Rebels of Mindanao (27 page)

“If you pay ten U.S. dollars per vote, the citizens will show up and check NPA,” said Bumbog, moving the meeting forward again. The others raised their eyebrows and chins simultaneously, a kind of reverse nod indicating an affirmative answer.

“Get all your villages to vote, and we will have a new country, I promise you.” Kumander Ali started to summarize, to see if there would be objections. Silence indicated that the confederacy was formed. Henceforth, they would be known collectively as the NPA, the New Peoples Army.

Mahir now felt he should be free to leave; the newly formed NPA could decide how to spend the money he had turned over to Ali. He had won his personal battle and was confident that the Syrian would transfer the rest of his earthly reward to his account; Ali had already given him the hand-written receipt that the Syrian demanded as verification. All Mahir needed to do now would be to retrace his steps; he could find his way out with no time pressure against him, thinking again that maybe
he would have a chance to stop off at that resto-bar along the road where the two sisters worked. To get to the sea he would only need to follow the coast.

But Mahir realized that he was with a team now. He believed in the mission, and he wanted to see his team win. He wanted to be the victor for once in his life, against a worthy opponent, in fact a numerically more powerful one. It would taste good to be one up on his global enemies in economic and religious philosophies, to make up for what had gone on back in Turkey. Maybe he could even wind up owning a fruit plantation or an export business in Mindanao and connect that business back to Istanbul. He would have the cash to invest. His allies here would rather work with him after their victory, he supposed, and they would need some help representing their interests to the world. Wild thoughts began to race through his mind. So he decided that he should stay on for a while and continue on jihad. Victory in the war of theologies would wipe out the Christian missionaries and Jewish businesses; both would be replaced by the new Muslim order.

Kumander Ali, the leader of the reconstituted NPA, took on increased authority with an army in which he would command thousands. As a gesture of thanks, he assigned about fifty men—two truckloads of soldiers—to Mahir to command. Although he had little formal military education himself, Mahir imagined getting his men together for training. After all, he had recent, real combat experience compared to his other subordinates, whose primary activity was limited to the monthly collection of tongs, extortion from miners and loggers who worked in their valleys. The barefoot soldiers assigned to him may have been in some squabbles with the PNP and the AFP, but the most they could boast about was sniping or kidnapping. One man, the most experienced, had held up a hardware store and stolen an M-16 rifle from a PNP officer who was there buying nails for personal use.

Mahir hoped he could organize and lead the men assigned to him to one specific place and get them to shoot their rifles in the same direction: such an outcome would be achieving a high enough level of discipline. Many of them did have rifles. They also had one 60mm mortar tube, two 12-gauge shotguns and several dozen rounds of mortar ammunition. They had never fired the mortars and did not know how, but they
carried them everywhere they went. Mahir thought he could figure out how to employ the mortar tube, but then he still would not know how to aim this indirect fire weapon. Maybe someone could figure out how to convert the mortar rounds into car bombs or strategically placed IEDs—individual explosive devices—or to make a dozen coordinated suicide bomb attacks. That would certainly put a big dent in the enemy's will to fight if the explosions were in the right places, like theaters or churches. He would lose twelve NPA soldiers in the deal, but they were not much good individually anyway, and the NPA could recruit more. He would ask for volunteers who did not have rifles, like the knife carriers or ammo porters. If all they had was a bolo, they were better employed to take a few of the enemy with them in suicide attacks and the while on jihad than to continue their march unarmed.

Since Bumbog and Al Zein had accepted Kumander Ali as their tactical leader in the field, Bumbog decided to test him. “Now that we're united, what do you recommend we do first?” Bumbog wore an aviator's flight jacket that he had taken from the dead co-pilot of a downed AFP aircraft and kept the collar turned up to look cool.

Ali had a surprise answer. “I have given it much thought. Suicide attacks have value, but timing is important. At this moment we have the Philippine Army confused. Now is the time for us to do what we have waited for. It is time for us to announce our war. Our next move is tonight. Near here in Itig is a radio station operated by a broadcasting company out of Manila. Tonight, we take the radio station!”

Kumander Ali had already discussed this plan with Lateef and assigned him to be the patrol leader, since he had been in a firefight recently and could do a better job with his experienced cadre than any leader of the raggle-taggle herd of new recruits wandering in who didn't know each other or even speak the same dialect. It would be difficult to ever forge the motley assemblage into a disciplined combat unit, let alone do it by nightfall. So the task fell to Lateef, who kept the same core team he had brought with him, including Mahir because they had fought together in a successful skirmish, and joined by nine of Ali's personal security guards, but not Ali himself. The mission to take the radio station was important, but it was grunt work. They made their plan as simple as possible, and it should be easy.

The patrol would also include Ugly Maria. Kumander Ali had ordered her to cover her body, especially her face, at all times whether in the village or on patrol—perhaps not only because of religious tradition—but she refused and told him to go to hell. He didn't make an issue of it, and none of the others admitted to being offended.

Lateef and the attack squad left the village shortly before 10
PM
using four
habl habl
, motorized tricycles, typical inter-village transportation in the area, to approach Itig town center by road. One tricycle at a time they rolled silently past the AFP checkpoints along the road. The soldiers paid no attention to the numerous and ubiquitous tricycles and stopped only cars and larger vehicles for inspection. They parked on the dirt basketball court, the wide spot in the road in the center of all villages, where the patrol assembled for their mission.

Radio FM 99.3 broadcast until midnight every day of the week. Seven minutes before scheduled sign-off on this particular night, Mahir, Lateef and the rest of the Abu Sayaf hit squad burst through the door. Lateef pressed a short knife to the neck of the program manager, nicking it and drawing a drop of blood. He calmly told the terrified man, “Walk fast out of town, do not look back or ever return. Your announcer inside stays with us.” The terrified man complied, perhaps walking a bit faster than even Lateef expected, and the NPA had its radio station.

What they had captured was a two-story wooden building, a diesel generator, a transformer and an FM transmitter of sufficient strength to reach a parabolic area of geography that covered the western coast of Mindanao 90 miles north and south of the station and extending 75 miles inland. In effect, it covered the four provinces that would constitute the core of the new country, the Islamic Republic of Mindanao. Residents who did not listen to the station personally would still get the news, delivered by word of mouth as fast as traffic or pedestrians moved;
radyo de baktas
was the “walking radio” that kept everyone informed.

The next morning when the early crew and later the office staff arrived, they were told the property was now an asset of the NPA. The temporary flag cut from a red tee shirt with a black portrait of Che Guevara flew from a bamboo pole. Two of the boys who did clean-up work and cooking asked to stay on, as did one of the D.J.'s, and they were accepted into the revolution. When the D.J. signed on the next morning,
he announced for the first time, “Radio Free Mindanao is on the air,” and informed the listeners that he would no longer play decadent foreign music. The first song he chose was Freddie Aguilar's vocal version of
Mindanao
, then several selections of tribal gong and drum music, followed by Imam Ali announcing prayer time, which would thereafter be done five times daily. The Koran was read by religious leaders between more old folk songs. On the noon news, Radio Free Mindanao announced the formation of the Islamic Republic of Mindanao and called for elections to be held on the 40
^th
anniversary of the founding of the NPA, the communist New Peoples Army. Choosing this auspicious date should help get the scattered NPA elements still hiding in the provinces to join efforts with the coalition. It was just thirty-one days away, the sooner the better. They did not care about how many people actually voted, just as long as those who showed up voted the right way and a public event demonstrated to their constituents and to the world the strength of their movement.

C
olonel Liu was livid. How could a bunch of farmers and a few terrorists announce
Radio Free Mindanao
? What the hell will they do next? His boss in Manila and certainly the President of the Philippines and shortly after that the Western world would be shocked to hear that a new radio station out of Sultan Kudarat, the predominantly Muslin western province of Mindanao, was playing Muslim folk music around the clock and readings from the Koran. Prominent ulamas, Muslim religious leaders of the province, were invited to preach on the air in support of kidnapping for ransom and other coercive means to collect revenue for the logistical needs of the cause. A massive exodus of the Christian population out of Mindanao could be the drastic consequence. This scenario the central government in Manila could not accept.

When he heard the first broadcast from Radio Free Mindanao, Liu was riding in his jeep on the transverse road forming the base of a triangle at the junction of the Banga and the Alah rivers, where his infantry
presently contained the main NPA force. He had to get to his command post to go over the situation with the captains assigned to Task Force Davao. Together they would need to figure out what to report to Manila. Maybe the President would let the U.S. Air Force take out just that one target. The situation had escalated to such a point that President Cayton might be willing to accept the political backlash. It was better than losing Mindanao. Liu fidgeted beside his driver in the front seat of their jeep while it bounced along, continuously knocking his knee against a loaded M-16 rifle secured in a bracket between them.

Every time his nervous driver heard the metallic clank of metal against metal he instinctively beeped his horn. Frustration increased with each delay as they swerved slowly in and out of pedestrian traffic. Master Sergeant Rivera had driven his colonel everywhere in peace and in war for fifteen years, and now, down this backwater road, he was confounded that his periodic beeping had little effect on the civilians blocking passage. The jeep had to wait at the outskirts of a village while a midnight-black water buffalo dragged a sled loaded with equally black mud off the road, every wasted minute adding to the colonel's consternation and making him more restless.

The task force commander knew exactly where the Abu Sayaf was; he could hear them on that damned radio station they had captured in Itig. He had reported back to Galan in Manila that he had the main NPA force cut off in the triangle, but his credibility had been damaged by that one, small Abu Sayaf patrol that had slipped out and seemed to roam around at will, even taking over a radio station. His task force needed to put a stop to this nonsense and eliminate these damned
insurgentos
, as they had been called since the United States' first counter-insurgency war in 1902, when the American army of occupation in the Philippines became a cause for Muslim revolutionaries to band together for the first time. Now, over a hundred years later, the new and continuing insurgency was no longer limited to opposition of foreign intervention in the country. Much worse, a large part of the country had declared independence from the republic. How could those semi-illiterate bandits and extortionists simply declare themselves to be a new country!

As soon as Liu arrived back at his new field command post near Isulan, he swung out of the jeep and marched to the table under a
canvas tent where his staff was drinking coffee and smoking. Liu remained standing after they came to attention and saluted, letting them also stand for an uncomfortable minute, not giving them an immediate “At ease.”

“How did they take that radio station? We had them isolated in the triangle, Bautista! What the hell is going on, Captain?” Liu confronted his subordinate officer.

“It can't be the same force that attacked the radio station, sir. The main NPA contingent was confused and wandering into the triangle,” the young captain reported, with no outward emotion, looking straight ahead at the large, hand-drawn map of Mindanao nailed to a board on the post holding up the tent.

“It was the same in my area, Colonel Liu,” said the other young officer, supporting his comrade, “a major force was directly in front of us, and they are still in that position. They were not capable of mounting an attack as far away as Itig.”

“I think that's it. You said ‘major force.' Sit down.” The officers sat. Liu put them at ease. “It would not take a large effort to capture a radio station, only a patrol. But I can still hear them on the radio!

“It would have been easy for a small hunter-killer guerrilla patrol to move through the jungle or at any time along the highway without our detection, especially during the night. They would have local guides with them who know the territory,” Colonel Liu concluded.

“Yes, sir.” Captain Bautista risked calling the Colonel's attention to his earlier command. “You ordered us not to close down the roads to civilian traffic. A small unit could drive into Itig, unnoticed.”