COMMENTARY: ADDENDUM to “The Jolo Siege of 1974, Half a Century Hence”

NAGA CITY (MindaNews / 21 April) – My article “The Jolo Siege of 1974, Half a Century Hence: Notes on History, War, Peace, Law and Justice” arose from my participation as a panelist in its 50^th anniversary commemoration by way of “The Siege of Jolo 1974: A Forum and Webinar with Survivors and Victims” held on 12 February 2024 at Bocobo Hall, Law Center, University of the Philippines (U.P.), Diliman, Quezon City, that was planned, organized and sponsored primarily by the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation.  More than a year later, I write this Addendum based on four relevant and significant books and papers that I have since been able to acquire and/or read, from which I now wish to share certain insights.

In my earlier article, I already made mention of two books, namely:

1 —  Agnes Shari Tan Aliman, The Siege of Jolo, 1974 (Central Books, 2021) [hereinafter the “Aliman book”]; she was an online panelist in the above-said Forum-Webinar.

2 —  Criselda Yabes, Below the Crying Mountain (U.P. Press, 2010), a novel [hereinafter the “Yabes novel”].

In addition, two more materials followed:

3 —  Elgin Glenn R. Salomon, “The 1974 Battle of Jolo: testimonial narratives of survivors and intra-Tausug relations,” Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 54 No. 4, 2022, pp. 619-34 [hereinafter the “Salomon journal article”]; he was an online academic panelist in the Forum-Webinar.

4 —  “The Battle of Jolo,”  Lessons Learned Series – Volume I, Doctrine and Literature Development, Philippine Army School Center, Philippine Army, April 1974, including appended After Battle Reports and Personal Interviews of key Army officers [hereinafter the “Philippine Army Reports”].

The Aliman book and the Yabes novel both give a good picture of Jolo before and after the Siege, so much so that this watershed event marked for Jolo something like the “B.C.” and “A.D.” in the Christian calendar.  To put it simply, Jolo was never the same after the Siege, after February 1974.  One of the three civilian resident survivor panelists at the Forum-Webinar, Ambroussi “Cheng” Rasul, perhaps captured it best in this post-Forum email message to me:

          Jolo is not just any town. It is a very special town. It is the capital of Sulu, seat of the Sultanate of Sulu and center for commerce and trade for Tausugs and others. It was a (accidental?) stroke of genius for those who bombed and napalm-burned the town, for it decimated our “Shangrila” and impoverished, displaced and dismantled Tausugs for decades. I believe we were on a trajectory towards being a regional economic and political powerhouse but this was not to be…. Historians, academics and truthsayers must highlight Jolo’s socio-political and economic standing and trajectory before her destruction. Doing so will remind us of what we truly lost….

          I hope and pray that we all realize that the burning and destruction of Jolo and the resulting impoverishment, displacement and dismantling of the Tausug Jolo society were near-apocalyptic in terms of the harm done not only to lives and wherewithal. It likewise  completely altered our palpable future from extremely rosy  into utterly bleak…. May there be many storytellers to tell the truth and consequences of the burning.

          There is of course much more detail and portraiture of Jolo before and after the Siege in the above-said two books.  The Aliman book is mainly significant and remarkable for documenting the accounts of 23 civilian survivors of the Siege, Muslim as well as Christian and those of Chinese blood.  Each story is a testament to the human spirit, of bringing out the best in persons in the worst of times that is a bloody fratricidal war, of the will of resident families to survive that and then the will to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives on a longer road to recovery, whether in returning to Jolo or moving to more peaceful places elsewhere in the country or abroad.  The Yabes novel, though fictional, is largely based on the same facts of life, war and uneasy peace in Jolo, including the author’s persona, the novel’s narrator who has obviously lived in and knows Jolo and relatively nearby sea transit point Zamboanga, both the people and the places thereof.

Both the Aliman book and the Yabes novel have their military sources and characters. The Aliman book carries the accounts of three high military officers, both on the Siege and on the military-administered post-Siege reconstruction.  The Yabes novel has several military characters, one is a Marine Lieutenant Colonel battalion commander who in more recent years gave the novel’s narrator “a previously top secret and just recently declassified “After-Battle Report,” but the main military character is a Marine Captain company commander who fought in the Battle of Jolo.

Both the Aliman book and the Yabes novel portray the harmonious Muslim-Christian people-to-people relations before the Siege and even after, though such relations that were so much part of the well-knit Jolo inter-faith social fabric, were definitely, as they could not have but been, shaken by the Siege.  Several civilian resident survivor panelists at the Forum-Webinar, such as Dorothy Lim Gokioco and  Rebecca Tan, believe that such  Muslim-Christian relations in Jolo have continued to be harmonious well beyond the Siege.  They contested online academic panelist Elgin Glenn R. Salomon’s shared research finding that “The imposition of Martial Law and the 1974 Battle of Jolo not only caused displacement, property destruction, and casualties.  It significantly contributed to the animosities between Christian and Muslim Tausugs that continue until the present.”  This is substantiated by the testimonial narratives of 15 witnesses and survivors of the Siege that are analyzed and synthesized in the earlier above afore-mentioned Salomon journal article that he sent me sometime after the Forum.

This underscores that a truly comprehensive Mindanao peace process consists not only of the vertical axis between the national government and the Bangsamoro people represented by the two main Moro liberation fronts. There is also the horizontal axis among the tri-people of the mainstream Filipino Christians, the Muslims or Moros, and the Lumad or highland indigenous people.  After the two vertical comprehensive peace agreements between the government and the Moro National  Liberation Front (MNLF) then the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) culminating in recent years with the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), perhaps the Mindanao peace process had best cover also its horizontal axis. In this regard, tri-people relations are one thing, but intra-Moro intramurals among the tri-Moro major tribes of the Tausug, Maguindanao and Maranaw are another thing.

The September 2024 Supreme Court Decision in Province of Sulu vs. Medialdea ruling that Sulu “shall not be part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region” has achieved what the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) was not able to do in defeating the MNLF in the 1974 Battle of Jolo, more than 50 years ago – that is, “divide and rule” over the Bangsamoro people who have already achieved a  unifying autonomous region in the Muslim/Moro-majority provinces and municipalities in Mindanao.  Unfortunately, a certain parochialism (and to be candid, the political ambitions and vested interests) of some quarters in Sulu has taken this retrogressive development to resurrect otherwise valid “Bangsa Sug” (Tausug nation) self-determination aspirations at the expense of hard-earned and paramount Bangsamoro identity and unity.

This is ironic because, reckoned from history’s 1968 Jabidah Massacre as the foundational casus belli of the contemporary Moro armed struggle in the Philippines, credit goes to the Tausug-led Moro National Liberation Front founders for imagining (and realizing) the Moro nation (Bangsa Moro) out of the13 mainly Muslim ethnolinguistic tribes in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan.  To the extent that “Bangsa Sug” is inspired by the Sufi Islam “Path of Ahlus Su’luk (Straight Path Followers),” then there might be some further religious dimension (agama) – aside from homeland (hula) and nation (bangsa) – which the Maguindanao-led Moro Islamic Liberation Front in turn sought to accentuate as one basis for Bangsamoro identity and unity.  But the Salomon journal article speaks even of “intra-Tausug relations” that involves not only the Muslim, Christian and Chinese Tausug (one might say the Tausug “tri-people”) but also the Tau Higad (seacost dwellers) and the Tau Gimba (upland folks).

Going back to, and given the significant military sources of, the Aliman book and the Yabes novel, it is interesting what these references, as well as the Salomon journal article and of course the newly received purely military reference, the earlier above-said Philippine Army Reports, had to say, if anything new, about certain literally burning and hanging questions of warfare in the Jolo Siege. Foremost among these questions is: who was mainly responsible between the AFP and the MNLF for the burning of Jolo?  Related to that is the question of whether the AFP used napalm bombs which are known for their enhanced incendiary effect.

While online panelist Agnes Aliman’s remarked at the Forum-Webinar that the weight of the evidence points to the major responsibility of the AFP for the burning of Jolo, given its superior explosive and incendiary weaponry, in the Aliman book she said “The rebels blamed the soldiers for setting the town on fire to flush out the rebels. On the other hand, the military claimed it was started by a Chinese resident, a certain Bien Luy Lim [or Bian Lay Lim], to keep the government troops away from them.”  This is the only reference to this particular Chinese resident that I have come across so far in the related literature on the burning of Jolo.  In the Salomon journal article, there is particular elaboration of the Aliman book’s reference to “flush out the rebels” according to one witness-survivor Mohammad whom Salomon interviewed: “The military’s guns produced fire to flush out the enemy.  If the bullet hit a building, it would erupt in flames.”  Salomon cited a report from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that “mortar rounds and house-to-house fighting” from the military “touched off small fires in tinderbox Jolo…” and that the Philippine Air Force (PAF) “also dropped napalm bombs, which ignited and burned most of Jolo.”  The Aliman book notes that “There were rumors that the military used Napalm to explain the rapid spread of the fire that burned the town.”

But it is the Yabes novel that drops the bombshell through its major military character a fictitious Marine Captain Luis Rodolfo, forgive my quoting him extendedly because of the many insights here, both historical and for the present:  (bracketed information and underscorings supplied)

          We did what we could.  We were like cats lost in the dark.  We didn’t have enough maps and the stupid soldiers in the Bus-Bus camp [of the Army 1^st Brigade]  couldn’t show my classmate where the major buildings were.

          The first thing I had to do was to re-take Notre Dame [college building].  Before the end of the day [February 7, 1974] we got it.  There were plenty of casualties.  Professor Hassan [the persona of MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari] led the rebels there. I didn’t see him. He managed to escape. It was a hard fight but it was important to get the school back [after most of it was occupied by the rebels], otherwise we’d be sitting ducks [in the Brigade headquarters below the school building’s vantage height].

          When all was done, I was sent back to Zamboanga.  Colonel Valiente took the credit for beating the enemy. He panicked, the bastard. He called on South Com to bring over all the forces it could muster, the Sabre jets, the old C-47 gunships, the armed helicopters which the rebels had succeeded in shooting down.

          He went on overkill just as we were close to getting the situation under control.  It was he who gave the order, the order to burn Jolo, the mosque, the church, the market, the walled city.  It was his way of making up for his delayed reaction and all for what?  To show he could do it, the Marines can do it?

         What are we proud of by destroying two-thirds of the town and claiming hundreds of lives?

x x x

           … South Com follows history:  during the time of Spain and of America, they held fort in Zamboanga.  This was the base of military power, the power that destroyed Sulu.

          It was ironic that about one hundred years ago the Spanish burned Jolo. And now it’s our turn, we did it again.  We were blamed for it. My soldiers couldn’t understand how much Jolo meant to me.  I didn’t want to repeat history but I had no control of it.

         They destroyed a paradise, and I was part of it.

Look at Jolo now. Everybody wants guns, not only the rebels, the ex-rebels, the bandits, the lost command, and what have you. The Moro political warlords are killing each other too, they just can’t rid of this cycle.

        We have to make a choice, which among them we have to take on our side, otherwise we’ll have no way of keeping Jolo under control. That’s what you call divide and rule.  It’s a tragedy, isn’t it?

        I miss it the way it used to be.

         After the Uprising, the President said we were heroes for defending the country. I didn’t know what to make of that.  The President accused the rebels of being Communists, and that was a lie he had to fabricate, because he had to appease the Middle East. He had some explaining to do if we were to continue getting oil.

          But I can’t be talking aloud.  No one in Jolo had ever heard of a Communist, they’d shake their heads if you asked them.   If you read the newspapers you’d think we were the good guys. Brave men of the Marines. But if you read the After-Battle Report – which is, until today, Top Secret – you’d laugh.

         But I will tell you one thing and I promise you that I am not lying: I had nothing to do with burning Jolo. Cross my heart, I didn’t.

            It is interesting to cross-check this account with the afore-said Philippine Army Reports, especially since it appends 6 After Battle Reports and 10 Personal Interviews of key Army officers in the Battle of Jolo.  In the Yabes novel, the “After-Battle Report” is described as “a thick folder previously top secret and just recently declassified” that was “a full account of events that led to the failed Uprising of the Bangsa Moro Liberation Army… The Burning of Jolo.” This could very well refer to the said Philippine Army Reports, even though the novel speaks more of the Philippine Marines, which is the infantry of the Philippine Navy (PN). These military accounts may be co-related with the main military reference cited in my earlier (2024) main article, i.e. the book by former Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) commander Maj. Gen. Delfin Castro (Ret.), A Mindanao Story: Troubled Decades in the Eye of the Storm (2005), particularly its Chapter 1 “The Curtain Rises,” largely based on interviews with the battalion commanders involved.

From the cross-referencing of such materials, it is not hard to glean that “Marine company commander Captain Luis Rodolfo” was the equivalent of Army Colonel Salvador M. Mison, commanding officer (CO) of the 14^th Infantry (Avenger) Battalion (14IB), and that “Marine battalion commander Colonel Valiente” was in turn Mison’s superior, Army Col. Alfonso Alcoseba, CO of the 4^th Infantry Division (4ID).  Mison’s 14IB was the unit mainly responsible for retaking the strategic Notre Dame building from the MNLF on Day 1 February 7, 1974 of the Jolo Siege.  Col. Alcoseba took over command of operations in the immediate environs of Jolo town.  Mison’s immediate superior was Army Col. Alfeo Rillera, CO of the 1^st Infantry Brigade under the 4ID (1/4 Bde).  But he was then offshore on a Navy ship with the highest ranking AFP officer in that war theater, Rear Admiral Romulo Espaldon, CO of the AFP Southwestern Command (SOWESCOM), who was then overseeing the amphibious operations against MNLF forces occupying other towns around Jolo.

If you will, just this quick additional note on Col. Mison, an exemplary soldier and public servant who hailed from Naga City, Camarines Sur and passed away only in 2023 at age 90.  “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away…” He rose to the rank of a three-star Lt. General and vice chief-of-staff of the AFP.  After his military career, he continued in public service later as a Commissioner of Customs.  A school building of his alma mater Camarines Sur National High School (CamHi) in Naga City is named after him. Perhaps one point here is the nationwide interconnectedness, including of “Bangsa Bikol,” with the Mindanao conflict.  “Ang sakit ng kalingkinan ay sakit by buong katawan.”

The Philippine Army Reports indicated that the leaders of the MNLF attack on Jolo were Alvarez Isnaji and Nizam Abubakar, son of the Jolo Mayor Aminkadra “Barley” Abubakar who obviously sided with the MNLF, including with his police force.  There is no indication here, including in the After Battle Reports and Personal Interviews of key Army officers of which Col. Mison had several, that MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari was in Jolo and directing the attack, just as was his fictional persona “Professor Omar Hassan” in the Yabes novel. But in another interview of already Gen. Mison, this time in the Aliman book, “Nur Misuari was there,” particularly in the Jolo Town Hall, where the rebels raised their flag.  The thing is, Misuari himself, in his authorized autobiography by Tom Stern (Anvil, 2012), said that he was then in his Sabah base near Sandakan, using messengers to direct the battle for Jolo.

There is also nothing in the Philippine Army Reports that indicates any key AFP officer to have given “the order to burn Jolo.”  The orders on record appear to be for air strikes, naval bombardment, artillery, tank and explosive projectile fire. Of course, these all contributed in different big and small ways to the consequence, whether intended or otherwise, that was the burning of Jolo, and not just specific target buildings where MNLF forces were positioned and firing from. There is no definitive indication of PAF dropping of aerial napalm bombs.  The closest to this that I came across were certain statements of Col. Mison in an After Battle Report of the February 14, 1974 pursuit and mopping-up operations against MNLF forces who fled from Jolo to its surrounding hills Bud Agad and Bud Pula. He states here as among “Lessons Learned/Observations” that “Napalm bombs when delivered on heavily fortified positions can force the enemy out of their bunkers if not to destroy them” and as among “Recommendations” that “Napalm bombs should be made available if the enemy is entrenched in heavily fortified positions.”  Are these indications that napalm bombs were actually used in the operations?  In any case, these operations were not conducted in Jolo town, which was “liberated” from the MNLF by February 10, but rather in several surrounding hills outside it several days after the burning of Jolo.

If ever napalm bombs were dropped by the PAF during the burning of Jolo starting the late afternoon of February 8 and onto February 9, 1974, it would presumably require the clearance or order by the AFP high command, not just the Army which has no command over the Air Force.  Interestingly, during the Forum-Webinar about 50 years later, a grandson of the highest ranking AFP officer in that war theater SOWESCOM Commander Admiral Espaldon spoke up during the open forum to say that, from what he knows about his grandfather, the latter would not and did not order the dropping of napalm bombs on Jolo, nor its burning. Rather, Espaldon was remembered more, especially by Jolo residents-survivors for facilitating the evacuation transfer of thousands of fleeing residents to Navy boats off Jolo’s Chinese Pier or jambatan that would take them to “far Zamboanga.”  According to US State Department Reports, it is believed Espaldon opposed the AFP operation on Jolo but was apparently overruled by Manila.  His policy of attraction in Sulu that was followed for five months before the Jolo Siege would also appear to have been a major casualty of the renewed fighting.

In the Philippine Army Reports, Col. Mison actually countered the notion of “Some people claimed that we started the fire” in this way:

          …. That cannot be because…. At about five minutes past five [in the afternoon of Day 2 February 8, 1974]… actually the fire started in three places simultaneously.  So the only conclusion is that the buildings were burned down by the rebels because the fires started in the areas occupied by them.  If you see the remnants of the town, the area that is not burned is that area which we captured before 1700H [5:00 PM].  If you go to the pier, at the right [or East, the Jolo airport area up to the Notre Dame college building] all the buildings are still standing.  This is the area which we have captured.  The area on the left [or West, the main town center, including the public market], which was occupied by the rebels, was burned down.

However, it is also of record that after Day 2, or from February 9, 1974 onwards, the clearing of the remaining two uncleared (out of three) block areas of Jolo was turned over from Col. Mison’s 14IB which cleared the first block to the other units of the 1/4 Bde. But it would appear that just like his fictional persona “Captain Luis Rodolfo” in the Yabes novel, Mison can say “I had nothing to do with burning Jolo.”

In the Philippine Army Reports, there is however also this passage relevant to the burning issue:  (underscoring supplied)

          From the statement of the OIC of the [Rocket Launcher Team of the 18^th Infantry Battalion under its CO Lt. Col. Cesar Tapia], it was apparent that the 3.5’ inch RL is an effective weapon against the enemy in combat in built-up [i.e. urban building] areas. It provided effective fire support to the infantry in clearing buildings of the enemy.  In the Battle of Jolo, however, it could have contributed to the start of the fires, especially when rockets of the WP type hit combustible or light materials.

“WP” refers to White Phosphorous.  Per an AI Overview, it is a highly reactive, waxy solid chemical that ignites spontaneously when exposed to air. It’s used in military applications for its ability to create smoke screens, illuminate battlefields, and act as an incendiary agent. Though both are incendiary agents, WP is different from napalm which is a jelly-like substance used in explosive projectiles.  WP White phosphorus burns intensely and can continue burning on the skin or clothing, while napalm’s burning is more controlled due to its gel-like form. It would appear that WP could be even more horrific than napalm.  Neither WP nor napalm are completely banned under international humanitarian law, but their use is severely restricted. While they are not prohibited outright, their deployment is governed by Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). This protocol prohibits the use of incendiary weapons, including napalm and WP, against civilian populations and civilian objects.

For this Addendum to my main article “The Jolo Siege of 1974, Half a Century Hence: Notes on History, War, Peace, Law and Justice,” I must thank the authors of the four references featured here, Agnes Shari Tan Aliman,  Elgin Glenn R. Salomon, Criselda Yabes, and the key Army officers such as the late Lt. Gen. Salvador M. Mison whose 6 After Battle Reports and 10 Personal Interviews were the Appendices to  “The Battle of Jolo,”  Lessons Learned Series – Volume I, Doctrine and Literature Development, Philippine Army School Center, Philippine Army, April 1974.  Magsukol for your stories of war, of rebuilding a shattered town and survivor lives, of intra-Tausug relations, and of love — of a special place, of families and loved ones, of special someones.  May the Jolo you/ we love finally get its just due and peace in our time.

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(SOLIMAN M. SANTOS, JR. is retired RTC Judge of Naga City;  a long-time human rights and international humanitarian lawyer;  legislative consultant and legal scholar;  peace advocate, researcher and writer on both the Communist and Moro fronts of war and peace; author of a number of books, including:  The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process (UP Press, 2001, 2^nd printing 2009);  Dynamics and Directions of the GRP-MILF Peace Negotiations (Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao 2005);  Referendum on Political Options: Study Papers on the Legal and Historical Basis (Mindanao Peoples’ Peace Movement, 2010);  In Defense of and Thinking Beyond the GRP-MILF MOA-AD: A Peace Advocate’s Essays on the Controversial Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (AFRIM, 2011); and Federalism and Cha-Cha for Peace:  Critical Papers on Federalism and Charter Change for the Mindanao Peace Process (Institute of Autonomy and Governance, 2016).)