Dennis Hollingsworth

Philippines, the Model

The long war between Manila and the Muslim Moros in the Philippines is fought in the shadows; a deadly mirror image of the terrorist wars in the Middle East. The difference is that the search for a solution has been going on for more than a hundred years. [First of two parts.]

World archipelago, meet the Philippine archipelago. Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club has returned from Mindanao and he sketches some history of the guerilla movements in the southern Philippines for Pajamas Media:

They say the desert is vast, but the sea is vaster. Many Muslims in the south are a sea-people, accustomed from early youth and conditioned by immemorial memory to live on the sea; and certain tribes actually build their homes on piles six feet above the high water mark. These descendants of the Moro pirates which assailed the Spanish forts tie up their outriggers like a horse to a hitching post at the foot of their homes at sea. The casual visitor to Zamboanga city will see Muslim families living on small outriggers; sleeping, eating and performing all the daily tasks that others are accustomed to on dry land.
Were you to walk the beach by night there would be lights moving beneath the waves. The traditional Muslim pearl diver has enlisted technology and evolved into the busero, a spear fisherman capable of staying forty feet below the surface half an hour at a time, sustained by a small plastic hose fed by an aquarium oxygen pump. With the slender source of oxygen like a straw between his lips, a waterproof flashlight in one hand and a rubber-band powered speargun in the other the busero?s light attracts the curious fish beneath the harbor into lethal range.

Cool, night diving. I can relate.

If you liked my previous post JUNGLE PATROL, this will bring the story up to the 20th century for you.