“All is Peaceful in Sulu” 4

The first time I met  Police Superintendent Julasirim Kasim, he was busy working out the logistics for his men who were about to patrol the dangerous streets of Jolo, the capital town of Sulu province in the southern Philippines. The only problem was that they were all out of petrol, and some of his men were complaining that the weekly government fuel ration wasn’t enough to even drive around the city  once. The police in Sulu were notoriously ill equipped and ill trained to deal with the province’s violence. Many police officers had to buy their own bullets or moonlight other jobs. When on patrol with them through Abu Sayyaf country, they looked enviously at my bulletproof vest and helmet. They had to rely on either luck or the magical spells they had inscribed on their under shirts.

But there was a buzz in Kasim’s office that day. Word had come from higher up that at team from the FBI would be in town to train some of his men in a few weeks, and with that always came the prospect of better weapons donated by the Americans.

“Balikatan” is the Filipino name for the joint U.S military exercises going on in Sulu, seen by many there as a cover for special operations in region. “Balikatan” has also become the local nickname for the brand-new M-4 rifles with all its bells and whistles that the U.S. has been giving the Philippine military — a source of envy among the police. The police and the military have long competed for the job of security in Sulu. Looking at the shabby state of the police, there was never any doubt who had come out on top.

Kasim himself never walked around with the usual paraphernalia of a Sulu policeman: M-16, wrap around shades, grenades and bandanna. He preferred his blue starched uniform and his Colt .45, always quick to point out that his piece was “Made in America.” He spent 35 years in the service, more than 20 of it in Sulu.

His beat is probably one of the most stressful postings for any police officer: an archipelago of some 300 islands with countless high-powered firearms, used with little hesitation at the slightest provocation. In the  town of Jolo, Kasim had to deal with drug gangs, assassination squads, kidnappers, extortionists, armed robbers as well as the labyrinthine politics of Sulu that demanded patronage and clan loyalty above all else. In the countryside, he was faced with simmering clan wars which sometimes tested his own neutrality. After all, Kasim was a son of Sulu, born and raised there. On top of all this he had to operate within the limits of  a crumbling police bureaucracy: one that started in Manila and trickled all the way down to his desk in Jolo.

Kasim himself suffered from chronic respiratory problems, and last year, while pinned down in a gunfight between two warring clans, the stress affected his breathing and he had to be rescued. Despite his bravado he never was able to convince the warring families to stop their little war. Kasim and his men were simply outgunned. It took a helicopter gunship and a company of Philippine Marines to straighten things out. Once again, the military took charge over a civilian matter: a personal humiliation for Kasim, but more ominously another defeat for genuine civilian rule in Sulu.

While filming for over two weeks with Kasim, he struck me as an eternal optimist, almost to the point of self-delusion.

“Apart from the mortar barrage last night, and the kidnapping of a television crew, all is peaceful in Sulu,” he chirped before his men during the weekly flag-raising ceremony in front of his office in Jolo.  Kasim’s blind optimism perhaps helped him with the impossible task of enforcing law and order in a fundamentally lawless region.

Kasim and three of his men were killed in an ambush last May 7th, on a stretch of road in Maimbung, Sulu, were I filmed with him last year. He was on a mission to rescue an Italian ICRC worker from his Abu Sayyaf kidnappers, according to news reports, when armed men opened fire on his vehicle.

My heart-felt condolences to his family, friends and fellow officers in the Sulu police force.

Copyright © Orlando de Guzman