Antiterrorism: The magic wand?

Antiterrorism: The magic wand?

Conrado de Quiros, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network,
Manila

"Global terrorism poses an imminent threat to international
peace and security. We, the chiefs of armies of the ASEAN, do
hereby pledge to remain seized with the matter, and with other
regions and countries to work in the global struggle against
terrorism."

This was the statement of the military chiefs of the 10-member
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the end of
their meeting here in Manila last week. Which is all very well
and fine, except for one thing. Who will protect us from them?

In fact, they would contribute monumentally to ending
terrorism in their respective countries not by being seized with
the matter but by being seized with a heart attack.

The ultimate terror is not hijacking planes and bombing
installations, it is mounting a repressive government or
defending it with fascist methods.

The first is sporadic, temporary, intermittent. The second is
permanent and pervasive.

The hijacking of a commercial plane and the bombing of public
places, however genuinely terrifying, cannot compare with
arresting the citizens of a country without warrant, with
torturing or summarily executing them for protesting their lot in
life, with blanketing a country in silence.

A cursory look at the history of the ASEAN will tell you that
it's the military that has been most responsible for the region's
experience with absolute terror.

It's the military in Cambodia and Laos that has been
responsible for their killing fields. It's the military in
Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines that threatens to bring
the country back to their authoritarian past, or at least that
foments authoritarian practices inside their democratic shells.

If a group of well-known thieves had vowed to protect the
property of the neighborhood from the depredations of suspicious
strangers, it could not have been more farcical. Which is the
truly terrifying aspect of today's anti-terrorism rhetoric.

"Anti-terrorism" has become the magic wand that has made every
evil in the world disappear like rabbits, even turning some of
the worst of it in to a good fighting evil.

That the Pakistani military should metamorphose from one of
Amnesty International's most wanted into a cornerstone of the
holy crusade to save civilization must already show the extent of
the farce.

It was only a question of time before the militaries of other
countries caught on to the bright idea. Truly, the devil will
never be loath to quote Scripture for his purposes.

The truly terrifying thing today is not terrorists hiding in
their wormholes, waiting for the opportune time to strike. It is
the institutions of societies with a record for wreaking
bloodbaths being free to strike out once more under the banner of
"anti-terrorism." And this time, with no world opinion to stand
in their path.

So after the terrorists are routed, who will be left to
inherit the earth?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo says she will ask the United
States, Britain and Israel to help train local police to fight
kidnapping. She says she will ask Hong Kong to cooperate with the
Philippines to fight kidnapping, since kidnapping is an intra-
regional affair.

She says she will ask the Marines and the Philippine National
Police (PNP) Special Action Force to help fight kidnapping once
they've finished off the Abu Sayyaf. And she says she will ask
the citizens to help her fight kidnapping, even allowing them to
bear arms for the purpose. So, are the days of kidnapping in this
country numbered?

No.

The arming of the citizens by itself is a guarantee that crime
generally, if not kidnapping in particular, will experience a
sudden boost. As to the rest of it, we have a very elaborate
example of "avoidance syndrome," of doing everything to avoid
doing what needs to be done.

Which is to turn the PNP inside out, if not abolish it
altogether and replace it with a smaller, tighter and cleaner
force.

At the very least, the PNP's incompetence calls for it. It's
not merely the quantity of the kidnapping that suggests so,
though one Chinese a day, which was the statistic last month,
must already indicate epic lassitude.

It's also the quality of the kidnapping, the last, which
happened to the teenage daughter of a rich dermatologist, being
done in broad daylight in a busy thoroughfare in Manila.

For sheer brazenness, the only time this compares with is the
last years of martial law, when robbers robbed banks with
impunity, like outlaws in the Wild West.

But the problem isn't just the PNP's incompetence, as the
following eye-popping statistics show. Out of the 23,645 inmates
of the New Bilibid Prisons, 2,386, or 10 percent, were cops and
soldiers.

This is enough, as Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers
rightly says, to form six battalions. And that is only the tip of
the iceberg if you reckon that they are probably merely the
sacrificial lambs, the foot soldiers and not their superiors who
directed their criminal activities.

The problem is not merely that the law enforcement agency is
incompetent, it is that it is compromised.

That should have been obvious from the Senate hearings on
Panfilo Lacson. The testimony did not just indict Lacson -- if at
all -- it indicted the whole PNP. It showed a fractious PNP
fighting for spoils.

And there's the rub. For every time crime shoots up,
government's first instinct is to give the police more powers:
More budget, more arms, more (il)legal leeway to fight crime.

That's like giving the ASEAN generals blanket authority to
fight terrorism. Which is pouring gasoline into a fire.

There is only one way to effectively solve crime in this
country: Abolish the PNP.