Mamasapano

The ghosts from a massacre would not go away. What happened in that small village two years ago remains an open wound. Superior numbers and superior arms wiped out 44 of our best troopers. They were sent to the jaws of death and then abandoned.

The previous administration tried very hard to appease the troopers’ angry kin. They were offered financial assistance and housing units. Orphaned children were offered scholarships. Former president Noynoy Aquino dragged himself to make an appearance at the wake for the slain troopers, there to come face to face with the cold gaze of relatives and soldiers alike.

There is something that all the financial assistance offered could not buy, something that all the alligator tears could not bring closure to. It is an unquantifiable, sometimes imponderable, thing. It is called “justice.”

SAF 44 kin continue to nurse a feeling justice has not been served. The full story has not been disclosed. Accountability has not been exacted. Responsibility has not been pinned. There can be no closure yet.

The sentiment appears to be shared by President Rodrigo Duterte. Last Tuesday, the President convened the relatives and addressed the massacre. He announced the formation of a commission to reopen the books on this case. Neither the official version issued by the previous administration nor the Senate report on the matter sufficiently tells all.

By convening a high-level commission, compared to the Agrava Commission that received testimony about the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino in 1983, Duterte basically suggests a cover-up happened. This could have serious political repercussions.

Duterte proceeds from a special vantage point looking at the events through that fateful day two years ago. He was coincidentally in Zamboanga City that day and was summoned by former president Noynoy Aquino to the room from where they monitored the carnage in progress.

Although excluded from the most secretive conversations between Aquino and then DILG secretary Mar Roxas, Duterte had the opportunity to closely observe the behavior of the two. After some time observing the indecisiveness of the duo, Duterte could not take any more of it any longer. He asked Aquino to be excused.

The last straw, by Duterte’s account, was when Aquino asked a general what he would do if he were in his situation. By that moment, it had become an entirely academic question. Most if not all of the SAF 44 were already dead.

The President asks some hard questions that remain unresolved despite the previous reports on what happened.

Duterte describes the Mamasapano mission as a “CIA operation.” This explains the presence of American operatives in the vicinity while the raid was in progress. Terrorist Marwan’s finger, cut off to prove he was killed, ended up in American hands. Nevertheless, we do not know exactly what happened to the large reward money the US put up for Marwan’s head.

Duterte questions the decision to deploy the SAF instead of AFP combat units to undertake the mission. This mission was undertaken in very hostile territory and hostile terrain. The police were lightly armed, enjoyed no air and artillery cover and no proximate support units.

It is ironic that the mission was codenamed “Oplan Exodus.” The unit assigned to undertake the mission was not able to exit the area.

While the carnage was in progress, Duterte faults Aquino for listening to his peace adviser instead of the military. Ging Deles was apparently worried about the implications for the peace talks of bringing in the armed forces. This is the reason, he says, why the military was not quickly deployed to rescue the pinned-down SAF unit.

This much was long-suspected but not fully addressed by the Senate report. Aquino, for his part, denies he issued any stand-down order to the military units in the vicinity.

The other lapses have been tackled. Aquino’s decision to allow then PNP chief Alan Purisima to handle the operation despite being suspended from his post was clearly wrong. On top of that, Aquino and Purisima decided to keep the PNP leadership as well as the AFP out of the loop. That was clearly disastrous.

One phrase stands out from the testimonies we heard about what happened at Mamasapano: “time on target.” What that meant, in plain language, was that both the military units and police forces in the vicinity of the mission were informed of what was going on only after the raiding team was deep into the badly conceived mission.

“Time on target” put a spotlight on Gen. Purisima’s suspiciousness for his colleagues in the military. Aquino, as commander in chief of both the police and military, should not have encouraged Purisima’s attitude towards his colleagues. Nor should have allowed the inter-service distrust to shape the way the dangerous operation was conceived.

But he did. Some liability should accrue from that.

Some might be content the Mamasapano incident, initially described by Mar Roxas as a “mis-encounter” with MILF forces, merely underscores the utter incompetence of the previous administration. But there should be a price paid even by the incompetent.

Others take the lapses a lot more seriously. The former president, they think, lied to his people by concealing important details and mischaracterizing his actual role in this tragic police operation. Long after the dead troopers were buried, Aquino continued to talk about “alternative truths” about Mamasapano. The whole confused effort at mischaracterizing what happened amounts to betrayal of public trust.

Is there a need for a commission to reinvestigate what happened? There probably is, to avert the truth itself from being buried in the aftermath.