SINCE last week Filipino truck driver Angelo dela Cruz has been under sentence of death from Iraqi terrorists, who seized him while he tried to earn money for his family back home. He is not the first victim of this bestiality. He may not be the last.
It is not hard to understand the apparently accommodating hints being given out by Rafael Seguis, undersecretary of foreign affairs, on Al-Jazeera television on whether or not the 51-strong Philippine military contingent will advance their planned withdrawal from August 20 to July 20, as the kidnappers demand. Where there is life, there is hope. It could yet be that dela Cruz’ abductors will release or that their hideout may be discovered by the Iraqi authorities. But in reality, the hesitation cannot go on for long. Unless Manila gives in, dela Cruz may well be murdered. They are in the business of terror, and another video of their crimes is their way of spreading fear.
What has made the standoff so much more telling is that the abductors’ demands concern such a small force of Filipino troops. Though their contribution to the multinational force must be recognized, their withdrawal a month early was never going to seriously damage the Iraqi government’s security program. This therefore has been a calculated blow designed to create the greatest possible unhappiness. Terrorism is like an acid, which eats through the weakest points of any barrier thrown up to contain it. If the men of violence succeed this time they will now target nationals from other countries that have sent small contingents of workers and military personnel. They all could find themselves marked down for exploratory kidnappings.
However, that assumes that the kidnappers choose their targets with care. But that is not what their history shows. They have abducted, and freed, Turks. They have abducted and freed a Pakistani. They have even abducted and freed a Lebanese American soldier, perhaps because he was an Arab. The truth is that they abduct anyone they can get their hands on and then decide what to do with them, based on their nationality, their ethnicity or their faith.
So far, despite the anguish that these crimes have caused, no country has broken rank. From the terrorists’ point of view, such operations could in time lose their value because all they do is achieve renewed revulsion at deeds which do so much to discredit the cause in which they claim to be acting. But if they can find just one chink in the united international front with which they have so far been confronted, it will become open season on any and every civilian they can grab. In no time at all, they could intensify their abduction drive, and hundreds could be facing the threat of a miserable and totally unjustifiable death.
For the government of the Philippines, it is a terrible choice. It has sought to deal with it the Southeast Asian way, by attempting to placate the terrorists while not giving in to their demands completely. The terrorists may well misunderstand such subtlety.
