The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) has warned that the $500-million US military aid to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will not improve the country’s capability to ward off the fire-spewing Chinese dragon leapfrogging through the South China Sea (SCS) since American military assistance is subject to strict requirements and must conform to US strategic interests.
A country is responsible for its own defense, which is the reason why Taiwan has developed its own submarines, destroyers and frigates, warplanes, missiles and artillery, as well as tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs.) Rather than wait for ancient hand-me-downs from the US, Ukraine has developed its own APCs and IFVs, improved its artillery pieces, and manufactured drones, both aerial and naval, to attack Russian forces in Crimea. In Afghanistan, the warplanes handed to Afghan forces were cannibalized and rendered inutile against the Taliban.
The Philippines used to build torpedo boats for the US military and the military arsenal in Bataan manufactured automatic rifles, pistols, bullets and sought to develop rockets and missiles until the US stepped in and told the Marcos martial law administration that building its own military-industrial complex would be too costly to Manila. The message was clear: Just depend on Uncle Sam. Yet the Americans would not provide its client states with state-of-the-art weaponry and they must be content with 60-year-old Huey choppers, obsolete infantry weapons and aircraft stripped of advanced missiles. The only advanced warplanes secured by the Philippines were squadrons of F-5s and F-8s that are no longer flying. The Sikorsky choppers for the Philippine Air Force (PAF) are actually Polish Sokol variants, some of which have crashed, and are designed as transports, not missile-carrying and cannon-firing A-10 Warthogs destined for the US boneyards.
Some of the guns for the Israeli missile patrol boats of the Philippine Navy (PN) come from Turkey while the missiles are manufactured by Tel Aviv’s Elbit Systems, the bigger ships for PN are being built in South Korea and Indonesia while squadrons of South Korean trainer and fighter jets have also been purchased. In short, the defensive armaments that could be used in confronting China come from other countries, not the US. The $500-million US military aid will not include extended range US missiles that could hit China’s Hainan province or the seven air and military bases built hastily on the weak soil of the reefs and shoals of the Spratlys.
KMU fears, and rightly so, that the $500-million US military aid will boost the capability of the Marcos Jr.’s military to intensify human rights violations and rampant violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) despite Malacanang’s organizing a so-called inter-agency Human Rights Committee (HRC) to monitor the compliance of the administration’s compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and IHL. This HRC actually duplicates the functions of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the universally recognized national human rights institution (NHRI) in the Philippines.
Moreover, the US and the Philippines have continued bilateral programs to train the AFP and the PNP on how to handle the counterinsurgency campaign and the US counter-insurgency (COIN) guide has become the bible for pursuing such a campaign, particularly after the Rodrigo Duterte administration established the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) in 2018 and unleashed a bloody reinforced offensive drive to uproot the mass base of the revolutionary forces in the Bicol region, Western Visayas and Eastern Visayas.
KMP said “it is deeply concerned over the latest pledge of $500 million (P28.5 billion) in military aid from the US to the Philippine government. We feel that this fresh aid will be utilized to further violate the democratic and human rights of the Filipinos, as it will enhance the state’s capability to inflict terror, as well as violations of IHL.” Ostensibly designed for the AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard (which is supposed to be a civilian agency), the foreign military financing may cover covert assistance for NTF-ELCAC and the AFP-PNP units engaged in abducting, torturing and forcing the “surrenders” of activists who are miraculously tagged as NPA guerrillas. The US Department of Defense also announced that it will double its investments at Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) locations across the Philippines or an equivalent of $128 million (P7.2 billion) to fund EDCA infrastructure projects.
“We are wary that this military funding will bankroll more aerial bombings and artillery strikes against civilian communities suspected of supporting the armed revolutionary movement in the countryside. Such attacks have been targeting production areas, destroying crops, and disrupting the people’s daily economic activities in many rural areas, in violation of international humanitarian law which prohibits the targeting of civilian property and infrastructure. Worse, civilians have been extrajudicially killed, illegally arrested or involuntarily disappeared by state agents and then falsely portrayed as armed insurgents,” KMP’s Danilo Ramos warned.
