To destroy is not to save

For at least 12 hours on Wednesday, fierce fighting engulfed parts of the town of Pigcawayan in North Cotabato. A large group of Bangsamoro Islamic Liberation Front rebels attacked an outpost of the Barangay People’s Augmentation Team in Malagakit village, but the Philippine Army was able to quickly send reinforcements and engaged the BIFF attackers. No casualties were reported, on either side.

When the rebels retreated, they took several civilians with them. A BIFF spokesperson, Abu Misri Mama, denied allegations that the civilians were used as hostages. “We protected them from the bullets of the Army. We will release them later. We did not use them as human shields,” he said. But this is absurd. The civilians were minding their own business before the rebels attacked the militia outpost. The view offered by Capt. Nap Alcarioto, spokesperson for the 602nd Infantry Brigade, is much more credible: The civilians were taken precisely to cover the rebels’ retreat.

Several dozen families were temporarily displaced by the fighting; there were residents who were trapped in their homes during the incident; classes throughout the town were suspended, affecting some 15,000 students.

Tactically, the attack by the BIFF, a splinter group that broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, succeeded only in temporarily distracting the attention of the Armed Forces. But it could not have been an attempt to ease the pressure of the military offensive against the Maute group in Marawi City, about 200 kilometers away. “It’s too small an effort. It was just a harassment case,” Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla told reporters in Malacañang.

But strategically, the consequences of the BIFF attack can be serious—if the government responds in exactly the wrong way.

The tragic conflict in Marawi, now on its fourth week, is a cautionary tale. Despite the consistent assurances of the Armed Forces that the problem posed by the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf could be contained, President Duterte imposed martial law in all of Mindanao. Despite the steady progress of the military campaign to restore order in Marawi, the President continued to wax pessimistic about the threat posed by the so-called IS—the terror network that is losing ground in Iraq and Syria and in its desperation is now encouraging attacks elsewhere in the world by both organized armed groups and so-called lone wolves. A couple of days ago, Lt. Col. Jo-Ar Herrera, spokesperson for the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, said: “We continue to recover and control strategic areas in the cleared area and the enemy resistance is waning, their controlled area diminishing.” But on Tuesday, Mr. Duterte suggested that, just to end the conflict in the historic city, he was open to the idea of carpet-bombing Marawi.

This is a horrifying idea, and certain to fan the flames of the radicalism that makes the IS ideology attractive to alienated, disempowered men. The President has the right impulse: not to waste soldiers’ lives. But he must go beyond thinking that there are no other choices left.

“I will not put the soldiers at high risk. If I have to bomb the … if I have to flatten the place, I will do it. And I will take full responsibility for it,” he said. “I will order the bombing … carpet already, carpet ah … I will really destroy everything.”

This is to follow the tragically mistaken American strategy during the Vietnam War, when villagers were massacred and villages were destroyed as part of an effort to defend what was then known as South Vietnam. Do we really want to go down this path, where to save Marawi we need to destroy it?

Sadly, the President has started talking about a civil war in Mindanao, between Christians and Muslims.

In the Armed Forces’ perspective, the BIFF attack on Wednesday was merely an “opportunistic activity.” If the government decides to make it bigger than it is, and responds by reducing the options available and at the same time escalating the tensions, then the question of long-term strategic consequences for the country will rear its ugly, monstrous head.