipino evangelists, who were staging a bizarre publicity stunt that predictably backfired, and the lone American hostage. The agenda of the American remains unclear and subject to much speculation locally, but it does seem that he went there of his own accord. I'm not sure how much consideration needs to be given to the safety of people who haven't the brains to keep their heads out of the hornet's nest. I feel for the Malaysians and Filipinos that really are kidnap victims, but it is pretty clear that the cycle was never going to end. As soon as they released one group of hostages they'd go out and get another one, and with the high speed, long range boats they were buying with the ransom money they could expand their raiding range immensely. I'm no great fan of the Estrada administration, but in this case I have to agree that there was nothing else to be done. I wonder about the reports of American troops being involved: I suppose it could be true, but it could also be deliberate disinformation, put out to encourage radical Islamic groups to give more to the local extremists on the grounds that they are fighting Americans, or to intimidate the Abu Sayyaf, or in pursuit of some other inscrutable agenda. There are some Green Berets in the country on training exercises (which were scheduled long before the hostage crisis began), but it seems unlikely to me that they would be sent to Jolo. Not a very bright move, if it's true. It will be a difficult fight in any event, and I don't expect that all of the hostages will come out of it alive. In fairness to the Philippine military, I don't think that even the best-trained forces in the world could have staged a surgical rescue: the hostages were scattered in a number of locations, and moved regularly. Accurate information is also very hard to come by in that environment, where most of the population is either supportive of the kidnappers or afraid of them, and the terrain is extremely difficult. It's messy already, and it's going to get messier. Of course none of this started yesterday; it's a problem that's been brewing a long time, and a lot of today's trouble is the result of short-sighted decisions in the past. I could say a thing or two about that (I lived in Mindanao from '79 to '83, and have followed the situation since then), but I don't want to embark on a dissertation on what are, after all, fringe events that hold little interest for most here.... <edit> It might be a good time to recall a previous American military excursion in Jolo: home.fuse.net