Biazon urges withdrawal of PH peacekeepers now

In this Friday, July 18, 2014 photo, a contingent of Philippine U.N. Peacekeepers march past the grandstand during a turnover-of-command ceremony for the new Armed Forces chief at Camp Aguinaldo at suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA—Filipino peacekeeping forces should now withdraw from the Golan Heights after their escape from a Syrian rebel group was branded an “act of cowardice” by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) commander, a lawmaker said Friday.

Muntinlupa Representative Rodolfo Biazon, chair of the defense and security committee of the House of Representatives, took exception to the statements of Lt.Gen. Iqbal Singh Singha about the Filipino troops, and raised questions about the UN commander’s competence.

He said Singha’s words should now compel the government to “immediately withdraw all Philippine contingents in the Golan Heights.”

On Thursday, Iqbal told the India Today newspaper that the Filipino soldiers’ escape from Position 68 after a seven-hour fire fight with Syrian rebels was “an act of cowardice.”

He said the “non-professional actions of the Filipino troops have endangered the lives of the Fijian soldiers” held hostage by the Syrian rebels.

But Biazon, a former senator and Armed Forces of the Philippines chief, said it was in fact the order of Singha to the Fiji contingent to raise the white flag and surrender  their weapons to the attackers that “resulted in their capture, and their fate unknown as of today.”

“Our troops fought gallantly even though they were running low on ammunition and there was the danger of their position being overrun by the attackers,” he said. “I raise the question: Why was there no reinforcement or ammunition resupply to the besieged Filipino contingent from the UNDOF led by Lt. Gen. Singha?”

He said the Philippine government should now inquire and clarify three things: the rules of engagement in UN peacekeeping deployments, the capability of the UN in reinforcing besieged peacekeeping contingents, and policy on what type of armaments UN contingents are allowed.

“These should be clarified especially because in the Golan Heights incident, the Filipino troops were only armed with individual weapons and the only crew-served weapons that they had were light machine guns,” he said.

“It appears that the Filipino contingent did not have mortars and other high-performance caliber weapons which are needed especially when UN forces are being attacked. However, despite this predicament, surrender to an unknown group was never considered as an option by the Filipino contingent,” Biazon said.

He noted that the Syrian attackers were reported to be members of the Al Nusra Front, a fundamentalist rebel group.

“If Al Nusra is the same as the Iraq and al-Sham and considering what the ISIS did to their captives such as the massacre of 1,750 Iraqi cadets and the civilians that they capture, and other atrocities done by them, surrender was not an option,” he said.

“If the Filipino troops surrendered, they could have suffered the same fate,” Biazon said.

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