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| Rescuing the Burnhams: the unspoken SOCPAC mission While the primary mission of Army special-operations forces in the Philippines was to train the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP, in counterterrorism, the kidnapping of two American missionaries changed the scope of the mission to include facilitating the rescue of American citizens held hostage by the Abu Sayyaf Group, or ASG. The selection, organization and training of a light reaction company, or LRC, for the Philippines by United States Special Forces Soldiers had been under way at Camp Aguinaldo, Luzon, for nearly two months when the ASG attacked the Dos Palmos Resort, offshore of Palawan Island, on May 27, 2001. The daring 200-mile cross-ocean raid netted the ASG 20 hostages for ransom. Among them were three American citizens, Gracia and Martin Burnham, both missionaries, and Guillermo Sobero. The difficult maritime operation, launched across the Sulu Sea from Basilan, reflected detailed reconnaissance, good logistics planning and a well-rehearsed dawn assault that neutralized resort security and caught the vacationers by surprise. The Dos Palmas kidnappings occurred about a month after the first American hostage, Jeffrey Schilling, a converted Muslim, had been released unharmed by ASG terrorists following eight months of captivity on Jolo Island. Now, the ASG held three Americans, and the U.S. State Department recommended that military assistance be provided. (1) ASG threats and the group's seizure of 20-Western guests from Sipadan resort in Malaysia in April 2000 had energized the staffs of the U.S. Pacific Command, or PACOM, and the Special Operations Command, Pacific, or SOCPAC. While intelligence analysts had expanded their efforts to track all Philippine terrorist groups, operations planners had developed security-assistance recommendations for improving the AFP's capabilities of combating increased terrorism and for restoring law and order in the predominantly Muslim southern archipelago. After Libya had paid the ASG terrorists more than $20 million to release the Sipadan hostages, the ASG seized more hostages in July and August 2000--more than 30 people in several actions. By the time Schilling was kidnapped in Jolo on Aug. 29, 2000, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, commander, PACOM, accompanied by officers from SOCPAC, had already traveled to Manila to brief the government of the Republic of the Philippines and the AFP on the concept of a mobile training team that would train and equip a company-sized unit to respond to the escalating terrorism. The creation of a Philippine response unit might restore popular confidence in the Philippine government. President Joseph Estrada rejected the American offer of assistance, but with a change of the Philippine administration a few months later, the Philippines welcomed American assistance. Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, began training the LRC in March 2001. The 1st SF Group's mission was to organize and train a national counterterrorist force for the Philippines in five months. The challenge for SOCPAC had been to accumulate equipment for the 90-man LRC--M-4 carbines, Kevlar helmets, body armor, night-vision goggles and radios--and deliver it to Fort Magsaysay on Luzon before the start of training. Brigadier General Donald C. Wurster, commander of SOCPAC, tasked the Air Force's 353rd Special Operations Group, based at Kadena Airbase, Okinawa, to deliver the equipment as a training mission, "taking the costs out of hide" because it was the only way to execute the program. (2) The mass ASG kidnapping at Dos Palmas prompted the U.S. Department of State to support security assistance for the Philippine armed forces, allowing PACOM to shift $2 million from its regional security-assistance program to fund the ongoing LRC training. When the AFP discovered that Sobero had been beheaded shortly after his capture, and that some hostages seized in the Dos Palmas raid were being held on Basilan, the Philippine military leadership felt pressured to use the LRC to rescue them. Fortunately, senior U.S. officials convinced them that the LRC would be more capable of rescuing the hostages after it completed training. (3) In the meantime, Major General Glicerio Sua, commander of the Philippine 1st Infantry Division, was working jointly with Wurster and with Colonel David Fridovich of Joint Task Force-510 as the Southern Command Task Force Comet commander responsible for Mindanao and Basilan Island. Under the auspices of the combined Exercise Balikatan, starting Jan. 1, 2002, Sua used the first two phases of his Operation Liberty to get the army and marine infantry battalions on Basilan ready to conduct major combat operations against the ASG. When SF detachments from the 1st SF Group began providing individual and collective training to the Philippine battalions on Basilan in late February 2002, Sua concentrated TF Comet's efforts on finding the Burnhams and preparing plans to rescue them. JTF-510 supported the development of intelligence-driven operations by the Southern Command, and it promoted coordinated staff work and the fusion of intelligence from all sources in the AFP joint operations center. PACOM dedicated a Navy P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft to JTF-510. Signal-intercept teams from the 1st SF Group worked with AFP elements at Camp Enrile, Zamboanga, as part of the 1st SF Group mission of "training, advising and assisting" the AFP in joint command, control and communications, fusion of all-source intelligence, counterterrorism, information operations and civil-military operations. (4) The individual and collective training conducted by the SF teams assigned to the Philippine battalions on Basilan raised Philippine soldier confidence levels, because most culminated in "graduation" combat operations in the field. Despite the fact that Basilan had been serving as the "combat JRTC" for AFP battalions for more than 10 years, the Filipino soldiers and marines were not proficient jungle fighters. Tactically, they were no match for the guerrilla forces operating from the remote areas of Basilan. A typical firefight resulted in one AFP killed and three AFP wounded, with many casualties of friendly fire. The presence of the Americans who had direct radio contact with helicopters (Philippine Air Force UH-1D Hueys during the day and U.S. aircraft at night) also meant prompt air medical evacuations of Filipino casualties when contact was made with the guerrillas. (5) But the first evidence that increased combat operations in remote areas of the island were having the desired effect--pressuring the ASG elements to disperse and move from long-established support areas--was the mass surrender of guerrilla fighters on the southern coast of Basilan in early April. 2002. (6) SF Detachment 114, with the 1st Marine Battalion Landing Team at Abungabung, arranged the surrender of an ASG guerrilla and his extraction to Manila. The guerrilla agreed to be the "test case" for his group of 19 fighters who were short of food and tiring of running from AFP patrols. After the guerrilla received his first demand of several cheeseburgers and a large order of French fries, he was flown to Manila for further interrogation. A cellphone call assuring his buddies that they would receive similar meals prompted the surrender of another 18 hungry ASG fighters three days later. (7) As the large force (more than 300 personnel) of Seabees and Marine engineers composing the Naval Construction Task Group from Okinawa arrived to begin work on humanitarian and civic-action projects throughout Basilan, the increased American presence provided rural residents with assurance that some of their basic needs would be met. The primary contact for the locals, the few Army Civil Affairs teams (protected by the SF detachments) that coordinated humanitarian and security-assistance activities with all ethnic groups, seemed to be everywhere. (8) The increased American presence also constrained the movement of terrorist elements on Basilan at the same time that local Muslim support of the ASG was being eroded by the humanitarian projects in progress and by the widespread public knowledge of the ASG's inflated ransoms and abuse of female hostages. When multiple-source intelligence from Philippine and American assets confirmed that the Burnhams had been moved from Basilan to Zamboanga del Norte, some distance from Zamboanga City, in late May or early June 2002, planning for the rescue mission, Operation Day Break, began in earnest, making the Burnham rescue the major focus of the Southern Command. Southern Command began making arrangements for moving several infantry battalions aboard Philippine Navy vessels to southern Mindanao to hunt for Abu Sabaya, the ASG leader holding the kidnapped Americans. Interdiction of ASG maritime supply and escape routes required greater naval support and made Operation Day Break on southern Mindanao a joint effort. As more Basilan infantry battalions were included in the operation, many of the SF detachments were left with only remnants of the AFP units that they had been tasked to train. Some detachments split, so that part of the detachment could accompany their AFP battalion commanders during combat operations on Mindanao. Fridovich, as the ARSOTF commander of JTF-510, assigned key staff from the 1st SF Group to develop viable courses of action based on a detailed intelligence preparation of the battlefield. He used those plans to steer the AFP leadership and to convince them of the need for conducting joint rehearsals on the islands off Mindanao. Nightly aerial surveillance by U.S. Navy P-3C Orion aircraft had been arranged through PACOM. After a night-surveillance photo was leaked to the Philippine press, access to that imagery was strictly controlled. Success with unmanned aerial vehicles was limited. Despite the fact that the Southern Command (TF Comet) and JTF-510 had made considerable progress integrating and verifying all-source intelligence, the AFP battalion commanders would not investigate every possible terrorist location identified, and they would not consider night operations. (9) Primary casualty evacuation was assigned to the MH-60L Black Hawks of the 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which replaced the Air Force's 33rd Rescue Squadron HH60Gs in May 2002. Wurster, at Camp Navarro, maintained control of the 160th SOAR helicopters. (10) JTF-510 worked closely with Southern Command at Camp Enrealy as Sua and JTF Comet on Camp Navarro coordinated the naval movement of army and marine elements from Basilan and the truck movement into assigned operational areas of southern Mindanao and observed the rehearsals conducted on the offshore islands. Three army battalions (the Scout Reconnaissance and the 10th and 55th Infantry) were brought north by ship to support the joint operation designed to locate and rescue the Burnhams. (11) For a short time, Fridovich had a temporary tactical operations center aboard a Philippine naval vessel to monitor the marine landings, the navy-patrol-boat interdiction of key estuaries, the offshore naval patrolling to blockade the southern Mindanao coast, and the ground movement of army battalions into battle positions. (12) The movement of AFP elements was reported by the news media and did not go unnoticed by locals sympathetic to the ASG. The volume of cell-phone traffic increased significantly: Surreptitious text messages kept ASG field elements informed of AFP movements. (13) By May 27, 2002, even the captive Burnhams had heard on the radio that several shiploads of AFP soldiers had landed on the Zamboanga peninsula. (14) Gracia Burnham later stated that during the early days of May 2002, several of her ASG captors, expecting a night resupply boat, inadvertently greeted an AFP element coming ashore on the beach. As the ASG party finished saying "Salam alaikom" (Peace to you), they realized that the boat contained AFP, and they immediately fled into the heavy undergrowth. The AFP characteristically failed to pursue the ASG. It was dark, the AFP units had very few operational night-vision goggles, and, the AFP did not like night operations. (15) Following a scheme of maneuver developed during Operations Liberty I and II, JTF Comet employed the 10th and 55th Infantry battalions as fixed blocking forces while the Scout Ranger Battalion conducted platoon and company-sized movements to contact in areas where ASG elements were reportedly operating. In southern Mindanao, as on Basilan, contact often occurred by chance, when the Scout Rangers bumped into ASG groups who were moving out of concentrated-search areas. Despite these cautious, deliberate and readily compromised Philippine combat operations, elements of the 55th Infantry Battalion managed to capture a local forester while moving to surround a suspected ASG element. Questioned, the forester said that he had seen a group with hostages, two of whom were Americans. (16) As it turned out, the ASG element that had the Burnhams, unfamiliar with southern Mindanao, had started using logging roads to move faster. They, too, captured a local forester and forced him to act as their guide. The ASG, like the AFP, did not operate after dark, and they kept the forester chained up at night. The absence of local Muslim support--food, shelter and village silence--had made the Burnham captors vulnerable. To further complicate their movement, seasonal rains had turned the logging roads into sucking mud, and the fleeing ASG group was leaving plenty of footprints. (17) Despite additional details provided by the forester and by signal intercepts that Wurster and Fridovich provided, Sua remained unconvinced that the hostages had been moved to Mindanao. After his search proved fruitless, Sua agreed to insert Scout Rangers into the area where the Burnhams had been spotted, and while moving up a riverbed toward the suspected ASG site, a platoon-sized patrol of Scout Rangers bumped into the terrorist element encamped on the back side of a hill. The Scout Rangers had been following the ASG and the hostages for almost 24 hours. On the day before the firefight (June 6), they had spotted tracks crossing the logging road late in the afternoon and began following them. The next morning the Rangers discovered the remnants of a hurried breakfast of fruit at a farm and kept tracking the ASG and hostages until the group stopped for the day. (18) Using a rainstorm to cover their maneuvers, they attacked the ASG. Until this action, the Filipino military had been reluctant to conduct operations when it was raining. Caught by surprise by the change in modus operandi, Abu Sabaya initially thought that he was being attacked by an American SF team. Gracia Burnham describes the attack: We (Martin and Gracia) had just closed our eyes when a fearsome barrage of gunfire cut loose from the crest of the hill. The AFP? Surely not. It was raining and they never fought in the rain ... My instincts, after sixteen previous battles, told me instantly what to do: drop immediately. I flipped my feet around to get out of the hammock--and before I even hit the ground, I felt the zing! of a bullet slamming through my right leg. I rolled down the steep hill maybe eight feet, dazed. I looked up and saw Martin on the ground, too, so I quickly crawled to his side. He was kind of twisted, with his legs underneath his body ... blood was beginning to soak through his shirt on his upper left chest ... Shots continued to ring out. The Abu Sayyaf were just getting themselves positioned to fire back ... The shooting continued. Grenades blew up ... The shooting gradually became more sporadic. At the top of the ridge I heard shouting in Tagalog, the language of the AFP. No sounds came from the bottom, however, which told me that the Abu Sayyaf had fled down the streambed. I didn't want to startle anyone who might be nearby, so I slowly waved my hand to signal that I was still alive. (19) Radio communications became very sporadic when the encounter turned into a firefight, but the Rangers managed to confirm the presence of the Americans and to report casualties. When the firefight began, the JTF-510 quick-reaction force, an SF detachment on standby at Camp Navarro, Zamboanga, was immediately activated, although the Burnham contact site was 45 minutes away via Black Hawk. Beyond the confirmation that Americans were present and that the Rangers had suffered casualties, the SF team and the MH-60L aircrews had only vague information. (20) Actually, both sides had casualties--seven AFP had been wounded, and three ASG had been killed. Martin Burnham and a Filipino hostage had been killed; Gracia Burnham had been wounded. When the firefight ceased, the QRF mission was scrubbed, and the Black Hawks were used for casevac. She was evacuated by MH-60L to Camp Navarro for treatment and subsequently flown to Manila on an MC-130P refueling aircraft. (21) After the firefight, the majority of the ASG captors, including Sabaya, escaped down the riverbed toward the coast. The AFP continued to pursue Sabaya, however, it was believed that since his element was short of food and lacking Muslim support, the group would probably try to escape Mindanao by boat. Wurster praised the SF teams for making the AFP battalions more tactically proficient, for training them to be better marksmen and for instilling confidence in the soldiers. The Scout Rangers had practiced combat lifesaving on their wounded as well as on Gracia Burnham. The individual and collective training of the army and marine infantry battalions by the SF teams, and JTF-510's emphasis on JTF Comet using multisource intelligence to plan operations against the ASG, made the rescue possible. Operations Liberty I and II not only coordinated army and marine field operations but increased pressure on the ASG on Basilan, while the Psychological Operations wanted-poster campaign and the humanitarian projects of Civil Affairs reduced Muslim popular support of the terrorists. Despite the constraints imposed by the Philippine government, the ARSOF elements managed to accomplish their assigned "advise, assist and train" mission and significantly altered ASG power on Basilan. Dr. C.H. Briscoe is the command historian for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. |