At home with terrorism?

New York City may be half a world away from the Philippines.

But as US investigators unravel the global scale of the terrorist network, the Philippines emerges geographically as part and portion of the terrorist operational jigsaw puzzle.

The nature of linkages of terrorist operations worldwide still remains under wraps as the US investigation fans out. But as evidences are slowly pieced together, the Philippines fills crucial missing links.

About seven years earlier, Ramzi Yousef, bearer of an Iraqi passport, was arrested in Pakistan, largely through the investigative efforts of the Philippine police. Yousef was on the US wanted list as the mastermind of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 26, 1993. The incident that sparked the manhunt was a small fire in an Ermita apartment leased to Yousef.

View of Lower Manhattan before (top) and after (bottom) the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

A computer left behind by the fugitive revealed his grandiosely murderous designs. It turned out that the fire was started by an accident in mixing liquid bombs intended to blow up eleven U.S. commercial aircraft. When Yousef was extradited to the US, it was discovered that the botched bombing of the World Trade Center belied an ambitious plot to topple the city's tallest tower onto its twin, amid a cloud of cyanide gas.

If Yousef had no direct hand in the September 11 suicide air raids that toppled the twin towers and the Pentagon and blew up another aircraft, the cataclysm certainly closely followed his own catastrophic blueprint.

That a man of such destructive schemes freely lived with and walked among Filipinos is almost unthinkable. It gives the Filipinos a chilling sense of physical proximity to the catastrophic crash on the New York landmark and the seat of US military power.

The Philippines is marked red on the map of global terrorism for other reasons: it is home to the Abu Sayyaf, some of whose leaders trained in Afghanistan. The US has named this extremist group, tagged by the Philippine military as "bandits," among the terrorist organizations whose assets should be frozen.

It should be recalled that in its earlier attempt to lend religious legitimacy to its kidnapping of foreign tourists from Sipadan, Malaysia, Abu Sayyaf demanded the release of Yousef among its conditions for the release of their victims, aside of course from the ransom money.

Neither the organizational nor the financial link between the Abu Sayyaf and Osama Bin Laden or his al-Qaeda Network has been established. But the foreign currency windfall from its kidnapping operations has given rise to suspicion that some liquid funds are finding their way into Osama's coffers.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also uncovered travel records to the Philippines of terrorists linked to the first bombing incident of the World Trade as well as the 1998 bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

That terrorists routinely used the country as a safe haven, and even as rendezvous for plotting and springing terrorist attacks, is hardly surprising anymore.

The country itself has had a series of terrorist bombing incidents in recent years that remain unsolved, aside of course from the highly publicized kidnap-for-ransom activities of the Abu Sayyaf.

The Philippine immigration system is lax to those who can bribe their way in. Members of the Japanese yakuza on the run from Japanese government authorities often turn up with their Filipina girlfriends in the country.

Given our worldwide notoriety for electing a president who is now being indicted for "economic plunder," and a senator who as Estrada's top henchman reportedly masterminded one of the greatest drug trafficking operations in the country, it is little wonder that we are a beacon to the world's fugitive criminal elements.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo rallied Filipinos behind the US-led fight against terrorism with her "14 pillars of policy and action." It would seem that because of their proximity to terrorists and actual experiences of terrorist attacks, Filipinos would solidify their stand against terrorism.

The initial shock from the Sept. 11 attack on New York seemed to do just that. But as Filipinos returned to their daily grind, perhaps deadened by random violence closer to home, the grip of terrorist fear has loosened.

The great terrorism debate was quickly torn apart, rephrased, and either swung aloft as an issue of "sovereignty" or hurled aground as an issue of "prostitution."

Indeed, it is only in the Philippines that an issue of universal value in the civilized world can lead to such political polarization.

Not even Arroyo's declaration that the possibility of sending Filipino military troops to the war zone is remote, nor assurances that the possible use of the former US bases would only be as transshipment and refueling stations, could scale back the acrimonious political debate.

As things stand, even the best effort of the Philippines to contribute to the global coalition against terrorism could only be symbolic in essence. Besieged internally by extremists, Arroyo herself realized that the Philippines could contribute more effectively in the war against terrorism by focusing on the domestic front, rather than committing itself externally.

Given the divisiveness of the Philippine polity, the president should focus on concrete, independent, achievable policies on the homefront, such as a more decisive action against the Abu Sayyaf and a frontal attack on money-laundering.*