In August 2008, at the height of the furor over the aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain between the Arroyo government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that was supposed to have been signed in Malaysia in the presence of US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, Sen. Joker Arroyo expressed the nagging thought in many people’s minds when he said: “Nobody has asked the question of why Ambassador Kenney was there. What is the interest of the Americans there? The US does not participate in any affair without thinking it over. It was not a simple ribbon-cutting [at the opening] of a flower shop.”
Because no official explanation was forthcoming from the US government, the public had to make do with speculation and conjecture. Party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna charged that America was intent on cornering Mindanao’s vast untapped natural resources by husbanding the creation of, and then dealing directly with a presumably more malleable, Bangsamoro nation. Others said the US was interested in basing rights in that newly carved-out section of Mindanao as a bulwark in its fight against Islamic terrorists, many of whom had found refuge in the region.
The only response from the Americans came in the form of text messages from Rebecca Thompson, embassy spokeswoman, who said Kenney and the other diplomats were invited to the signing ceremony, but that “[the] US is not a party to negotiations… It’s between [the Philippine government] and MILF with Malaysia’s help, but the US is [a] committed partner for peace, development and prosperity in Mindanao.”
Online whistleblower WikiLeaks has just dismantled Thompson’s denial for the disingenuous double-talk that it was with the release of secret diplomatic cables touching on the MOA-AD, among other documents pertaining to the Philippines, that were sent by the US Embassy to Washington. While many of the memos purporting to be analyses of local conditions, especially those relating to the tumultuous years under then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, appear to have been dressed-up regurgitations of everyday gossip, opinion and conventional wisdom that had otherwise freely floated in the country’s streets and airwaves, the cables do offer unexpected clarity and revelation about America’s movements and activities in the Philippines.
It can now be safely asserted, for instance, that the US had a direct and purposeful hand not only in the final draft of the proposed MOA-AD, but also in nudging the government and the MILF to agree to the terms of the deal—which, incidentally, would have stipulated that funding for socioeconomic projects in Mindanao be handed over to the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development. On the basis of a letter sent by then Moro rebel chief Hashim Salamat to US President George W. Bush on Jan. 20, 2003, the US government also took the unprecedented step of meeting secretly with the MILF—first with its vice chairman for political affairs Ghadzali Jafaar in 2006, then with MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim in 2007.
In her report, Kenney said: “Our direct engagement is clearly welcomed by all parties and can help pull the complex peace process toward concrete progress, possibly including step-by-step eradication of terrorists from Mindanao.” No word of the Arroyo administration ever protesting the US government’s unilateral tête-à-tête with the MILF, which could mean it had finessed a separate understanding with the US, and was itself at pains to get the MOA-AD framework up and running.
Salamat’s plea for help from the US offered the wooly notion that America’s involvement in any peace agreement would help rectify its “sins” when it ceded Bangsamoro land in Mindanao to its then Philippine colony. No idea could be more deluded. America has never been repentant of its imperialist adventure in the Philippines, nor of its never-ending campaign to shape, influence and redirect developments to its favor, here or in any other part of the globe where it has planted the flag of American self-interest.
Realpolitik, not benevolence, guides its relations with the world. Like any self-respecting country, it acts chiefly on the basis of its vested needs and wants—a fact once more underscored by the WikiLeaks cables, which shows the US dipping its hand into various local concerns it felt it had a stake in, from the Mindanao problem to the threat cheaper medicines might pose to American pharmaceutical companies. America’s interests, it should be said, can and do often run diametrically against the Philippines’ own. Caveat emptor.