The General Who Saved Mindanao

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Former Army General Fortunato Abat, a warrior of the Mindanao Campaign versus the Moro, died at 7 p.m of March 7, 2018 at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC).

“The Day We Nearly Lost Mindanao” was a book authored by then Army Commanding General Abat.

My father was assigned in Cotabato City during this conflict in the middle of the 1970s and he narrated to me how they called the Northrop F-5 combat jets from Mactan Air Base to drop napalm bombs against the Libyan government backed  Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under the leadership of Nur Misuari, a former University of the Philippines' professor, to deter them in conquering Cotabato City.

WARRIORS - Army Commanding General Fortunato Abat accepts the surrender of a Muslim
rebel's commander  and his battle scarred warriors. Photo Credit: General Allan Luga

According to the March 1973 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, the first shipment of firearms, courtesy of Libya’s Strongman Muammar Qaddafi and Sulu born Sabah State Minister Tun Datu Haji Mustapha, landed in December 1972 at the town of Lebak in Cotabato province. Boats, each powered with three Volvo-Penta 170 engines, brought in Belgian made Cal 7.62 rifles, anti-personnel mines, grenades of the cylindrical unserrated type, plastic explosives, Cal 30 LMG, Browning carbines, Cal 30 Mis and several thousand rounds of ammunition to Cotabato and other landing sites regularly for the next fourteen months.

"We almost lost that war," recalled Brig. Gen. Ciriaco Reconquista (Retired) as quoted in a defense forum, who as a transport plane pilot flew hundreds upon hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers from the battlefields of Mindanao and ferried troops repeatedly from NPA-infested areas in Luzon to the MNLF front. "The (Muslim) rebels were better-armed." In terms of firepower, the military had only one sustainable advantage: the Air Force. At no time was this power wielded more dramatically than in November 1972 at the battle of Sibalu Hill in Sulu near the southern tip of the Philippines.

Shortly after noon, he received the first of a series of frantic calls from Jolo, Sulu, requesting air support to extricate a battalion of Marines trapped within the MNLF strong- hold. 

In an exerpt posted at the forum’s Defense of the Republic of the Philippines it said that: “(Air Force) Colonel Pompeyo Vasquez flew back to Jolo where he would orchestrate the attack as air controller the following morning. By dawn, wave upon wave of F-5 and F-86 jet  fighters, as well as T-33 trainer jets and C-47 gunships, took off for Jolo every minute - bombarding the enemy camp accurately and relentlessly. After each sortie - some pilots flew three sorties during that attack - the aircraft would dart back to Mactan to reload. Before the morning was over, helicopters landed at Sibalu Hill to extricate the marines that narrowly escaped a massacre. 

A few months later, the Air Force would again play a vital support role in the massive military counter-offensive in the central Mindanao province of Cotabato. By early 1973, the MNLF forces had virtually surrounded Cotabato City and the Awang airport complex. With overseas support for training and arms, the rebels were gearing up for riverine and land attacks to seize the seat of government in Central Mindanao. This would complete the first step in their grand plan to turn Mindanao, Palawan and the Sulu chain of islands into the Bangsa Moro Republic”.

“Counter- insurgency troops hop on board the C-47. To thwart the Cotabato rebel attack, the Central Mindanao Command (CEMCOM), headed by Brig. Gen. Fortunato Abat of the Philippine Army, enlisted the support of every branch of the Armed Forces, as well as paramilitary civilian home defense forces. Aside from airlifting troops from Manila and Cebu to the war zone, the PAF swooped into the thick of battle. Composite Air Support Force Cotabato (CASFCOT) fielded Huey choppers, rocket-bearing U-17 aircraft and C-47 gunships as CEMCOM troops advanced to recapture town after town from rebel hands”.

Datu Ali Sansaluna, who headed the Cotabato Command with 5,000 to 6,000 MNLF, selected Lebak as the main logistical based in Mindanao Island.

By the way 2,000 of these troops were armed with European made assault automatic rifles. 

 As a grade school pupil in M'lang, North Cotabato, soldiers, who took a respite at the market place, would tell us Christians that in a firefight armed Moro had a rope tied on his body so in case he died his comrade who was behind him could easily pull him and  retrieve the rifle slung around his cadaver and continue the fight to death, son of a gun, with the infidels.

According to my father, Lebak was where a young PMA graduate and a lieutenant named Gregorio Honasan was wounded in the intense firefight with the brave Moros.

Yes Virginia, brave as then Artillery Commander Colonel  Rodolfo "Toto'" Canieso, an Ilonggo baw linti gid, had to order 105 and 155 Howitzers to bomb not the MNLF but the inexperienced Filipino soldiers behind them so they would not run away from the firefight.

 “I even brought home the bench where he lied in Awang Airport in Maguindanao while waiting for the C-130 Cargo Plane that will bring him to V-Luna Hospital in Manila,” he told me when I saw on the newspaper in 1986  a mestizo Colonel Honasan doing closed in with the jittery Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile after bosom friend President Ferdinand Marcos discovered his and the colonel nicknamed Gringo plan to power grab.

My father, who until now kept those old military maps,  showed to me  the terrain of Lebak as a military advantage to the MNLF.  He cited the Tran and Tran Peidu Rivers whose coastlines provided excellent ingress for the landing of military hardware from Libya, Sabah, and Europe. Tran river also provided the natural obstacle to any State Security’s incursion into the fortified area. The sea there acted as easy avenue of withdrawal.

My father, a Korean War Veteran, grudgingly admired the MNLF because they would even face and fight to the death the soldiers who were mostly Ilocanos unlike the communist NPA rebels, intoxicated by Marx and Mao teachings, would rather choose to hide after they ambushed the state troopers.

"They even taunted the soldiers that their M-16 Armalites were made of plastic and their bullets would ricochet whenever they hit the blade of a cogon  grass thus could not be at par with their Belgian made FAL rifles that could  cut half the body of a soldier if one mowed it".

The liberation of the town of Maganoy on 2 April 1973, as quoted in the Forum, hinged on a risky air mobile operation in which six Hueys had to execute a tight spiral - one after the other - from 5,000 feet to a marked landing spot at the town plaza to insert elements of the 22nd Infantry Battalion. From March to August 1973, the PAF provided air cover and tactical support to ground forces, interdicted waterborne rebel reinforcements, broke up rebel concentrations and blasted fuel and ammunition dumps. The military attack culminated in the two-month campaign to destroy the well-secured rebel logistics base in Barrio Tran, Lebak and to restore government control over the town. Secondary explosions following a series of air strikes heralded the success of the mission. From there, CEMCOM gained the initiative and shifted to unconventional warfare as the rebels, in Gen. Abat's assessment, began resorting to "harassment, limited attacks, depredations, sabotage and terrorism...to keep their image of strength." Even as the Muslim secessionist movement waned in the face of peace and diplomatic initiatives, the military found no respite as it confronted the growing NPA threat on several fronts.

Going back to Abat, as a young teenager, he entered the Philippine Army as an enlisted man on April 15, 1944 before the Allied Liberation of the Philippines. He continued his secondary education in La Union High School even after World War II and completed his education in the year 1947.
Abat entered the Philippine Military Academy right after finishing his high school diploma, and graduated in the Class of '51, and was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the Philippine Army. 

Along with 2nd Lieutenant Fidel V. Ramos (who later became Philippine President), Abat, and my father joined the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK), where they served with distinction under the United Nations flag.

He was married to former Corazon Bulatao, a teacher from San Carlos City, Pangasinan, with whom he has six children.

Moreover, some foreign affairs lessons that my friend Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano could learn from the Apo of Saluyot country's Ilokoslovakia former President Ferdinand Marcos.

 Thanks to Marcos dexterity on diplomacy, he was able to avoid the secession of Mindanao by denouncing Israel annexation of the Arab lands, befriended Oil Exporting Producing Countries (OPEC) where the Philippine depended heavily and if the detente was not handled properly could make the Philippines marginalize and weak, and won Indonesia President H. Muhammad Suharto's support where he did not only reject Misuari plea to use two areas in Indonesia as dumping areas of arms from abroad to the Philippines but interceded on behalf of the Filipinos with the Muslim countries. Without the support of these governments, probably Mindanao had been long under the MNLF.

And my Christian name Marcelo Mortz Ortigoza had been converted to probably Datu Udtog Ramanam  Amin or Datu Mortz Salsalani Jakulen or Datu Musuko Pagdimakakiyo, God Forbid!

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MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

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I am a twenty years seasoned Op-Ed Political Writer in various newspapers and Blogger exposing government corruptions, public officials's idiocy and hypocrisies, and analyzing local and international issues. I have a master’s degree in Public Administration and professional government eligibility. I taught for a decade Political Science and Economics in universities in Metro Manila and cities of Urdaneta, Pangasinan and Dagupan. Follow me on Twitter @totoMortz or email me at totomortz@yahoo.com.