Give Abus a dose of their own medicine

The order for government troops to take the moral high ground in fighting the bandit group Abu Sayyaf, which beheads captured or dead soldiers, will surely be disobeyed.

If a military commander in the field insists that the order to fight those rogue Moros fair and square be followed to the letter, he will have a mutiny in his hands.

The order for government troops not to mutilate dead Abu Sayyaf bandits supposedly came from their commander in chief, President Rodrigo Duterte.

The soldiers in Patikul, scene of fierce gun battles in Sulu province, want blood for blood—and head for head—for their dead comrades.

If they are ordered to hold their punches, so to speak, they will lose their morale to fight since a fight to the finish does not have rules.

Let the troops vent their anger on the barbarous Abu Sayyaf bandits who do not show mercy to captured or dead soldiers.

If soldiers behead captured Abu Sayyaf bandits on the battlefield, let them be.

As long as they don’t rape women and kill innocent civilians in the scene of battle, soldiers should not be punished for giving the captured bandits a dose of their own medicine.

***

I think I was 5 years old when my father’s soldiers presented to him a severed head of a man.

We were in our quarters inside a Philippine Constabulary camp in Seith Lake town, Sulu, when the soldiers brought the bloodied head, which was cut cleanly at the neck, before my father who was sitting with my mom on the balcony.

I was a few meters away from my parents playing with a toy.

The soldiers were in a jeep and one of them, who was seated beside the driver, raised the bloody head for my dad to see.

“Very good, very good,” I remember my dad saying as he returned the salute of the soldiers on the jeep.

Many years later, when I was already in my 20s, I recalled to my old man that scene which, even up to now, is so vivid like it happened only yesterday.

I asked him why he was smiling the whole time he was shown the decapitated head.

My old man said the decapitated body belonged to a Moro outlaw (not rebel, mind you, as the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF would come decades later) who had killed one of his enlisted men outside the camp and beheaded him.

Dad said he formed a group of volunteers to go after the outlaw and behead him as well if they capture him—which they did.

“That was good for restoring the morale of my men,” he told me.

Modesty aside, my father was considered one of the best commanders in Sulu in his time.

***

I doubt the veracity of reports that President Digong told the soldiers to desist from mutilating the bodies of the Abu Sayyaf bandits.

What Digong meant was not to waste bullets on a dead Abu Sayyaf by shooting the body over and over again.

What Digong said was “kapag natumba na, ’wag mo nang aksayahan ng panahon, ’wag mong sayangin ’yang bala (when the enemy is dead, don’t waste your time, don’t waste your bullet).”

Bullets are too precious to use on a dead lowlife.

Digong never said, “Don’t behead the Abu Sayyaf.”

***

Abu Sayyaf bandits are apparently hooked on methamphetamine hydrochloride, “shabu” in street lingo.

They move unusually fast and don’t get tired of running and walking long distances, according to accounts from their former kidnap victims.

They hardly sleep and are very fidgety, the victims said.

People “high” on shabu are paranoid and capable of committing extreme acts of violence, like mutilating their victims.