Rebels of Mindanao

by Tom Anthony

  “Your customs here are different than ours in many ways, although we all follow the law of the true prophet.” Mahir was putting the conversation on safer ground.

  “Yes, now we read the same words, but it was not always so. Many of our tribes have old ways still. Especially pertaining to the ways of war.” Bumbog entered unexplored territory with his new comrade.

  “That is usual, there must be a code of honor between men.” Falling rain drained mud into the basketball court in front of them as Mahir continued, chanting a hadith almost under his breath. Mahir was a priest, in the sense that all Muslim males are priests, even if not learned in the law. Bumbog did not understand Mahir’s intonations but the rhythmic quality of his voice encouraged him to confide further.

  “Some of our customs in war you may find strange,” Bumbog confided.

  “Like what?” Mahir was curious. “In the thousand years of the Turkish Ottoman Empire having ruled most of the Western world, our soldiers encountered many strange cultures. There is nothing they have not experienced and recorded for our scholars. What do you think would surprise me?”

  Bumbog paused before he answered. “Tribesmen who eat their dead enemy.”

  “You mean cannibals?” Mahir was frankly surprised.

  “No, no, not exactly, not like I heard about across the water, in Borneo, not as a customary food, and not the entire body. But I know that warriors of the Bilaan, some are with us now in this camp, follow a tribal ritual that includes eating the flesh of their fallen foes.”

  Mahir did not quite comprehend, “They kill and eat other humans?”

  Bumbog was not an expert on this subject, but gave his understanding. “It’s like this; they have difficulty taking and keeping prisoners. What would they do with them? In war, they just want to eliminate threats to their own livelihood, or to defend their lands.” Bumbog fidgeted, now a bit nervous about revealing these details to a foreigner. He lit another cigarette and tried to explain. “They spear them.”

  “Spear them? Don’t they have guns?” Mahir’s curiosity grew.

  “Some have rifles, but I have not heard about what happens if they are shot, perhaps it spoils the meat,” Bumbog conjectured. He had only heard the stories; his tribe did not engage in the ritual.

  “So they spear enemies only in combat?” Mahir had to draw the details out of his comrade.

  “No. Not only in war. In the wilderness there is a different law. A man could be speared for stealing another’s horse or wife, if the chieftain of his own tribe approves the punishment.”

  “What, exactly, is spearing?”

  “It is a way to keep peace among the rival families. If the thief is speared, a tribal war of vengeance and great loss of life can be avoided. The victim is avenged.”

  “So spearing is a way to keep peace.”

  “Yes, in a manner of speaking, peace is the outcome. The evildoer is speared, and his head is immediately cut off. The head is put on a stake in the spot where he was killed for all to see for several days. The victim’s abdomen is slashed open, and the heart and liver are removed and wrapped in banana leaves. Only these parts are taken back to the camp of the avenged. The corpse of the dead is not kept for food, but the warriors viciously dismember it and spread it around the stake holding the head. After a few days, there will be no traces remaining in a hot jungle alive with hungry creatures.

  “Back in the village, the heart and liver are broiled over charcoal and the warriors paint their bodies and dance around a huge bonfire. When the meat is cooked, it is cut into small slivers that are shared among the tribesmen. The ritual is performed to avenge the offense.”

  “Can we expect our new recruits to follow these customs now, in combat?”

  “Only if it is not convenient to take prisoners. I expect that in combat there will not be time for the proper ceremonies. But if we have a great victory and take captives, there may be an opportunity. It is not a question of lack of food; the Bilaan with us could hunt monkey or take a domestic carabao more easily. But do not be surprised to see a few heads on stakes after the next victorious battle.”

  The two leaders of the NPA walked to the end of the village and returned along the other side of the one street to the command post. Mehmet Al Zein squatted outside the hut, cleaning dirt off his rifle ammunition and replacing the lightly oiled rounds into one of the three magazines he habitually carried. His rifle was propped against the wall of the hut. It was an unplanned opportunity for the three subordinates of Kumander Ali to talk informally together about their leader.

  “Mehmet,” Bumbog greeted his contemporary, “do you think you will have a chance to use that weapon soon?”

  “If it be the will of God.” Al Zein had been focused on his work and had not noticed the two approaching until they were leaning over him. “I hope to use it soon, the sooner the better, tomorrow would be my prayer. Are you as ready as I?”

  It was a good question. Both Mahir and Bumbog knew that combat, possibly mortal combat for themselves, could be near, but they had not thought about any definite start date. Kumander Ali had briefed them about his plan for the elections, but military action could happen at any instant, and not always at a time of their choosing. Their enemies might have their own idea about when the next shot would be fired.

  The newest warrior among them, Mahir addressed the two seasoned soldiers together. “Kumander Ali now sees us as being united. As the New Peoples Army, we have a chance to defeat the combined Philippine Army and National Police. Their army is better organized than I thought. I saw how they communicated while maneuvering between the rivers. The national police cut off our escape with armed checkpoints on the roads while the army maneuvered effectively in rather difficult terrain. If they can do the same with large forces, it could become challenging for us.”

  “That was exactly our report to Kumander Ali. He is the leader we have all accepted, and it will be his responsibility to create new tactics. We agreed to subordinate our sovereignty to him for a common cause, but our followers will not wait forever for results. He needs our help now. We must change how we fight if we want to win our freedom.” Al Zein gave the opinion he had formed during his long service. He locked a full magazine of ammo into his rifle, fired two shots into the brush to check it, then leaned the weapon back against the wall and stood up to motion the other two to sit with him on the porch. Mahir and Bumbog were willing to consider new strategies with the older warrior.

  Al Zein continued. “The AFP might start to launch large preemptive attacks against us, because they must show significant victories to keep the money coming to them from the foreign Jews. If we don’t give them a big target, they can’t achieve a large victory. Our strategy must be simple: small units of our New Peoples Army should hit many visible targets at the same time—any AFP soldier standing in a post office, a PNP officer directing traffic, a coffee shop with foreigners. Each of these small targets will result in a recognized victory for us. Our patrols will then conceal their weapons and disappear back to their homes, wait, then reach out and strike another target a few days later. We will be impossible to stop.”

  Mahir asked, “How do we command them? How do we resupply them?”

  Bumbog explained for the Turk. “You are new here, we have been practicing for years how to achieve this. We live off the land and the taxes we collect. And the easiest solution is: we do not communicate with each other. After we leave this camp, each of us will return to our origins, but we will resurface again and again as the New Peoples Army. We will prepare for the elections that we know we will win. In the meantime, we will continue attacks against the infidels and the foreigners. Our work does not need to be coordinated.”

  Al Zein summarized the new strategy of the NPA. “That is the beauty of Ali’s plan. That is why I supported him and agreed to accept the NPA label. We do not need to have communication; we do not need to be directed. We will act on our own. There will be no more defeats for us, only victories.”

&
nbsp; “I am trying to help you make the best of your victories, so you don’t need to fight again. I need to change some of the large U.S. dollar bills I have for pesos for our immediate needs and must find a bank that can do that. “Where is the nearest one?” Mahir asked.

  Bumbog gave him the directions, “On my way here I passed one. It is near; you can walk there in half an hour, a village named Bual.”

  Only an hour later, Mahir was leaving the Bual office of the Bank of the Philippines. He saw a fancy truck covered with banana leaves-out of place in this village. He walked down the alley. There were not many vehicles like this one in Mindanao.

  Looking in the open window, Mahir saw two new M-16s on the front seat, and a map with circles and lines drawn on it. He knew he had found an enemy vehicle, so he watched it for a while. When Juanito came back from the village and went to sleep in the Pajero, Mahir returned to acquire two more guns for the NPA.

  Sleeping in the cab of the Pajero, Juanito never felt the shot that ended his life.

  29

  Holy Warriors

  After their initial military victory in the field, when they surprised Colonel Liu at Koronadal, the Muslim revolution had gained momentum. And Radio Free Mindanao did not report the NPA defeat the following day in the triangle. That unfortunate incident was considered the will of Allah, and best ignored and forgotten. Enshallah. It did not matter. The radio D.J.s and the ulamas continued to report only the earlier victory in detail every hour over the Itig station. Allah Akbar. The NPA owned the radio station now, and every family at home, every customer in open-air ihaw ihaw restaurants in the hamlets and the soldiers moving along the roads listened and heard the message. The commentator announced, “No longer is there an MNLF, the Abu Sayaf, or the MILF. From today there is only jihad; we are all mujahadeen. We have one mission, to be independent; we have one leader, Allah Akbar! One name now: New Peoples Army. All strugglers for independence must accept Allah and join the NPA! Libertad!”

  The success of the radio station takeover and its aftermath had been spectacular. New NPA recruits were joining up every day and coming to the encampment around Itig. Especially welcomed were the old guard from the NPA who had been fighting for years and had experience and cohesiveness within their small units. Simple farmers turned insurgents had no problem accepting Allah. The tribesmen could still worship their own gods at home, and they viewed Islam as just another religion of the foreigners, as was Christianity in its various and confusing forms with strange rituals. When we die, do we wait for God or Jehovah, or for Allah to judge us? One prophet or the other from the deserts of the West sounded like the same guy to them, but at least this Allah lets us keep our guns and feeds us now, not just after we die, and he provides virgins for us in paradise if we die on jihad.

  In addition to the NPA now under arms in the north, the coalition had another 7,000 men added from the MNLF in the western provinces. Kumander Ali hardly knew what to do with them all. The new enlistees would need basic equipment, and they would demand sustenance. Walking up the road in front of him at the moment were more than a hundred new men from what was once a unit of the liberation front, his own former cohorts, now accepting the combined designation of NPA. The men joining them had uniforms of a sort, and almost every one had a rifle.

  Moros from the western provinces were dedicated separatists who had resisted the control of Manila for generations. It had taken some of the warriors three days to travel all the way south from the swamplands bounding Lake Lanao, mostly on foot, but part of the distance in intercity motorized bicycles, spurred on by their increasing sense of urgency and the importance of the mission they shared, and fueled by poverty and desperation.

  Ali’s face was stern and showed little emotion, but his heart swelled with pride and concomitant responsibility. He was the instigator of all of this. The new troops might not know who he was, but he knew that through the informal layers of leadership, he was their commander. Even Bumbog, the leader of the original NPA, had accepted Ali and was now a loyal lieutenant.

  Kumander Ali knew these new soldiers were not well organized and had no discipline and only a shaky chain of command. But if he could assemble them all in one place at one time with guns, and if he could choose that place, he would gain a big advantage over the Tagalogs in Manila. As long as Task Force Davao did not know where he would attack, he would have the initiative again. If he could defeat the Philippine army chasing him, the elections could be held without meaningful interference.

  Ali was sure the Manila central government would cave in, and the NPA would win the war. But he would have to fight and win soon; time was not on his side, and without a decisive victory the alliance he had molded would be forced to disband and revert to small unit actions by local cells. They might never again have the chance to mass their combined forces and achieve ultimate victory and freedom. Ali decided to call the tribal leaders and the key men of the New Peoples Army together. This took some rounding up, as not all agreed among themselves who the key men were. But Ali achieved a quorum.

  He rejoined Bumbog and the others sitting inside one of the few wooden houses available to them, an old building raised off the ground on stilts with the walls covered with colorful hangings of Maguindinaoan tapestries.

  Mahir could hardly comprehend all the enthusiasm for the cause. So many signed up for the cause who were barefoot and skinny little men carrying nothing more than a malong sack with some fruit and a few personal belongings, bolos sheathed but sharpened, many of them bringing their wives and sometimes three or four kids under the age of five with them. He asked Lateef, sitting on the porch next to him, “Why, especially after our defeat, are so many new recruits joining up?”

  “Brother”—it was only the second time Lateef had addressed Mahir in this familiar way—“these men fight for rice. They have little to lose, and hope we will feed their families and provide candy and cigarettes for them. Most have not heard about what happened to us during the encounter between the rivers, and even if they knew of that defeat, we would still be their best chance for future rice, maybe even rice with viand sometimes.”

  Mehmet walked up and sat with the other two. He was chewing betel nut, and stains of the red narcotic dribbled down his chin, dropping into bright puddles of tarnish on the dusty floor. He chewed leisurely while he listened to the other two discuss what to do next. He told Mahir, “The genius of Kumander Ali is his ability to see our weaknesses clearly and to turn them into our strengths” It was an eloquent statement of strategy formulation.

  “Yes,” agreed Mahir. “We have a saying in our country—an army of sheep led by a lion will defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.”

  “And we have our lion in Kumander Ali. I opposed him before; perhaps as a leader I was a sheep. That is why I agreed to adopt the name of NPA and to put my trust with him.” Mehmet’s concession was the single most important one that had made the wider revolution possible.

  The NPA mujahadeen knew they would eventually have to fight the Philippine forces now approaching them from the south. Feeling the pressure of time, Kumander Ali announced that after the upcoming battle his followers would disperse throughout Mindanao. Operationally mobile groups would return to their home regions and make individual attacks on any government or army facility they could identify as a target. Each local cell would choose its own target. But they would wait for implementation until the decisive date: the 29th of the next month, and the time would be one minute after midnight, the first minute of the historic date, the anniversary of the original founding of the NPA. Ali explained to the newest arrivals that they could either choose to become Muslim or not be included in the new society. It made their choice to accept his plan easy; no single tribal chief could refuse as he would just be replaced by another. So it was no surprise that acceptance by the tribal leaders was unanimous.

  After the other leaders had left, Mahir heard Kumander Ali explain to Lateef, “We have money now, but when we spend it, we will have it no
more. Then the situation will go back to exactly what it was last year. These people will be back in their fields and villages, and nothing will have changed.

  “Those who do not join us now will find their brothers will have taken over their lands and their homes, maybe even their wives, when they get home with no money or power. So they join.” Kumander Ali presented his very logical plan.

  Lateef understood the rationale, “We will have a local chieftain on our side in every village. All together that constitutes a new nation. We will have won.”

  “Our radio is reporting all good news.” By saying the word “independence” and not being contradicted, Kumander Ali had solidified his position as leader of the combined and renamed NPA. “And we have named a specific date for elections.”

  Mahir was still dubious and asked, “Elections? How can you organize elections?”

  Ali spoke tangentially, not directly answering Mahir, gazing around the room. “It is time I delegate leadership. Lateef, you have agreed to drop the Abu Sayaf name. For this, I want you to lead the military effort. Mahir, you will be one of his lieutenants.”

  “I cannot. I do not know this land, the languages, or this people.” Mahir stood up to object. “I was not NPA, not MNLF, I am a Turk. These peoples with so many tribes, languages and cultures, are difficult to lead. Any military leader would have the same problem. I cannot lead them. I have little real combat experience, less here.”

  Ali was surprised by Mahir’s reluctance, and did not respond immediately. Then he picked up the conversation again in a way that gave Mahir confidence. “I will command. But I need leaders of men in combat. You are better than most, and you speak English, which gives you an aura most others do not have. It overcomes tribal rivalries because it demonstrates that you are not from a rival tribe. My decision is easy for me. You must lead an important part of our army.