Julie Javellana-Santos, Arab News

MANILA, 21 April 2004 — A researcher who has just come back from war-torn Iraq said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should bring home the Filipino troops she sent there before Iraq's resistance movement starts hitting at them.

Herbert Docena, the regional peace and security campaign liaison for the group Focus on the Global South, said the Filipino soldiers in Iraq are "sitting duck targets" for the Iraqi citizenry.

He said the Filipino troops are bearing the brunt of the Iraqi population's ire against the American forces in their country.

"Indeed, this fight is so popular that even women and children are joining. And why not? They are being targeted themselves. Little wonder that instead of throwing flowers at the American troops (and coalition forces), they are now throwing hand grenades at them," said Docena, veteran of several international fact-finding missions.

Docena, who was in Iraq recently in preparation for the International Mission to Monitor the Transition Process, was speaking at a forum in Manila about the wisdom of sending troops to the Middle Eastern country.

The mission Docena was preparing for would also have included party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales and activist Professor Walden Bello.

"The security situation has rapidly deteriorated with the recent hostage-taking of foreign nationals in Iraq," Docena explained, referring to the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. In fact, he said he faced kidnapping merely because he was a Filipino and the Philippines had troops in Iraq.

Bello pointed out that the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah "could be the turning point in the American occupation of Iraq," which has gradually turned worse.

"There is no doubt that the heavily armed marines can pacify Fallujah, but the costs are likely to make that victory a Pyrrhic one," Bello said, explaining that US forces have been firing indiscriminately at the country's civilian population. He added, "Fallujah has become the graveyard of US policy in Iraq."

Bello said "the resistance is on the ascendancy in Iraq," thus the Philippine government really has to make plans to withdraw the some 3,000 Filipino workers there as well as the less than a hundred military men. Activists in Manila have been holding protest rallies almost daily against US forces in Iraq.