“Maute losing ground.” “Terrorist leadership in Marawi crumbling.”
These are just two of yesterday’s banner headlines in two Manila dailies. Yet after nearly a month of relentless military operations, the ISIS-backed Maute terrorists are still entrenched in Marawi.
Why is this happening when the Armed Forces of the Philippines has thrown all its resources in manpower, including aerial bombing strikes of known Maute strongholds in the beleaguered city?
Government military officials provided the answers to their own problems of not being able to dislodge the Maute raiders. First, AFP officials said, the Maute attackers are using hostages as human shields and snipers are picking off advancing troops with deadly accuracy. And even as the Mautes are desecrating Catholic churches, they are using Marawi’s mosques as sanctuary from air strikes unleashed by government planes.
It is in this surreal setting that the Mautes have added another dimension to the battle of Marawi. Call it the ISIS scorched-earth policy of burning and destroying every place it attacks. Marawi, once a center of cultural and economic life in Mindanao, has been turned into a burning city after four weeks of heavy fighting. The Maute marauders are now also setting fire to homes and government buildings.
The humanitarian crisis spawned by the siege of Marawi has seen some 300,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Iligan, Cagayan de Oro and Davao. To divert attention from them, Maute allies Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters opened a new front in Pigkawayan, North Cotabato. Government troops swiftly drove away the BIFF.
Are government troops playing right into the Mautes’ end game? Launching a full-force attack on the Mautes and killing every one of them can only turn them into legendary heroes. This is what the Maute/ISIS groups want—to be killed in battle against superior odds. It would make for great propaganda and convincing tool for new and young recruits.
The military could have used the one-day humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow the Maute raiders to escape. What, allow them to escape? An incredulous regular at the 365 Club in Holiday Inn Makati asked this. The soldiers who had their comrades killed in battle against the Mautes would never allow it, he said.
Let them escape now to free Marawi and save the hostages, I said, adding that the military can always pursue the terrorists while on the run and they don’t have any house or building to use as cover. This way, it will be easier to fight them without worrying that civilians would be caught in the crossfire. With US drones pinpointing their escape route, the Mautes will then be nothing but a bad memory for the people of Marawi.
Monday having been Eid’l Fitr or the end of the holy month, Muslims throughout Mindanao are resentful of the Mautes and their ISIS allies for robbing them of the solemn observance of Ramadan.
For the dastardly deed committed against Islam, it is doubtful whether ISIS can gain new recruits in the Southern Philippines. But then the lure of money might be too hard too resist for our poor Muslim brothers in Mindanao.
Trump wins SC round in travel ban
US President Donald Trump won a round in the Supreme Court which upheld his travel ban against six Islamic countries. The six are Iran, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump hailed the high court ruling—a triumph for homeland security and the US fight against global terrorism which has seen an escalation of attacks in France, Germany, United Kingdom and Belgium.
The UK, though, might soon have to drop the word “united” from its name. “Brexit,” the word used for the exit of Britain from the European Union is proving to be divisive between the EU and the UK. Brexit has become an even more divisive issue among the Brits. The fallout from Brexit? Scotland might call a vote to declare its independence as a separate state from Britain.
Prime Minister Theresa May who was being considered the new, young Margaret Thatcher might have committed a political blunder by calling for elections. Her Conservative Party majority lost votes to Labor whose last hold on government was that of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Margaret Thatcher came to power with that creative and effective slogan “Labor isn’t working.” This was crafted by Saatchi and Saatchi.
There was a four-minute glitch during a BBC telecast that went viral. The news anchor, a certain Howard, kept his cool and merely kept silent pretending to be scribbling notes while waiting for audio to come back on even as the “Breaking News” light kept flashing.
We can imagine how a Donald Trump or a Rodrigo Duterte would have coped in such a situation.
