Originally posted by NUKE
They actually endangered the workers and more so, their country by cowing to terrorists. Now everyone knows that they will submit to terrorists and they are fair game for exploitation by anyone who has a bone to pick.
Maybe, and then again, maybe not. It's a gamble, but in its favour, by withdrawing their troops, they've withdrawn the single bone of contention - there is now nothing that the extremist groups in Iraq can really gain from the Philippines government.
Holding people to ransom won't work: that's ultimately a family thing, and thus pretty stupid: if their family had pots of cash, they wouldn't be working in Iraq. Kidnapping poor people for money is dumb.
Tell company X to withdraw from Iraq? They're not Filipino companies, so the Philippines government is of no use there.
They might ask the Philippines to withdraw all its citizens, but I'm not sure if the government could hope to deliver that goal, and even if they can from the government's point of view in the end, with only 3,000 Filipinos, Iraq's relatively small potatoes compared to other ME countries: so it might be worth the gamble for the goodwill it generates elsewhere (standing up to the US, receptive to the Iraqi cause, withdrawing troops from occupied territory, shunning zionist-US plot to enslave the good people of ME or whatever the hell the views are over there).
Perhaps some members of the new US-appointed regime are angry at the Philippines - but it was only 50 or so engineers, and it was going 1 month early so in the grand scheme of things it's fairly forgivable. And whether that regime's personnel has any say at all in the future of Iraq remains to be seen. Whether it can gain control of the cities remains moot at the moment. All in all it may actually prove extremely counterproductive to future trade to curry favour with the current regime.
It's conceivable that some may try to get Abu Sayyaf people released - but it seems rather unlikely: why should the Iraqis care? And there the Philippines government will probably draw the line. Because they can be tough on terrorists if it's worth their while.
So I tend to think the risk against the Philippines has lessened somewhat. One way it could increase again is if the Philippines now tries to cover themselves by bending over backwards to stress support of the US occupation. Because ultimately in Iraq, one of the biggest factors in determining who is at risk of be kidnapped and killed is whether their government supports the US in Iraq or not.
But to take an entirely practical point of view, no one can actually say with any certainty whether the Filipinos in Iraq now are any more or any less at risk of kidnap and beheading than before. All we can say is that one of them appears to still be alive because of it.
What really seems like the final shrewd calculation on Arroyo's part is the gamble that the US is unlikely to withdraw much if any of its TWOT-related aid dollars to the Philippines as that would make the US seem soft on terrorists, a really bad move for W in an election year. Gotta hand it to Glo, really. She's a lot of things but she ain't dumb.
