Manila // Philippine troops are facing a security “nightmare” during Pope Francis’s visit to the country, which starts Thursday, with concerns over potential stampedes, extremist militants and lone-wolf attacks.
Nearly 40,000 soldiers and police are being deployed to protect the pontiff during his five-day trip to the Philippines, a majority Catholic nation where attempts have been made to kill visiting popes twice before.
“For this year, this will be the greatest security nightmare that we can have,” Philippine military chief General Gregorio Catapang said as he readied his troops for the pope’s arrival.
Authorities say that the huge crowds of devout Catholics are their main worry, with up to six million people expected for a mass in Manila on Sunday.
Giant throngs are also expected along his motorcade routes in the capital, while a one-day trip to typhoon-devastated communities in the central Philippines will pose its own problems.
In a nationally televised address on Monday, President Benigno Aquino pleaded with his countrymen planning to join the crowds to remain calm and avoid creating a stampede that could endanger the pope.
“I ask you, do you want history to record that a tragedy involving the pope happened in the Philippines,” Mr Aquino said.
Aside from a crowd potentially crushing Pope Francis, Mr Aquino also warned that blocking the pontiff’s motorcade would make him an easy target for an assailant.
The president referred to the threat of “terrorism” and an assassination attempt on John Paul II at the Vatican in 1981, as he called on all Filipinos to help protect Pope Francis in the Philippines.
Adding to security concerns, the 78-year-old pontiff has insisted he will not travel in a bulletproof “popemobile” so that he can be closer to his flock.
Highlighting the priority Mr Aquino has placed on security, he personally led a late-night dry run on Tuesday of the motorcade journey that the pope will make from the airport after he arrives — with thousands of police lining the roads.
Mr Aquino did not refer to the assassination attempt and an assassination plot that have targeted previous popes during visits to the Philippines, however.
On the first-ever papal visit to the Philippines in 1970, Bolivian painter Benjamin Mendoza donned a priest’s fake cassock and swung a knife at Pope Paul VI as he arrived at Manila airport.
The pontiff was wounded but continued the trip without disclosing his injury.
Then, one week before Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1995, police uncovered a plot by foreign extremists to kill the pontiff by bombing his Manila motorcade route.
The extremists then planned to set off explosives on 11 US jetliners over the Pacific Ocean that they hoped would kill thousands.
The plot was detected only because bomb-making material caused smoke at the apartment that was being used to store the explosives.
Ramzi Yousef, who carried out the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings in the United States, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of Al Qaeda’s most senior figures who planned the September 11 attacks, were among those involved in the plot.
For decades, Philippine security forces have also struggled to contain local militants with links to Al Qaeda.
The most well-known, the Abu Sayyaf, operates mostly on the country’s southern islands, which are populated by the nation’s Muslim minority, many hundreds of kilometres from Manila.
But the group is accused of carrying out the Philippines’ deadliest terrorist attack, the bombing of a ferry in Manila in 2004 that killed more than 100 people.
Senior Abu Sayyaf leader, Khair Mundos, who was on the US government’s most wanted list, was also arrested while living at an apartment near the Manila airport just seven months ago.
While the government has insisted no specific plots have been detected against the pope, he is undoubtedly a tempting target for Filipino militants, said Rommel Banlaoi, director of the Manila-based think tank, the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.
“For violent groups opposed to the rule of the Catholic Church, attacking the pope is like a trophy, a major accomplishment,” Mr Banlaoi said.
“The most challenging threat would come from a lone-wolf attack. It is easier to monitor bad elements coming from identified violent groups.”
Despite this, Mr Banlaoi said the country’s security forces had proved they could secure visits by popes and US presidents.
* Agence France-Presse