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.