Blood in Those Hands

A 400-STRONG “Muslim separatists” against a team of 100 soldiers, most like a team of Army Special Forces (ASF), a news report went, and augmented by members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), backed by bomber planes and artillery fire. 

GMA News reported that the debacle resulted from “a military operation against a few fugitive MILF rebels and Abu Sayyaf bandits in Al-Barka town.” And when the firefight broke, the fugitives managed to increase their strength to 400 men, while the pursuing operatives failed to get theirs. And this resulted to the death of 19 soldiers, including four officers, and seven enemies after more than 10 hours of fighting. 

But amid the calls of an all-out war against all separatists, including the MILF, there are a few lessons that the Philippine armed forces needs to learn in order to prevent deaths like these—a full-alert state of mind. Laxity on the part of military intelligence apparently has led into this unnecessary deaths, considering we are talking here of Army special forces who are supposed to be at their top elements.

First, there was a failure of intelligence. The soldiers may have succeeded in following the fugitives’ trails, but they failed to know ahead of time how much of these fugitives lurked in the background as they entered the town of Al-Barka. Maybe we can blame that to lack of surveillance technology. Satellite surveillance in that area may have uncovered potential hostiles ready to respond against them. But it remains a fact that the pursuing soldiers failed to assess very well the dangers they were facing when they entered the town. Did they send ahead the team of ASF to check the town first for hostiles? Or, did they barge in without reasonable precaution?

Second, over-confidence on the part of the military led them to eat more than they can chew. A 100-strong pursuit force is a large one when pursuing a much lesser number of fugitives. But it seemed that retaliation and reinforcement on the part of fugitives was far from the mind of the Army commanding officers, or those who did the planning. Apparently the military had a surprise of their life? Is it normal military procedure to always have a Plan B, even a Plan C? In this case there seemed to be none to cover this possibility. It is fortunate that they didn’t get slaughtered, all of the 100 men.

Third, there was a failure of mobilization. It is not clear how far from their positions before they entered the location of the nearest regimen of soldiers that can reinforce them in the operation. What we can see, no reinforcement arrived yet when the firefight ensued. Did the military initiate the bloody encounter inside the town? Or, they had to fight back after the rebels descended on them? The first option would have been folly. The latter one would be unfortunate.

Being on the pursuit, the military had the advantage of giving the first fire. Despite numerical advantage, the rebels would have second thoughts in initiating the firefight because of their advantage in position—they can wait for an ambush once the soldiers enter town. Whatever error of judgment that the military committed here, the blood of their brothers in combat will be in the commanding officer’s hands.

At the end of the day, an enemy is an enemy. It will fight to the death to stay alive, considering they were the elements in flight. Who commits the error to engage will have the blood of the soldiers in their hands.