For U.S. Commandos in the Philippines, a Water Pump Is a New Weapon Against ISIS by Thomas Gibbons-Neff – New York Times
PADAS, Philippines — While neither guided bomb nor armored vehicle, a gray oblong water pump sticking out from the brush along a remote dirt road is intended to be just as clear a sign of the United States’ efforts to stop the spread of the Islamic State.
It has taken two months, an American Special Operations civil affairs team, three nonprofit organizations and an entire platoon from the Philippine Army to bring the pump to Padas, a village of about 3,000 people in the Mindanao chain of islands in the country’s south. If all goes to plan, water from the pump will help impoverished farmers establish trust in the government, and, in turn, seek to undermine the militants’ influence.
“Whatever the international community gives us, we’ll accept,” said Macaraya Ampuan, an influential leader in the village. “But first thing to address is security. Eliminate ISIS so our livelihoods can be stable.”
The contest between the Philippines government and shadowy insurgents in one small village in the Pacific Ocean carries familiar echoes of the United States’ long wars and counterinsurgency campaigns against Islamist extremists since the terrorist attacks of 2001. But the project in Padas is also linked to the defeat of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria and the Pentagon’s race to stop its resurgence in other parts of the globe…