March 04, 2003

One of the breaking news items this morning is this:Blast rocks Philippines airport

An explosion has ripped through Davao City airport on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, killing at least 15 people.

More than 50 others are said to have been injured, among them children.

There are also reports of a further two explosions shortly after the initial blast. One is said to have ripped through a bus terminal near the airport.

The first explosion went off at around 5:15pm (0915 GMT) in a packed waiting area, airport authorities said.
[...]
In the past, rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have been blamed by the military for a string of attacks on the island, including a car-bomb explosion at Cotabato airport last month, which killed one and injured another six people.

The Abu Sayyaf militant group - and another two factional organisations - have also been blamed for attacks in the region.
[...]
Davao city, about 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Manila, is the largest city on the island of Mindanao, and has a largely Christian population.

The island is mired in factional fighting, with government troops clashing regularly with Muslim separatist rebels.

The rebels have been fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines for three decades.

Then, there's this editorial Philippine Flip-Flop in today's WSJOnline that was written before the bombing happened today, of course, in which the Journal staff writer(s) aptly sums up the situation there:

One location where captured al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed operated was the Philippines, which welcomed his arrest Saturday as a demonstration of the importance of international cooperation in defeating terrorism.

It's too bad Manila doesn't practice what it preaches. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has instead just reneged on an agreement with Washington to deploy U.S. troops to help chase down the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the southern Philippines. The agreement is unconstitutional, she now says -- not explaining why the Philippine constitution didn't stop her from agreeing in the first place. Other Filipino politicians say a legal agreement could easily have been worked out had the president kept her nerve.

Ms. Arroyo's broken promise is a disappointment to the Pentagon, which had Special Forces primed for the mission, but it's far worse for her own country's economic well-being. More than half of all Filipinos live in poverty, a situation that won't improve as long as foreign investors continue to dismiss the archipelago as a haven for terrorists. And it's important to be clear: There is absolutely no chance the Philippine armed forces can beat Abu Sayyaf on their own.

The tactical inability of Philippine forces was proven last year, when U.S. satellite tracking, sophisticated jungle- and night-fighting technology, terrain mapping and field instruction almost wiped out Abu Sayyaf in a couple of months -- something Manila hadn't come close to doing in years. But equally intrinsic to Filipino nonperformance are plausible charges of corruption in the Philippine military.

Reports that cornered Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have bribed soldiers to let them escape have the ring of truth. It is alleged as well that some unscrupulous officers have sold arms to the terrorists. Opposition leaders in government protest that Ms. Arroyo is hesitant to crack down on misconduct by generals because their support was the essential step in ousting the former president and installing her without an election two years ago.

There are other concerns about Ms. Arroyo's poor judgment these days. Manila's Daily Tribune reported yesterday that Ms. Arroyo has been negotiating with Libya to try to pull in $100 million in investment for a palm-oil production center. The installation would be run by an outfit headed by Moammar Gadhafi's son, Sayf Al Islam. Cozying up to Libya has proven disastrous in the past. Former President Joseph Estrada allowed Gadhafi to negotiate the ransom of European hostages almost three years ago, a policy that provided Abu Sayyaf millions of dollars to buy sophisticated weaponry.

Unreliable friends like Gloria Arroyo have made efforts to defeat global terror networks unnecessarily difficult. Indonesia joined the cause only after terrorists blew up a large chunk of Bali and that country's tourist industry along with it. We hope Manila doesn't have to learn the same hard lesson.

President Arroyo might want to rethink either that decision not to use the offered help of U.S. troops or to enact some constitutional reforms to allow her to do so, because she and her country have real problems.
A year ago, we would have been talking about a bomb like this in Israel, but thanks to the firm hand of PM Ariel Sharon and the judicious use of the IDF, we're not seeing these horrible terrorist bombings in the Holy Land much these days--Thank God!
(Why are these Islamofascists trying to blast their way to a "Muslim homeland" if Muslims aren't even in the majority there? Just land-hungry, I guess.)

*Actually, I hate to second-guess the WSJ but Indonesia's not in the clear yet, as far as Islamist terrorists are concerned, in light of the fact that their province of Aceh was just allowed to open its first state-wide Shari'a court this week
, but today's Mindinao blasts may prove to be the Philippine's "Bali."
Must our world's leaders all have to learn by their own nation's bitter experience and not from observing the horrific attacks on other peoples (like America's 9/11 attacks, Australia's Bali bombing, Russia's Moscow theatre siege and Israel's Intifada) and gleaning the appropriate lessons without the loss of more life?