DOWN SOUTH
Vanguard of the future AFP
On 29 June 2009 at 3pm, I finally caught up with Lieutenant General Raymundo B. Ferrer at his office at the Eastern Mindanao Command at Camp Panacan. While we’re not totally unknown to each other, this was the first time for me to interview him.
I had long wanted to do that. As an academic, I have, after a fashion, followed Ferrer’s career since his peacebuilding stint in Basilan to his command of the 6th Infantry Division in Central Mindanao and now as the commanding general of EastMinCom, and I have come to personal conclusion that we’re looking at the vanguard of the future AFP. By that I mean that in probably ten years’ time, recruitment and screening policies would be instituted in the AFP to catch people whose future military service would have the potential to emerge along the lines of a Ding Ferrer – able to cross-index seemingly unrelated information at what I suspect to be the speed of light, psychologically hardy, committed to service, competent at his tasks and more importantly, intuitively able to read people and situations and adjust accordingly while at the same time advancing tactical gains for the military.
Some years back, I took Mac Tiu’s sage advice for tracking the road to academic advancement and survival: Take a sorely neglected field that is crucial to the survival of social order as we know it and make your mark in it. What has emerged from that is the modest wealth of research and literature I have generated thus far on AFP and military psychology. Today, as I contemplate undertaking my doctoral dissertation, I have chosen to focus on combat stress and the impact of the 2008 Mindanao war on our combat troops. Wars, after all, still need to be fought and every soldier has to count.
It was for this reason that I sought out Gen. Ferrer early this week. He was the ground commander for the pursuit operations in Central Mindanao against rogue MILF commander Ombra Kato from July 2008 until his transfer to EastMinCom in February this year.
Mindful of his time, I had earlier emailed in my two questions and had asked for fifteen minutes to draw his answers. No luck. It was almost 5:00pm when we terminated the interview. We were only interrupted once by a phone call from a priest in Central Mindanao who had concerns about the entry of food and relief goods for the internally displaced civilians along Liguasan Marsh.
Earlier, I had hijacked my friend Kris Mortela from what I hoped was a relatively slow day at his post as deputy CMO chief of the 10th Infantry Division. I just knew he wouldn’t mind sitting in for an interview with Ding Ferrer, not because the latter is his boss, but because Kris enjoys intellectual discourse. A former iskolar ng bayan, Kris has a deep appreciation for research and could ably second me at my data gathering.
Also, Kris and I share a background of growing up in smalltown Philippines under the care of hardy, loving mothers. His father was a policeman. Mine served in the Philippine Constabulary – which, in the Martial Law years, was not so much different from police work. We both saw Martial Law and its impact on our early family life. When available these days, Kris is my designated honor guard when I need to make formal representation anywhere in Panacan.
To start off, Gen. Ferrer showed us a right-leaning announcement he clipped from that day’s Philippine Star. He proceeded to do a brilliant content analysis on the choice of details, quotations, and phrasing of the discussion borne by the article. To end, he gave his critical recommendations on how it could have been improved.
That almost had me applauding, except that my fan behavior won’t serve to benefit anyone, least of all this remarkable man who would be at home taking my place in the classroom. Come to think of it, Ding Ferrer would be at home anywhere. In fact, if he put his mind to it, he could passionately yet lucidly argue Satur Ocampo’s case for tactical consolidation of guerilla fronts in Compostela Valley, Bukidnon, Surigao, CARAGA and the Davao Region, and none would be able to tell the difference from Satur’s own formulation.
Among our generals, Ferrer is to my observation the one who has recognized the shifting arena brought to bear upon the AFP at the dawn of the 21st century. Like a duck to the water, he happily takes to it, showing the rest of the organization that the changing battlefield is not something to be feared; it is an environment that brings on novel challenges, one that promises an element of control and is worthy of renewed commitment.
In the interest of pushing work on my dissertation, Ferrer shared with me his observations on the magnitude of combat stress and the measures he employed to prevent and mitigate the onset of it on the combat troops during the pursuit operations. At the height of the Central Mindanao offensives, Ferrer was commanding the eight battalions under the 6ID, beefed up by five more battalions pulled out from other geographical regions. The 1002nd Brigade of the 10ID seeing action also on the borders of Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato and Sarangani, requiring the reinforcement of another battalion from Compostela Valley.
Ferrer admits that it is mostly at the preentry screening level that the AFP requires psychological assessment for recruits. While the AFP recognizes the importance of the troops’ psychological wellbeing, this component – as with many other human resource concerns - is yet to be given due attention given limited resources.
Although combat commanders observe the manifestation of combat stress in various campaigns, such remains to be commander-dependent assumptions as there are no protocols in place to monitor the combat stress levels of troops. Without the employment of tools to diagnose combat stress and no frontline professionals to administer these, combat stress reactions would remain as a suspect factor to disciplinary problems such as soldier-on-soldier attacks or operational problems such as lack of readiness to engage and costly human error under fire.
Post-traumatic sequelae are similarly assumptions that appear to be outside the ambit of operational concerns, with no specific after-care services prescribed to monitor onset and arrest development of fullblown war-stress symptoms. Army services to address the more serious psychotic breaks and psychiatric cases are centralized at the V. Luna Medical Center in Quezon City, well away from the combat assignment of soldiers who are potentially in need.
Primed by a TV documentary feature he’d watch earlier, Ferrer recognized the importance of mitigating combat stress despite no prescribed AFP protocols. As a remedial and preventive measure, he had directed the strict implementation of the rotation policy for combat personnel and troops in Central Mindanao. By periodically interrupting combat immersion through 3-day passes and supervised rest and recreation during this campaign, Ferrer hoped to alleviate combat stress.
Other stopgap measures he employed involved the fielding of a Critical Incidence Stress Debriefing (CISD) team that went around the units during lulls in operation in order to deliver psychoeducation interventions on combat stress. No individual assessment, diagnosis, or frontline treatment, however, was conducted by the CISD team.
What could be gleaned from the interview was the emphasis on the soldier’s family adjustment, which begs the question of the family bearing the burden for the psychological wellbeing of the soldier as the AFP does not have standard operating procedures in place to ensure that the homecoming soldiers arrive home unhampered by the psychological burdens of his combat exposure.
Ferrer further comments on the need to capacitate non-commissioned officers down to the platoon level to handle counseling, since they are the ones at hand to catch foot soldiers at moments of combat stress reactions. In particular, he believes that inputs on conflict resolution and anger management would go a long way, not only for the purpose of preserving harmony in the ranks, but also to raise the troops’ level of awareness of the nuances of whatever conflict they come to be part.