Rebels of Mindanao

A NOVEL

TOM ANTHONY

Copyright © 2008 by Tom Anthony

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form....

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anthony, Tom.
Rebels of Mindanao : a novel / Tom Anthony.
        p. cm.
  ISBN 978-0-8253-0514-6 (alk. paper)
1. Intelligence officers--United States--Fiction. 2. Undercover
operations--Fiction. 3. Terrorists--Fiction. 4.
Insurgency--Philippines--Mindanao Island--Fiction. 5.
Muslims--Philippines--Mindanao Island--Fiction. 6. Manobos
(Philippine
people)--Fiction. 7 Mindanao Island (Philippines)--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3601.N568R43 2008
  813'.6--dc22
2007052193

I want to thank my sons, Michael Anthony for his persistence over several years of pushing me to write this story and for his detailed comments and constructive criticism throughout the process; and Christopher Anthony for his inspiration to record images I observed in Mindanao.

Eric Kampmann, Beaufort Books, New York, saw something worthy of being published; Arnold Dolan, editor, Trish Hoard, copy editor and Margot Atwell, Associate Publisher, for pulling it all together.

My special thanks to:

Brigadier General Ramon Ong, Philippine Armed Forces, Retired, for vetting my work and for making corrections in four languages.

The Otaza, Payen, and Otakan families, whose names I borrowed to create fictional characters, and for telling stories around our cooking fires and on the beach in Mindanao, which expanded in creating
Rebels of Mindanao
.

General Fidel V. Ramos, for teaching me to “Care, Share and Dare,” in writing and in life.

Freddie Aguilar and Sean Hayes, whose lyrics I quote with their permissions, adding song to the story.

An article published in the New York Times Magazine, July 21, 2002, “It Only Looks Like Vietnam,” by Donovan Webster, quoted in my book, gave me a new perspective.

Thank you Emalyn, my source for inspiration in all things, and our daughters Emily and Elaiza.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

P
ROLOGUE

1
I
STANBUL

2
D
UTY AND
H
ONOR

3
T
HE
L
ADY
L
OVE

4
E
LAIZA

5
T
HE
T
URK

6
T
HE
E
MBASSY

7
U
GLY
M
ARIA

8
STAGCOM

9
A M
ESSAGE FOR
M
AHIR

10
T
HE
M
ANGO
T
REE

11
T
HE
D
AM ON THE
A
GUSAN

12
S
ERGEANT
S
TARKE

13
T
HE
S
CHLOSS
C
ODE

14
T
HE
M
ISSION

15
T
HE
O
TAZA
B
ROTHERS

16
K
ADAYAWAN

17
P
URSUIT

18
D
ELUSION

19
T
HE
C
HINOY

20
J
IHAD

21
S
ERENDIPITY

22
LZ K
ORONADAL

23
T
ASK
F
ORCE
D
AVAO

24
S
ULTAN
K
UDARAT

25
R
EBELLION

26
T
HE
T
RIANGLE

27
J
UNGLE
P
ATROL

28
I
TIG
V
ILLAGE

29
H
OLY
W
ARRIORS

30
B
ULUWAN

31
D
EATH AND
V
IRTUE

32
M
ARTYRS

33
R
ADIO
F
REE
M
INDANAO

34
K
ING OF
B
ATTLE

35
B
IRDS OF A
F
EATHER

36
O
LD
G
ENERALS AND
E
MPTY
C
HAIRS

37
M
OUNT
A
PO

38
T
HE
P
AYOFF

39
P
ACO
P
ARK

40
D
REAMS

Epilogue

REBELS
OF
MINDANAO

T
oday, the Philippine Archipelago consists of 7,121 islands at low tide, with seventy-five million inhabitants growing at a five per cent rate each year, speaking some seventy-five different languages or distinct dialects, less a few each generation as indigenous tribes are absorbed or become extinct. Five hundred years after being consolidated into a country forced upon them by the conquering Spanish, the separations of waters and religions still keep the peoples from melding into a single nation.

Ocean barriers isolate the islands from potential invaders but also hinder the adaptation of new technologies. Despite its vast expanse and diversity, the Philippine Islands was defined as a single nation for the convenience of the colonialists. After the Spanish, foreign domination continued under the Americans, who brought in a form of democracy. Filipinos attempted to make their culture fit their masters' with varying degrees of success and often accepted religious sects of splinter churches as alternatives to the Catholic dogma of the Spaniards. After independence from the U.S., in 1946, the central government in Manila inherited a cumbersome structure.

Of the three large island groups-Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao-Mindanao, in the south, is the most tormented. Mindanao could stand alone as a nation and has the resources to do so, with no contiguous nations to dispute the natural boundaries of the oceans. As England sent its outcasts to Australia, so Spain sent its troublemakers to Mindanao,
La Tierra del Destirro
, the land of the exiles. Outlaws and undesirables from the north were deposited onto this island of Moro pirates-the Muslim terrorists of three centuries past. Over the intervening centuries, some things have changed, others not at all.

A war of insurrection has raged in Mindanao for much of the last forty years without much outside attention. Muslim rebels, who fought against the Americans when they replaced the Spanish, then
with
them to throw out the Japanese, continue their insurgency against foreigners who send in only missionaries and token soldiers. Brother against brother, Christian against Muslim, poor against rich, on it goes …

T
he blast killed a dozen worshipers at the Beth Israel synagogue in downtown Istanbul, attracting international news coverage. It was a significant event for Mahir Hakki. Now, for the first time in centuries, he thought, we are taking the fight to them.

The rusty old car that Mahir and his friend Jamal had loaded with explosives had rolled slowly down the hill, crashing through the door below a Star of David. Mahir was careful to push the button on the remote control a microsecond after, when only the foreign Zionists were near the car. He wanted to make sure that no innocent countrymen of his would be hurt. Mahir told his friend, “We want our patriots to understand the struggle. Then all of them will join in jihad.”

Back in the spring of 2004 when Mahir was working in the only tire store the Turkish European Trading Company had been able to hold on to, Gregory P. Mount, the vice president for marketing at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, came to Istanbul with his wife and son,
taking a sentimental journey back to where he had started out so many years before. He could not resist walking by the old store and talking to the guy there about tires.

“I remember when this was just a used tire shop,” he told the worker.

Mahir replied to the stranger, “Then you would know my father, Hassan.”

“Yes. An old and very good friend of mine. How is he?”

“My father passed away fifteen years ago.”

The time had slipped away for Mount. He was surprised, “Mahir. Is it you? I knew you when you were a small child.”

“And you sir … are?”

“Greg Mount, Goodyear International, retired.”

“Ah, yes, you helped my father, and started the good and the bad.”

Mahir explained the history of the rise and fall of the House of Hakki when Mount took him to lunch at the Sheraton Hotel, while Mount's wife and son shopped in the bazaar for hand-made rugs and hammered brass tables. Mahir let out his venom, but in a courteous way. He held no personal grudge against his father's old friend, and his mother would surely like to see the Englishman again. So Mahir invited Mount to come out to their house by the sea some day, some indefinite day in the future that would never come; their lives were not on parallel paths.

Mahir told Mount, “I don't hold you personally responsible. But your company is a part of it, the informal global conspiracy of Jews and Christians. No American can be elected president of your country nor an Englishman prime minister unless he first swears allegiance to the State of Israel, a government and a people who are the eternal enemy of Islam.”

“Mahir, that is just not so.” Mount was not offended, rather flattered in a backhanded way that this young man would be so forthcoming with him. “I don't think the Israelis are your enemies: they just want to have their homeland.”

But Mahir was not convinced and told Mount, “The Jews had their own place, carved out of the land of the true believers, but that was not enough. Now they extend their settlements into other Arab lands, and when they have enough squatters in them, they will call a vote.”