The Philippines fist bump

The picture of the meeting between the head of Australia’s Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Nick Warner, and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines looks so odd it’s hard to know where to begin.

Why is our chief spy meeting Duterte at all? Why is he photographed doing so, when he is rarely photographed? Why is he engaged so publicly in a fist-bump with Duterte? Does his organisation approve of the Philippine leader, as this gesture implies, where the Australian Government – for good reason – has serious reservations about him? Does this imply some form of double-dealing with the government of the Philippines? Or was it all just a ghastly mistake?

Unfortunately, the nature of the Duterte government means things are not equal. He presides over an administration which has embraced murder as an instrument of policy. The country’s other war, against drug dealers and addicts, has seen more than 12,000 people die in summary executions. That this illegal, extrajudicial campaign is popular does not justify it; it only suggests the enormous scale of the problem the Philippines faces, and provides yet another example of the disastrous cost of the worldwide war on drugs.

Enter Warner. By chumming up to Duterte publicly, the head of ASIS appears to risk both negating the government’s justified stance against Duterte’s domestic policies, and complicating the campaign against Islamist terrorism.