Partners vs terror

Providence must still be smiling on Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. After she fumed over a survey sent to potential donors by the Republican National Congressional Committee, which described the Philippines and Thailand as "countries that harbor and aid terrorists," her boys foiled an Abu Sayyaf plot to launch attacks in Metro Manila that could have been on a scale similar to the March 11 bombings in Madrid.

Intriguingly, for such a massive attack foiled, we still haven’t been treated to the usual photo op of the six Abu Sayyaf suspects and their 36-kilo cache of TNT with commander-in-chief GMA.

The six are supposed to be top guys in the Abu Sayyaf. Gee, I thought the group had already been decapitated. One of the suspects supposedly beheaded American hostage Guillermo Sobero in Basilan. Another allegedly bombed that roadside canteen in Malagutay, Zamboanga City where an American soldier was killed. A third supposedly planted a bomb on the SuperFerry 14, starting a fire that left about 100 people dead. Any Americans among the fatalities? Ferry owner WG&A loves this story.

Still another suspect is… the driver of actor Robin Padilla? Oops, wrong script; erase, erase.

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An informal survey conducted last night by ABS-CBN Channel 2 showed that most of the viewers thought the foiled "Madrid-level" terror attack was a tall tale.

But apart from WG&A owners, at least one person is willing to go along with the government’s story. Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, who is traipsing freely all over Mindanao, has happily confirmed the government’s message – that his group is alive and well and planning to blow our house down if we don’t watch out.

The US government, embarrassed by the survey conducted by President George W. Bush’s own Republican Party, has also been effusive in its praise of the Abu Sayyaf arrests. The Republicans have apologized to the Arroyo administration while the US State Department has issued an official statement, telling anyone interested that the United States considered the Philippines and Thailand partners in the global war on terror.

Washington needs every ally it can get, especially when American civilian contractors are being dragged by angry Iraqis through the streets of Baghdad and then hanged.

Part of the State Department statement reads: "We are also grateful for the deployment of Thai and Filipino troops to Iraq and Thai troops to Afghanistan."

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To be fair, the Bush administration has always been genuinely fond of President Arroyo, and genuinely appreciative of her all-out support for the US-led war on terror.

When President Arroyo says her boys have foiled a terror attack on the scale of the Madrid bombings, the Americans take her word for it.

William Pope, the State Department’s principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, described the Abu Sayyaf arrests as "great" and said, "I strongly congratulate your government."

The basic objective of counterterrorism, Pope told a handful of local journalists the other day, is "to find and stop terrorists who are going to kill a lot of people." This the Philippine government has been doing, he said.

Pope was in Manila for the two-day conference of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which focused on transportation and maritime security.

Concerns were raised at the ARF conference that Islamic militants could team up with pirates and threaten commercial shipping in the Straits of Malacca. US officials, worried that terrorists would use ships as virtual missiles, also want private shipping operators to invest vast sums in the so-called container security initiative.

Pope admits that while the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime deprived terrorists of state sponsors, those victories in the war on terror also dispersed the threat. Small terror cells have been created around the globe that could be equally dangerous, especially when they go after soft targets such as commuter trains in Madrid and nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia.

Pope disagreed with observations that Southeast Asia, with its weak governments, lax law enforcement, porous borders and widespread poverty, could turn into the next Afghanistan, ripe for terrorist recruitment, used as a training and staging point for terrorist attacks.

The reason, he said, is that unlike the Taliban or Saddam’s regime, governments in Southeast Asia are not supporting terrorists and are not allowing Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda or like-minded militants to set up permanent installations for terror.

Pope said the Philippine government "is doing everything it can" to fight the terror threat.

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Terrorists have shown themselves to be highly adaptable, however, and the war on terror is entering a new phase. Pope admitted that even the elimination of Bin Laden would not end the threat. He described this point in the war as "the end of the beginning" and warned that "it’s going to be a long struggle."

He brushed aside concerns that members of the US-led coalition in Iraq are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, pointing out that the threat has been there even before the war in Iraq and, in the case of the Philippines, long before 9/11.

"Almost every place is vulnerable," he said. "There’s no particular country that’s safe from this."

He pointed out that after 9/11, Bush tried to build the biggest international coalition against terrorism. Hope also mouthed the official Bush administration line that Washington did not act unilaterally in Iraq.

Pope predicted no change in US policy in the war on terror even if Bush lost his re-election bid in November.

"You cannot overestimate how incredibly traumatic Sept. 11 was for (Americans)," Pope said. "It is existential for us. These guys basically want to kill us and we have to stop them before they do it."

But Americans know they cannot fight this war alone, that they cannot find and arrest every terrorist in every part of the globe. "We don’t want to and we’re not trying," Hope said.

Which is why they are genuinely pleased when an ally like the Philippines announces the arrest of terror suspects.

For now, with no evidence to the contrary, we’ll believe the Abu Sayyaf arrests and foiled terror plot were not just an April Fool joke. In the war on terror, it can be deadly to cry wolf.