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July 2003
Made in the
Philippines:
Psywar
THE FUROR in the United
States set off by a state senator suggesting that corpses of Muslim
terrorists be buried with pig entrails reminds us that many of the
Americans' psywar tactics were developed in the Philippines.
Guy Glodis, a member of the Massachussetts state legislature, had
suggested following the example of the American general John Pershing in
his anti-Muslim military campaigns in Jolo province, back in 1913.
Supposedly, Pershing buried Muslims with pig's blood and entrails, as a
stern warning to other Muslim that they would suffer the same fate. The
use of the pig was based on the Islamic prohibition on the consumption
of pork, and the perception that the pig is an unclean animal. If true,
the Pershing story would be an early example of American psywar tactics.
Strangely, while the Pershing story keeps cropping up, the reliable
website www.snopes.com classifies it as another urban legend. The
website notes that there is no historical record of Pershing ever having
used this pork carcass gimmick. There is one account in a book entitled
"Jungle Patrol," published in 1938, saying that a Colonel
Alexander Rodgers had buried "all dead juramentados in a common
grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs."
"Juramentado" from the Spanish "juramentar," to take
an oath, referred to Muslims who would wage a personal jihad or holy war
against Christians. Supposedly, Rodgers' tactic "resulted in the
withdrawal of juramentados to sections not containing a Rodgers,"
prompting other officers to make similar moves. In one area a slain
juramentado would be beheaded and the head sewn inside the carcass of a
pig.
A book with a title "Jungle Patrol" suggests the accounts are
probably sensationalized. Nevertheless, the stories do tell us how
people look into the possibilities of using their enemies' culture to
wage war.
While Pershing's psywar tactics have never been confirmed, those of
General Edward Lansdale are well documented. Lansdale believed in psyops
or psychological operations and honed his skills here in the
Philippines, where he served as the chief operative of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1950s, working with the
Philippine government's campaign against Huk rebels in Pampanga and
other Central Luzon provinces.
In his memoirs, Lansdale wrote: "To the superstitious, the Huk
battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie
creatures." One of his favorite psywar stunts was to plant stories
among local residents that the Huk areas were infected by vampire-like
"aswang." After spreading these tales, they would ambush a Huk
patrol, silently snatching the last man in the group, killing him and
puncturing his neck with two holes. The victim would then be hauled up
by his heels and drained of blood. The corpse would be left on the trail
and, when discovered by his comrades, rumors would spread rapidly about
an aswang attack, demoralizing the Huk squadrons.
Another Lansdale psywar tactic was what he called the "eye of
God," where government troops would identify villages known to be
sympathetic to the Huks. At night the psywar teams would creep into town
and paint an eye on walls facing the houses of suspected sympathizers.
The notion of an all-seeing malevolent eye was supposed to have been
"sharply sobering."
Lansdale's Philippine adventures apparently impressed the American
military establishment, who then asked him to design similar plans for
Vietnam. An example of one such operation was the hiring of North
Vietnamese astrologers to write up predictions about coming disasters to
communist leaders, and to predict unity between the south, ruled by a
pro-US government and the north, ruled then by Ho Chi Minh and the
communists. Throughout the Vietnam War, even after Lansdale had gone,
the military continued to capitalize on people's traditional beliefs for
psywar. One example was "Operation Wandering Souls," where
helicopter-mounted loudspeakers were used to blare wailing voices in war
zones, supposedly coming from the spirits of fallen guerrillas.
Lansdale went on to plan psyops against Cuba's Fidel Castro, one
proposal involving the dissemination of rumors that Castro was the
anti-Christ and that a revolt was necessary now that Jesus was
returning. Lansdale concocted an "elimination by illumination"
plan to announce Christ's coming, with a proposal to fire phosphorus
shells into Havana's skies. The scheme -- harebrained if you ask me --
was never implemented although the "shock and awe" operations
of the US against Iraq seem to be a secular rehash of the Cuban plan.
In 1964 the US Army commissioned a strategy paper called "Withcraft,
Sorcery, Magic and Other Psychological Phenomena, and Their Implications
on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo." The paper
discussed the use of "counter-magic" tactics to suppress
rebels, using witchdoctors, charms and magic potions. While terrorizing
the enemies with threats of sorcery, the psywar proposals also involved
strengthening the morale and confidence of their own troops, convincing
them they were invulnerable to magic.
Snopes, the urban legend website, notes that the pig entrails story has
gone around many times on the Internet, suggested for use in Israel
against the suicide bombers and, after the 9/11 bombing of New York and
Washington, against Muslim terrorists. There have been proposals to put
a baby pig on every airline flight to deter suicide terrorists, or
shipping 100,000 pigs into Afghanistan.
I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of these psywar tactics. If
anything, the proposals only show another kind of
"superstition" on the part of the planners themselves. By
oversimplifying their enemies' culture-believing for example that
Muslims are that fearful of pigs-the psyop planners betray their own
anxieties and fears when confronting cultures they cannot or do not want
to understand.
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