Through My Eyes: A Reflection on Narco-Terrorism
By Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope
There was a time I thought I understood the problem.
As a young scholar immersed in public safety and law
enforcement doctrines way back in 1998 at the Philippine Public Safety College,
I believed that identifying the enemy—whether drug lords, terrorists, or armed
insurgents—was a matter of categorization. You separate threats into boxes,
draw lines between ideologies and motivations, and then craft a framework to
address them. That’s what we were trained to do.
But the more I immersed myself in real communities, in towns
burdened by the weight of both poverty and violence, the more I began to see
the blurry truths behind those neat academic lines. One day, I sat in a dusty
barangay hall where mothers whispered to me about their missing sons—some
recruited by armed groups, others lost to the illegal drug trade. To them, it
didn’t matter if it was terrorism or trafficking. Pain didn’t have a name. It
just existed.
This is where the term narco-terrorism started to feel
inadequate—almost hollow.
It’s a term that sounds powerful in Senate hearings and
headlines. It commands urgency. But as I’ve watched it become a catch-all
justification for crackdowns, military actions, and sweeping policy reforms,
I’ve become uneasy. When we label complex human crises with such reductive
terminology, we’re not simplifying—we’re distorting.
I remember hearing a local police officer once say, “Sir,
lahat ngayon may terorista, basta may droga.” (Sir, everything now is labeled
terrorism, as long as there are drugs involved.) That struck me.
He wasn’t dismissing the threat—he was pointing out a
dangerous shortcut. When we conflate drug syndicates with terror groups, we
ignore the crucial differences in how they operate, what they want, and how
they affect people. Drug traffickers often want to be invisible, to blend in,
to profit quietly. Terrorists, in contrast, want to be heard—they seek
spectacle, message, and ideological chaos. One funds crime to avoid attention,
the other commits it to gain it. Yet we respond to both with the same hammer.
And the hammer hurts most when it falls on the wrong people.
What happens when we saturate entire communities with fear?
When are farmers suspected as couriers? When youth in slum areas are profiled
not because of action, but because of proximity to poverty? In the name of
fighting “narco-terror,” how many lives do we marginalize further?
Some may argue, “Better safe than sorry.” But safety built
on misidentification isn’t safety—it’s suppression.
Let me tell you about a young woman I met during a field
study in Mindanao. Her brother had joined a local gang tied loosely to a drug
network. When law enforcement raided their home, she was caught in the
crossfire—both literally and figuratively. She lost her brother and her sense
of belonging. The barangay called them a “narco family.” She said to me, “Doc,
paano kung gusto lang naming mabuhay?” (Doc, what if we just wanted to
survive?)
That question haunts me.
Because survival, in these environments, often involves
compromise. And when a system has failed to provide education, livelihood,
healthcare, or even clean water—who are we to judge how people survive?
This isn’t to excuse criminality. I’ve spent my career
advocating for public safety, and I believe strongly in justice. But justice
must be rooted in understanding. In discernment. Not in the broad brush strokes
of fear.
We also do ourselves a disservice when we build policy
around panic. The media thrives on the dramatic. Government agencies, desperate
for funding and validation, often lean on the terrorism label to make their
case. But the more we cry “terror” without precision, the more we dilute the
term—and misallocate our resources.
Meanwhile, arms smugglers go unnoticed. Human trafficking
persists in the shadows. Corruption festers silently. Because we’re too focused
on one part of the equation: drugs + violence = narco-terror. But that math
doesn’t always add up.
As I reflect on our country’s ongoing struggle against
drugs, crime, and insurgency, I see the damage that overreaction has caused.
We’ve militarized neighborhoods that needed social workers. We’ve prioritized
punishment over rehabilitation. We’ve turned what should be a holistic response
into a one-dimensional war.
If we are to truly address the threats of illicit trade,
organized crime, and extremism, we must first accept that their causes are
interwoven with poverty, inequality, historical injustice, and weak governance.
They are not military problems alone. They are deeply human ones.
That’s why I urge my fellow scholars, policymakers, law
enforcers, and everyday citizens to look deeper. Let’s retire the reflex to
label every criminal act as terrorism just to attract attention. Let’s build
frameworks rooted in social truth, not political convenience. Let’s craft
solutions that empower communities—not terrorize them.
And most of all, let us never forget that behind every crime
statistic is a name, a family, a story.
This is how we make peace real—not just by silencing guns or
capturing leaders, but by recognizing the humanity of those we are trying to
save.
