BY GENE FAJARDO PAGKANLUNGAN
According to the U.S. Department of
Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a covert operation
(also as CoveOps or covert ops) is "an operation that is so
planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial
by the sponsor."
It is intended to create a political effect which can
have implications in the military, intelligence or law enforcement arenas.
Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties
knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation."
This best describes Operation
Wolverine/Exodus which was implemented on January 25, 2015, and unfortunately led to the death
of 44 Special Action Force (SAF) officers. These men were executed by Moro rebels
during the bloody encounter as shown by video footage in which the SAF soldiers were repeatedly shot even as they laid dead on the ground.
As of this writing, details of Operation Wolverine remain sketchy, gossipy, and blurred. Let's go back to the definition, “ a
covert op conceals the identity of the sponsor.”
President Benigno Aquino in the latter
days, owned up and took full responsibility for the debacle, after much delay
and after enormous outrage from the Philippine citizenry.
BUT THE TRUTH IS FAR
FROM COMING OUT. It will not come out, in fact.
WHY? By its very nature. It is a covert operation, after all. So Mar Roxas, the Army and those who profess
not knowing it, shouldn't know about it or should not say they knew about it.
Even the Americans who, people say, were involved in the Op, are not telling you and me.
Then the proper question to ask is this and what I want to get
clarification on - this simple question: WHY OPERATION WOLVERINE WAS CARRIED OUT?
And it was answered early on. Operation Wolverine had to be carried out to
get Zulkifli bin Hir aka “Marwan,” the Malaysian Muslim terrorist, and his ally,
expert bomb-maker, Abdul Basit Usman.
 |
| Marwan was killed during Operation Wolverine |
These two men were on the U.S Federal
Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) top list of international terrorists.
Let’s look at the facts how these two
men ended up on the America’s MOST WANTED LIST.
Marwan was known as the “Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia.” He is believed to head the Kumpulun Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM), a member organization of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network.
The Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM), or Malaysian Mujahideen Movement, is/was a terrorist organisation that supported an overthrow of the Mahathir government and is/was for the creation of a pan-regional Islamic state comprising southern Thailand, the entirety of Indonesia and the southern Philippines.
KMM is believed to be self-financing and is often tied in correlation to smaller more extremist groups in Southeast Asia.
According to his profile in the FBI, Marwan had used two dates of birth – Jan. 5, 1966 and Oct. 5, 1966. He weighs 120 pounds and is 5 feet 6 inches tall.
Marwan – supposedly able to speak Malaysian, English, Tagalog and Arabic – is believed to have been staying in the southern Philippines since 2003, where he has conducted bomb-making training for the Abu Sayyaf group. He allegedly taught Azahari Husin, known as the “demolition man” who supposedly masterminded the 2002 Bali attack, how to create explosive devices.
According to Philstar (Feb 5, 2015) report, “ On Aug. 1, 2007, Marwan was indicted in the US District Court, Northern District of California, and charged with “providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, contributing goods and services to a specially designated global terrorist and making false statements.”
In the Bali attack, 202 people were killed. According to Wikipedia “The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack killed 202 people (including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, 27 Britons, 7 Americans, 6 Swedes and 3 Danes). A further 209 people were injured."
Various members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a violent Islamist group, were convicted in relation to the bombings, including three individuals who were sentenced to death.
An audio-cassette purportedly carrying a recorded voice message from Osama Bin Laden stated that the Bali bombings were in direct retaliation for support of the United States' war on terror and Australia's role in the liberation of East Timor.”
Osama Bin Laden, who founded Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 1988 bombing of the U.S embassy in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the embassies of the United States in two East African cities – Dar es Salaam, the largest city of Tanzania, and Nairobi, the capital and largest city of Kenya.
Later on, Bin Laden’s A-Qaeda slaughtered close to 3,000 individuals in the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center in New York City. He was neutralized and finally killed on May 2, 2011 in Pakistan by operatives of the U.S. Navy Seal.
Marwan’s links to Al-Qaeda is clear. Marwan’s link to Abu-Sayyaf, clearer. And Marwan’s objective to further murder
people is utmost clear. So he had to be neutralized. And it happened in the
January 25, 2015 Operation Wolverine.
The real angle of Operation Wolverine
has been re-angled by popular sentiment. The focus has set on why the soldiers had to die, who ordered the op, who is to blame, etc.
The real issue is : A terrorist being protected by Islamist
terrorists had to be hunted down through a covert operation. Those brave SAF officers knew of their mission. They knew of military tactics and covert operations. END OF STORY.
