This is on top of the $14 million-contract announced last June to improve JSOTF facilities near Zamboanga City, including the construction of recreational facilities for US servicemen assigned there.

Defense Undersecretary Ernesto Carolina told ABS-CBN News that the US will help bankroll the Philippine Defense Reform program (PDR), a 10-point, 10-year package to improve the capabilities of the Philippine military.

The PDR is focused on implementing a “strategy-driven, multi-year planning system”; improving operational and training capacity; improving logistics, management expertise and personnel systems; provide for planning and upgrading the AFP’s capabilities; optimizing budget management and controls; creating a pool of professionals to run a centralized defense acquisition system; beefing up capabilities for civil-military operations (CMO); and building an information management development (IT) program.

Carolina explained the US is committed to match peso-for-peso whatever the Philippines spends for the PDR. He said the government will be spending about P2 billion a year for the reform package, equivalent to about $30 million.

The US State Department has recommended reducing military aid to the Philippines from $30 million to only $11 million in the 2008 fiscal year (which starts in October). But the Senate appropriations committee restored the proposed cut, setting aside the same level of military aid for the Philippines as last year. The US Foreign Operations budget is already on the Senate floor, ready for a vote in the next few days.

And even if the US Congress decides to go along with the State Department proposal for lower military aid, one Philippine official noted, indirect US spending to help the AFP – particularly cross-training – will continue, if not increase over the next several years.

US investment in the PDR, launched in 2004, will ensure they remain closely engaged with the Philippine military at least until the program is completed in 2014.

A team from the AFP is also set to arrive here in the next few days to submit a “shopping list” of military hardware to the Pentagon. When President Bush designated the Philippines as a “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA), it paved the way for the AFP to get “first crack” at surplus American weapons and equipment, according to Col. Rolando Tenefrancia, Philippine Army attach? to Washington DC.

Another advantage, he explained, is that we can buy US-made military equipment at the same price that the US bought them wholesale, exploiting an “economy of scale”.

Tenefrancia cites the Harris HF/VHF field radios that could cost several thousand dollars apiece if they were to be purchased through regular commercial channels.

The combined benefits of availing the US Foreign Military Fund (FMF) and being a MNNA will enable the AFP to buy them at a much lower price, equivalent to what the US Army paid in acquiring them in bulk. Hence, the Philippines could be paying much less than the $96 million it would cost for procuring 6,300 handheld radios and 2,000 “Man Pack” systems that it says it wants to buy from the US.

Filipino and US troops have fought side by side since World War II. The global war on terror provided a fresh impetus for military cooperation after relations cooled when the Philippine Senate voted to close down the sprawling US military bases at Clark and Subic.

Joint RP-US counter-terrorist operations in Mindanao have drawn praises both in Manila and the Pentagon, and American military leaders here are holding them up as a model of success in the global war on terror.

The US force is composed mainly of Special Operations Command (SOCOM) troops who help supply real-time intelligence to Philippine troops. They use unmanned spy drones and powerful radio scanners to detect Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) guerillas.

But the US also employs a potent non-lethal arsenal of rewards for the capture of wanted ASG personalities, road-building and other community projects that help improve the quality of life in erstwhile ASG strongholds and thus alienate the people against the extremists.

The continued presence of US troops, albeit limited in size, has drawn protests from militant groups fearful it could be a precursor to the return of US military bases in the Philippines.

And the fresh round of spending by the Pentagon to improve an “advanced command post” in Zamboanga merely fuels those fears.

“The global force posture we seek is about places and not bases,” Admiral Thomas Fargo, former commander of the US Pacific Command (USPACOM), stressed.

He pointed to the need for “rapidly deployable, flexible forces to meet our national defense needs.” Fargo underlined the necessity for “strong alliances, partnerships and friendships” as key to ensuring the security of the Asia-Pacific region against armed threats.

US military officials stress that their presence in the Philippines is not indefinite and open-ended. But neither are they willing to give a timetable when they’ll be pulling out.

Lawrence Wright, in a New Yorker article entitled “The Master Plan” warned that “the Al-qaeda version of utopia has drawn the allegiance of a new generation of Arabs, tutored on the internet by ideologues…radicalized by September 11, the occupation of Iraq and the Palestinian intifada.”

“Those jihadis fighting in the conflict in Iraq have been trained in vicious urban warfare against the most formidable army in history,” he wrote. “They will return to their home countries and add their expertise to the new cells springing up in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and many European nations.”

But the continuing and growing US influence over the Philippine military could also have an unexpected boon. Secretary Carolina admitted that US support for the PDR could help the Philippine military rely less on combat to overcome the Islamic terror threat as well as the challenge from the communist New People’s Army.

A key element of the PDR is the emphasis on expanding and improving CMO. It points to the development of an “Affirmative Action Road Map” to “facilitate economic dispersion in conflict areas” and support for “enhanced convergence of government efforts at addressing the root causes of the insurgency”.

“We may avoid these incidents (alleged human rights abuses by soldiers) through these institutional reforms in the Armed Forces,” Carolina noted.

A Fil-Am community leader opined that greater American involvement in Philippine military reforms also increases US leverage to stop the spate of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, many of which have been blamed on soldiers and policemen.

Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate have tacked on language in the Foreign Operations Bill, that provides for economic and military aid to the Philippines, to express their concern over human rights abuses in the Philippines. The Senate version has even provided an incentive, in terms of additional aid, if the State Department can assure the US Congress that progress was being made to stop the harassment and violence against government opponents.

By Rodney J. Jaleco