The Battle of Thermopylae in reverse
I learned from my high school class in world history, half a century ago, that in the Battle of Thermopylae, about 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas, bore the brutal onslaught of thousands of Persians. They might have all perished in the battle but the time they bought from their fatal struggle made their kindred safe. This historical datum came back to me eerily when I read from the broadsheet, the Philippine STAR, the news update of the Maute attack in Marawi City.
Actually, the numbers attracted my attention as the Thermopylae epic flashed in my mind in relation to the Marawi incident. On one hand, and according to the report, there are nearly 900 members of the Philippine National Police alongside the Armed Forces of the Philippines fighting the Maute. This is supposedly the Persian side, reckoning the bloody war in Thermopylae. While there are no specific numbers of army personnel involved in the war, there is at least one battalion of soldiers trying to dislodge the lawless elements from the city. My most conservative estimate puts the figure at about 600 soldiers. All told therefore, the government, rather the Persian side, has roughly 1,500 combatants with reinforcements still coming.
On the other hand, the Philippine STAR report, quoting informed sources, said that there are about 200 men belonging to the Maute group. The Spartans in the Thermopylae scene are their supposed counterparts. Deduct from this number those who have been neutralized, reportedly at 61, there should be just more than a hundred of them left to fight.
The Marawi City situation stands in contrast to Thermopylae. Their roles are reversed. The Spartans, which I associate as the Maute group, had the inferior number of the Spartan King Leonidas and his men while the armed forces, have the superior number of the Persians in the Thermopylae scene. It was probably because of the great numerical disparity between these two sides of the conflict that the Martial Law administrator initially set the deadline of June 2, as the time when the Maute shall be crushed.
Unfortunately, the less two hundred Spartans (Maute), despite their smaller number, seemed to have gotten the better of our army. As admitted by the army spokesman the other night, the Mautes do not appear to have been crushed by the vastly more numerous Philippine soldiers. They are defying our army such that the part of Marawi City, which they seized at the beginning of the war, is apparently still under their control.
In Thermopylae, the 300 Spartan soldiers of King Leonidas were skilled in all known kinds of warfare. Their bravery was without question. But, the numerical disproportion was too much. Thousands of Persians eventually vanquished them.
I am sad to surmise the truth that is unraveling. We have the Battle of Thermopylae in reverse. I was hoping the government had the opportunity to crush the Mautes and wipe them off of the map and what better setting would there be than in a peaceful city of Muslims. It pains me to admit however that in Marawi, the less than 200 Mautes, Spartans in my parallelism, must be better skilled and braver than Leonidas' men. For more than a week now, they have repulsed the more numerous forces of the republic backed by armored columns and air assets. It is tragic that lives of Filipino soldiers are lost but it is more catastrophic to learn that our government is unable to assert itself over armed criminals.
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