Bloody

When this whole affair began, none of us imagined how bloody this battle was going to be – and how ruined Marawi will become.

The bad news is that the brothers Maute are still alive and fighting. That is information provided by civilians managing to escape from the enemy zone. We wished them dead. But you know the Spanish saying about bad weeds: they never die.

And so it seems our troops have no choice but to fight the enemy chamber-to-chamber until the very last of them is shot. The virulent enemy will not surrender and the AFP will give them no quarter. If they want martyrdom, that will be gladly delivered.

Close quarter combat is always dangerous for our troops. At close quarters, our troops enjoy no air superiority. They cannot rely on artillery to clear the way for them. They basically have to deal with the enemy on even terms. It is nearly a duel, although not with an honorable adversary.

This is the reason why the AFP’s casualty toll appears to spike even as the enemy is boxed in a small area. This is man-to-man. In the last reported incident, nine soldiers were killed when the terrorists suddenly charged and showered them with grenades. They want to take as many of our troops with them to paradise.

The good news is that the terrorists are now confined to a single square kilometer – although that happens to be the most built-up portion of the city. Our troops and the terrorists are exchanging sniper fire nearly around the clock. The AFP’s advantages here are superior marksmanship training and night vision equipment.

Some of our best snipers, it turns out, are women. That should at least make the activists of Gabriela proud. The leftist women’s group, which snipes in a different way, should reduce the volume of unfounded claims they dish out about how our brave soldiers are misbehaving in the combat zone.

If the terrorists are trapped in a single square kilometer box, all of them should be within reach of the Army’s snipers. This will be a bloody denouement to a battle fought largely out of camera range.

There is some salacious intelligence about the terrorists guarding sacks of looted riches amounting to well over a billion pesos. According to hostages who have since escaped from their Maute captors, the terrorists made their captive work regular hours systematically looting the area under their control.

This is not exactly gold at the end of the rainbow. When the loot is recaptured by our troops, the best effort will be exerted to return them to their rightful owners. Those owners are likely Maranao businessmen whose acumen in trade is matched only by their distrust of banks.

When President Duterte visited the troops in Marawi last week, he did not tell them to hurry up getting the work done. He told them to take their time, save as many of the hostages as possible and try not to damage the mosque. Those are very sober instructions.

During the congressional debate on the extension of martial law in Mindanao, so much time was wasted by the miniscule minority of Liberal Party senators and leftist congressmen. Repetitively, they seemed trying to convince us that martial law was responsible for the displacement of civilians.

That is so ridiculous. Civilians were displaced because Maute terrorists occupied part of Marawi. Those facts are plain. The critics of martial law insult our intelligence.

Both the leftists and the LPs oppose martial law for partisan reasons. They should find the forthrightness to admit that rather than twist cause and effect.

These people are not idiots. They simply have difficulty finding a reason to be relevant.  In that condition, they seem be flailing about like a man drowning. They are making motions but not much sense. They emit sounds but not coherence.

All of us weep for the displaced people of Marawi. But it was not martial law that displaced them.

Besides, although this might be an inconvenient thing to talk about at this time, the community most damaged by the fighting also kept silent while the terrorists spent months assembling a large force and a vast stockpile of weapons right at the heart of the city’s commercial district. Had the neighbors failed to realize what was going on in their midst?

Marawi is called a city. But it is really a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Five hundred fighters could not have settled in without anyone noticing. The police and the army were kept in the dark. The neighbors did not tell.

With martial rule extended, the challenge for government is to make that a meaningful fact. Government should use the extraordinary powers given it to disarm the assortment of armed groups that fester throughout this troubled island. There is consensus on this.

The invasion of Marawi galvanized public opinion. The leftist and the LPs may try to break the consensus – to little avail.

If the Duterte government comes down hard on the assortment of armed groups in the island, including the NPA that has 80 percent of its forces in Mindanao, we will hear the usual whining from the usual suspects. But the overwhelming majority will support that. The opinion polls indicate that.

We are simply sick and tired of armed bands basically engaging in extortion in the name of some bankrupt ideology. The people of Mindanao will be happiest if the island is rid of them. These pests should not continue holding our progress hostage.