Philippines.
Ambassador Dick Solomon, the head of USIP, called me later that day to welcome me to the group and to set up meetings and briefings over the coming weeks. On the first of July, I visited USIP offices in Washington, met with the other Wise Men, and received detailed briefs on the situation and the approach we would take.
The conflict we were dealing with, begun over three decades ago, had its roots in the long-standing friction between the Muslims of Mindanao and the Christian majority in the rest of the Philippines. In 1968, non-Muslim soldiers had massacred Muslim soldiers in the Philippine Army. This outrage led to the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF); their aim was independence. In the mid-eighties, the more religious and ideological MILF broke away from the MNLF.
In 1996, the MNLF reached a peace agreement with the government (which was not accepted by the MILF). Though it has had a rocky implementation, it has been holding; and recently, the MILF had indicated that they too were ready for talks. The government under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had declared its intention to join these negotiations.
In response to President Arroyo’s May request, President Bush issued a statement promising support. This was welcomed by chairman Hashim Salamat, the leader of the MILF.
Following our initial briefings, we were briefed by representatives from the Malaysian Embassy in Washington. We reassured them that we were truly there to support them and not to replace them as mediators.
Our next step was a fact-finding trip to the region to get a firsthand sense of the situation on the ground and meet some of the key players. On August 10, four of us left for the Philippines, just as the MILF announced the death of Salamat, their leader. The death of their longtime leader caused the MILF to undergo internal adjustments, but his heir apparent claimed that he too was committed to a peace process.
We spent the first days of our visit in Manila calling on President Arroyo and other government officials. The President was a truly impressive leader. Her self-confidence, intellect, knowledge of details, and obvious leadership ability, together with a sincere commitment to the peace process and honesty about past government failures, clearly came through. The members of the congress, ministers, military leaders, and the chief negotiator for the government seemed equally committed. Though there were hard-liners in the government who did not favor negotiations, the majority seemed to support them. Everyone we talked to acknowledged that there was no military solution to this conflict.
In Manila, we also met with members of the Muslim community, the media, Christian church representatives, NGOs, and our own embassy officials. Our Ambassador, Frank Ricciardone, was an old friend from my CENTCOM days. We also met with our USAID officials who were working in Mindanao. They had started a series of impressive projects there, whose incentives and rewards helped keep the ’96 agreement together. The promise of more of these was a big reason for the MILF’s motivation to reach an agreement.
On our third day, we traveled to Carabao, Mindanao, the small port city that served as the capital of the autonomous region set up by the ’96 agreement. There we met representatives of the MNLF, the MILF, and members of civil society. Mindanao is a beautiful Pacific paradise… with striking poverty and little promise of a brighter future. The Moros (as the locals were called) described centuries of oppression, injustice, and suffering; and gave mixed reviews on the fulfillment of the ’96 agreement and the programs it had promised.
In the hinterland, we presided over the opening of a USAID project that provided training and facilities for former MNLF guerrilla fighters, now trading their weapons for farm implements. It was another countryside that eerily reminded me of Vietnam — thatched huts, water buffalos, rice paddies, and bamboo clumps, all familiar sights. At the site of the ceremony, a small grain-storage building and training area in a jungle clearing, I studied the faces of the wiry, tough former guerrillas as they sat through the speeches and ribbon-cutting ceremonies in the hot sun of midday; I had seen thousands of such faces before. I wondered what was going through their minds. The security was heavy with Philippine military and police, and MNLF security forces all around us.
We returned to Carabao and continued our meetings with local USAID representatives.
On my last day, we had sessions in Manila with Lieutenant General Garcia, the deputy chief of staff of the Philippine Armed Forces and the chairman of the Coordination Committee for the Cessation of Hostilities, the element established to implement the ’96 agreement. General Garcia was an impressive man, honest and experienced, with exceptional insights about the practicalities of implementing the agreements on the ground (always the tough part of conflict resolution). He taught me invaluable lessons.
I left the Philippines on the fourteenth of June with a real sense that this effort could work. It was going to be difficult, but enough pieces seemed to be in place to encourage hope.
The process continues…
Working toward a peaceful resolution to long-running, bitter conflicts can be difficult and thankless. Your successes are few. But along the way, you save lives or better the lot of poor souls caught up in conflict. And on those rare occasion when you fully succeed, every effort becomes worthwhile. I have experienced firsthand the pain and devastation of war. I know I have to work to find alternatives to it where I can.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CALLING
Tony Zinni
At the very beginning of the twentieth century — a time when the daring and brave from many nations struck out for the promised land — two men from the rugged, mountainous province of Abruzzo in central Italy set off to achieve that promise. One of the men was a peasant farmer named Francesco Zinni; the other was a tailor named Zupito DiSabatino. They were my grandfathers. They had never met, and would not for many years.
Their trek followed the pattern followed by thousands of others. They came alone, found jobs, established themselves in this strange, raw, bustling land, and a few years later sent for their families. With the same courage and apprehension, my grandmothers, Christina Zinni and Cecilia DiSabatino, packed up the kids, headed to the Italian ports, and sailed across the seas to join their husbands. With Christina in 1910 was her fourteen-year-old son, Antonio, my father; and with Cecilia in 1906 was her three-year-old daughter, Lilla, my mother. I often look at faded old pictures taken around that time and wonder what my parents and grandparents were thinking as these great changes unfolded.
Neither of my parents had an easy life growing up. Like all young immigrants of the time, they managed only a few years of education before they had to go to work. My father worked in mills, and then in landscaping, and eventually became a chauffeur; my mother worked in garment factories.
Our family military tradition in America started with my father, who was drafted to fight in World War One — the War to End All Wars — shortly after he arrived from Italy. He got here and he was drafted. Later, I looked into it and found that twelve percent of America’s infantrymen in World War One were Italian immigrants. Their new homeland did not forget their wartime service. My father, who served in the 101st Aero Squadron in France, received his citizenship papers along with his discharge papers. He came out of the war as a full-fledged citizen of the United States. Just imagine what that meant to him!
Meanwhile, his family had settled in a mill town called Conshohocken on the outskirts of Philadelphia; and my mother’s family had settled in the Italian neighborhoods of South Philadelphia. These places were the center of my universe for the first two decades of my life.
They met during the 1920s, married, and raised four children: Frank, Christine, Rita, and me. I entered the wonderful, loving world of large Italian families on September 17, 1943, when my parents were well into their forties.
The people with whom I grew up were from working-class families. The mothers were full of love and caring,
