Arming an Old Colony

The Philippines has been a key strategic outpost in Southeast Asia for a century. The archipelago of 7,100 islands was an American colony until 1946, and the U.S. maintained sizable air and naval bases there until the national legislature voted to remove them in 1991. The last U.S. forces left the country in 1992, and the U.S. withdrew most of its aid -- although President Clinton was happy to keep selling them weapons. Thus far the Clinton administration has sold, or granted license to sell, over $800 million in arms to a country in which more than one-third of the people have difficulty meeting basic nutritional needs.

In 1998 Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen announced that the U.S. intended to resume military cooperation with the Philippine government. The Clinton administration has been pushing hard for Philippine Senate ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which would allow for joint military training and exercises, reinstate American access to Philippine ports, and, critics say, encourage (and possibly finance) government purchases of arms and ammunition from American manufacturers. Senate ratification is expected despite vocal Filipino opposition to repeated American involvement in the country. Last November Vice President Gore met with Philippine President Joseph Estrada to discuss passage of the VFA and Philippine arms modernization.

U.S. arms sales in the Clinton years Direct government sales Government-approved Sales (scale in millions of dollars)

Unfortunately for arms makers, neither Clinton nor Gore can make costly arms purchases financially feasible for the Philippines. The Philippine government's ambitious economic reform plan, dubbed "Philippines 2000," aims to modernize the country's primarily agrarian economy into a market-driven, industrialized one. However, poverty and gross income disparities prevail among the country's 70 million inhabitants.

Amnesty International worries about the "undermining of the economic, social, and cultural rights [of Filipinos]...which has taken place under the banner of economic development." The Philippine economy has been hit hard by the Asian financial crisis: The peso has lost 50 percent of its value since 1997 and many businesses have folded, causing countless layoffs and nearly obliterating the country's middle class.

Nonetheless, between 1992 and 1998 President Clinton gave the government of the Philippines 3,638 M-14 rifles; 16,488 Colt M-1911 pistols; 10 M-240 machine guns; 22,500 Colt M-16A1 automatic rifles, and two refurbished Lockheed Martin C-130B transport planes -- all free under the Excess Defense Articles program, and teasers for future arms purchases.

The giveaways have paid off. In 1993 the U.S. government negotiated an $18.2 million deal between Textron Marine and Land Systems, a division of Textron Inc., and the Philippine government. The deal delivered 12 Commando V-300 armored personnel carriers and 12 V-300 infantry fighting vehicles to the Philippines in 1995. Also in 1993, the Philippines ordered five McDonnell Douglas 530-MG Defender helicopters. Two years later they ordered five secondhand Cessna-172/T-41 aircraft, also made by Textron. However, financial problems have postponed a $50 million deal to upgrade and modernize the Philippine Air Force's F-5A/B fighter aircraft.

The Philippine government is currently engaged in several long-term, domestic conflicts; the arms (particularly small arms) that Clinton has sold over the past few years are being put to good use. Filipino civilians face a corrupt and sometimes brutal police force, violent residential evictions and displacements, and widespread fighting pitting the country's communist guerillas and Muslim minorities against security forces. According to the Philippine government's Commission on Human Rights, the police -- the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the civilian Philippine National Police (PNP) -- are the country's worst human-rights offenders.

The AFP and PNP also recruit and organize civilian militias called Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs) to secure regions of the country cleared of "insurgents." PNP units are used to forcibly displace whole neighborhoods -- primarily poor residential areas, farm cooperatives, and indigenous communities -- to make way for commercial and infrastructure projects. It was estimated that 180,000 people were displaced in Manila in 1997 alone, during violent clashes that included the government use of tear gas, beatings, and what Amnesty International likes to call "extrajudicial" killings of civilians -- including infants.

The Philippine government has been engaged in active conflict with its Muslim and communist minorities for decades. In 1996, it reached a tenuous peace with the Moro National Liberation Front, the nation's largest Muslim rebel group. However, the Estrada administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the second-largest Muslim rebel group, are deadlocked over the insurgents' demand that independent Islamic state be created on the southern island of Mindanao. Muslims comprise the largest minority group in the country.

In one of Asia's most prolonged leftist insurgencies, government forces are also fighting the communist rebels of the National Democratic Front. Fighting persists despite a cease-fire and ongoing peace negotiations. Colt M-16 rifles -- American-made excess defense articles -- were recovered from the scene of a firefight between the NDF and government forces in January. The NDF's demands include the release of the country's 127 political prisoners, compensation for victims of human-rights abuses suffered under former President Marcos, and the establishment of its own courts to try human-rights cases.

-- j.j. richardson

Flags courtesy of World Flag Database