|
(Page 3 of 5)
According to Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia terrorism expert and professor at Simmons College in Boston, the MILF is believed to have had ties to Al Qaeda since the early to mid-1990s. In 1996, when it became difficult to get foreigners into its Afghan training camps because of increased scrutiny, Al Qaeda started moving operations south and eastward, dispatching trainers to already established MILF camps in the lawless areas of Mindanao.
"The central government doesn't control large portions of Mindanao, and the Philippine borders are porous, so it's a good place to launder identity and set up training camps," says Abuza. He also notes that Al Qaeda was adept at blending in. "Its operatives across Southeast Asia married into families," he explains. "Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa came to the Philippines in 1991, set up businesses, and married the sister of a leading MILF political officer.
The operatives worked their way into the community very well." According to CNN's Jakarta Bureau Chief Maria Ressa, in her book Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia, these financial and familial support networks paid off. "Every single major al-Qaeda plot since 1993 has had some link to the Philippines," including, she writes, "the 1995 Manila plot to bomb eleven U.S. airliners over Asia...the 9/11 attacks in 2001...and the Bali blasts" that killed more than 200 people in a nightclub in 2002.
Other terrorist organizations haunted Mindanao as well. The radical Islamic group Abu Sayyaf (meaning "sword bearer" in Arabic) was made up of dissident MNLF soldiers, had funding links with Al Qaeda, and was active near the Kingking concession. It, too, was pushing for an Islamic state, using tactics that included ambushes, bombings, kidnappings, and executions. The New People's Army, or NPA, which had been fighting since the 1970s for communist rule, also operated in the area.
Its armed strength is estimated at over 10,000. Labeled a "terrorist group" by the U.S. State Department in 1996, the NPA is seen by the Philippine government as a greater threat than even the extremist Muslim groups. (Abu Sayyaf and the MILF were also labeled terrorist groups by the State Department in 1996.) Joining this dubious company in the hills around Kingking was the Lost Command, a splinter group of former MILF soldiers led by Kapitan Inggo. (Several months after his visit to the Kingking offices, Inggo, aka Karsolo Abubakar, was killed by police.)
How did Echo Bay become linked to these terrorist organizations? One bad decision at a time.
"See, sons, what things you are!
How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object!"
— Henry IV, Part II
IN ITS 1996 ANNUAL REPORT, ECHO BAY SHOWED OFF a new triangular logo with planet Earth at its center. According to the company, the symbol represented "the ethical core at the heart of everything we do." But on that planet-a place on Mindanao invisible to the shareholder-was a project that revealed a different reality.
When a small-scale Canadian mining company, Toronto Ventures Incorporated (TVI), approached Echo Bay in early 1995 about partnering to develop Kingking, Echo Bay was interested for two reasons. First, its president, Richard Kraus, had recently announced an ambitious strategy to move the company from a mid-tier gold-mining operation into the top tier, producing more than one million ounces of gold per year.
Referred to by employees as "Echo Bay 2000," Kraus's five-year plan envisioned an international expansion of development properties along "the major gold belts of
the world." The Philippines, estimated to be second only to South Africa in average gold reserves per square mile, was a jewel on one of those gold belts, and Echo Bay wanted it.
Second, the Philippine government was giving it away. Racked by debt and desperate for foreign investment, the Philippines passed a mining code in 1995 that amounted to a fire sale of the nation's riches. The act "streamlined" the environmental-permitting process, allowed 100 percent foreign ownership, gave tax holidays and easy repatriation of all profits, and guaranteed against expropriation by the state.
The industry-oriented Mining Journal described the legislation as "among the most favorable to mining companies anywhere." Extractive interests from around the world staked out about 40 percent of the nation's land area in the act's first two years. Many in Echo Bay's technical group didn't like the looks of Kingking, arguing that its complex metallurgy, unstable soils, and torrential seasonal rains made the project a losing proposition. The business side, however, overruled the geologists and engineers. In October 1995, Echo Bay purchased a 75 percent stake in the mine, with TVI retaining the rest.
From the beginning there was trouble. Almost immediately upon arrival in October 1995, the first project manager, Bob Gilroy, fired off a red-flag memo to Denver. "The property has a violent history," he began. "[The previous owner's] camp has been burned, drills burned, truck attacked, people shot and killed...We have been approached indirectly by the NPA to pay $10,000 to secure safe passage to the site...The issue of 'contributions' must be addressed as a policy issue...It is obvious that we have inadequate knowledge or experience to proceed until expert analysis and advice is obtained."
The expertise arrived several weeks later in the form of a report written by the Control Risks Group, one in the burgeoning category of companies paid to tell multinationals what they're getting into abroad. The report stated that the New People's Army would almost certainly demand "revolutionary taxes"-a modern version of Mafia protection rackets. "Companies that fail to pay the full amount are liable to be attacked," the report said, adding that the property's previous owners "are believed to have paid NPA taxes," and that attacks in 1993 and 1994 "were attributed to them not paying the full amounts demanded."
The section ended by suggesting that if Echo Bay refused to pay, "the NPA has the capability to launch raids against the company, to destroy equipment and to halt operations in the area." The report also warned of attacks by the MNLF, the MILF, and Abu Sayyaf, and concluded by saying that "the best security for Echo Bay's operations will be a friendly local population." Instead of cutting its losses and getting out, Echo Bay opted to protect its investment.
Continued
< Previous|1|2|3|4|5|Next >
Article Sidebar: The Resource Curse
Photo above copyright A.P./Wide World Photos; used with permission.
Up to Top
|
