The Rebels: "I Learned It from the Movies"

Though the government-controlled Philippine press reports little about the worsening war with Moslem guerrillas, military leaders speak freely with foreign correspondents. The rebels are more elusive. TIME Correspondent David Aikman made contact with a band of them last week on Basilan Island. His report:

ACOMPANIED by an intermediary -- a civilian Moslem who sympathizes with the rebel soldiers -- I set out from Basilan City in a motorized outrigger called a pump boat. We rode through the tranquil coastal waters for 30 minutes, then turned into a narrow creek canopied with palm fronds. It was another 30 minutes before we reached the rendezvous point -- a lonely clearing on a coconut plantation.

The rebels wandered in slowly, a dozen of them, rifles swinging from their shoulders like coolie poles. Some had British-made grenades slung from their belts. All were barefoot, but a few wore red headbands that lent their otherwise raggle-taggle appearance a sort of rakish ferocity. Their leader -- a slight young man with a goatee and darting eyes -- identified himself as Usham Ambihal, 28, a former coconut-farm laborer.

Ambihal did most of the talking, but the others chimed in from time to time. They seemed almost completely ignorant of the campaigns of Moslem insurgents on other islands in the region, but they conveyed a sense of desperate frustration and determination about their own situation.

"We have been fighting for some four months, and we are willing to go on fighting for years if it takes that," said Ambihal. "We are fighting because we cannot get land and because if we surrender our arms, the government troops and the Ilagas [Christian vigilantes] will kill us all. We have already lost lives and property, and the government should be made to pay us back for this. But an amicable settlement is impossible now. We cannot trust the government. At the beginning, we didn't seek independence. But now we feel it is our only choice."

I asked how Ambihal's men obtained their weapons and whether they were being helped by any foreigners.

"You are the first foreigner we have seen," Ambihal replied. He had bought his own rifle, he added, from somebody connected with the Philippine army. It had cost him 3,000 pesos ($450), the equivalent of more than two years' wages.

None of his band had received any formal training for combat, Ambihal said. "I instruct the men myself," he explained. "I learned it from the movies." The others guffawed. "It is hard to fight planes though," Ambihal added earnestly. "We are short of many things to fight with, and we will accept help from anyone."

When we made our way slowly back down the winding creek to the sea, we found a guard posted at the mouth of the stream. "How long have you been fighting the government?" I asked. "Seven years," he answered. "I killed a government officer who tried to take away the land I was squatting on." As our boat moved away, he faded into the idyllic setting of blue waters, golden shores and swaying coconut trees.

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