A tragedy in the making

A former superintendent of the Philippine National Police Academy has been sending me heartbreaking messages regarding the massacre of Special Action Force troopers in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. Clarence V. Guinto, recently retired, personally knew six of those gallant men who trained at the PNPA during his watch. And his grief set me thinking about the way we are waging war and peace simultaneously.

From revelations made by officials, their charges and countercharges, the origins of this debacle may well lie in the structure that governed the mission. More important than assigning blame to any of the principal actors, we should first look at the command, control and communications system. It is pathetic that while his dying men were bidding goodbye to their families on cell phones, the SAF commander, Director Getulio Napeñas, could not call or radio for reinforcements in the early hours of Jan. 25.

Why and how did the “Oplan Wolverine” slaughter happen? The plan required penetrating the strategic depth of territory controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The problem was not so much the audacity of the plan as the turf mentality that governed its execution. And both plan and execution recklessly neglected the mission’s impact on the political environment.

In the context of active warfare, the existing parallel police and military regional command system is deeply flawed. President Ferdinand Marcos shrewdly divorced the police functions of the Constabulary from the Armed Forces to prevent a possible consolidated coup attempt against his regime. At the same time, he sought to accommodate the rivalry of two top generals who loathed each other, Fabian Ver and Fidel V. Ramos.

At any rate, independent police and military operations are common worldwide. They have divergent roles: the police to maintain peace and order by investigating and deterring criminal activities, the military to concentrate its main efforts operating against insurgents and threats to national security.

In relatively secure and peaceful provinces and regions, it is perfectly fine for police and army units to be under divided police and military control, and even under separate political supervision—the Departments of Interior and Local Government and of National Defense. Under this setup, police and military regional commands regularly meet, exchange communications, and share intelligence. Only in rare, large-scale operations against organized banditry and insurgency do they work closely.

This is apparent in the Bicol peninsula, where the New People’s Army still boasts of small units that can intimidate barangays or harass military and police units in hit-and-run tactics. Here, police and military commands function independently, each concentrating on its respective mandates.

However, the system becomes dysfunctional in areas characterized by raging insurgency and massive enemy formations. In such areas, divided commands cannot work, or work only to the detriment of soldiers, policemen, and their mission. The arrangement impairs rather than strengthens operational cohesion, morale, communications, and combat operations, particularly in times when success and failure or life and death are measured in minutes.

In regions with pervasive insurgency, a unified command with one overall commander is not only essential but also imperative. US Gen. Ike Eisenhower summed it up succinctly: “Immediate and continuous loyalty to the concept of unity … is basic to victory.”

In the Malaya (now Malaysia) experience, a divided police and military structure abetted insurgency. It took two years before it was clear that a unified command and control system was necessary to prosecute the counterinsurgency campaign. In December 1951, Winston Churchill merged the posts of high commissioner and director of operations, unifying control of civil and military forces that successfully defeated the communist guerillas.

In Mamasapano, there was no unity of command and no single authority in the battlefield who could call for army reinforcement or air cover. It takes a seasoned overall commander to comprehend the implications of operational details—exact location of the targets, familiarity with the surrounding terrain, proximity of enemy camps, enemy numbers, potential enemy reactions, and reaction time frames.

An overall ground commander of unified elements would have been in a position to vet the plans, establish lines for emergency communications, coordinate air and army support if necessary, and insist on a contingency plan since nothing in covert operations ever goes smoothly. More, he should have an idea of the mission’s political repercussions on the peace process; this would help prepare key political decision-makers to publicly defend the mission’s success or failure.

In the context of raging warfare, the current system would have two other failings. One is that senior commanders report to two different bureaucracies, the DILG and DND, or even directly to Malacañang. They should be insulated from politics simply because huge, competing political egos often compromise their professional integrity and judgment.

The other is the revolving-door turnover of senior police and military officials due to retirement, politics, or questionable performance. While both military and police generals have a term of two years in regional posts, most routinely serve stints of less than a year. By the time a general has begun to master his command, he is on the way out.

In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US Army Gen. David Barno observed that the biggest problem with American generalship was rapid turnover. “You have 10 commanders in 10 years, which is horrifically bad. So what you are going to have is chaos, no matter what your plan is.”

It was chaos in Mamasapano—and the carnage in a cornfield was evidence that brave men were poorly deployed, poorly supported, and poorly led.

Rex D. Lores ([email protected]) is a member of the Futuristics Society of the Philippines.