32 Asia The EconomistFebruary 1st 2020
2Banyan No crater love
N
early twoweeks after Taal volcano’s
first eruption in over 40 years, the
Philippines Institute of Volcanology and
Seismology has lowered its threat assess-
ment a notch, and local residents have
begun to stream back to their homes in
jeepneys, pickups and on the backs of
motorcycles. When Taal roared to life on
January 12th, the plume of steam and ash
it sent 32,000 feet into the air was so vast
it generated its own weather system,
with thunder and lightning. As the fall-
ing cinders turned day to night, tens of
thousands of evacuees fled for hastily
created evacuation centres a safe dis-
tance from Taal’s spite.
Usually, Taal is a draw. The volcano
has made its own island in the middle of
Taal lake, which occupies the caldera of a
much bigger volcano which exploded
aeons ago. The surrounding slopes are
forested. Papayas and vegetables thrive
on village plots by the shore. The lake
itself provides livelihoods to those farm-
ing tilapia fish. More jobs come from
catering to visitors from Manila who
flock to the lake, or to the resort town of
Tagatay on an overlooking ridge, for the
fresh air, sweeping views and grilled fish.
The country’s capital is just two hours’
drive to the north.
Yet these times are hardly usual. The
eruption seems to have caused a lot of
the lake’s water to evaporate. One part of
the lake, though, is now a metre deeper,
since the whole caldera has tilted sharp-
ly. Taal’s ash has turned a vast area a
monotone grey. Rain following the erup-
tion has hardened the ash to concrete.
The tin roofs of villagers’ houses have
buckled, trees have lost their main
branches and the tomatoes and au-
bergines in Rosa’s garden have shrivelled
to nothing. But life is nothing if not, well,
pigheaded. Rosa says she and her hus-band, a retired soldier, had no choice but
to stay, despite the loss of electricity and
water: Biggie, their sow, was about to
farrow. Fourteen piglets now snuffle
around their mother. Girlie, from one of
the worst-hit villages on the west side of
the lake, cries with joy to find that the food
she left out for her family’s dog and kitten
have sustained them.
The repair teams from the electricity
board, villagers chipping the ash off roofs
and even young scientists returning to
their lakeside observatory in Talisay to get
the solar panels for their sensors working
again—life has a yen for normality, too.
Not the volcano, however. The earth-
quakes following the eruption have fallen
in number and severity, and an alarming
build-up of magma appears to have dimin-
ished. But that, says Paolo Reniva, a geol-
ogist, says little about how the volcano will
behave in future. He expects Taal’s current
cycle of activity to last months or years. At
the back of all the geologists’ minds is the
eruption of 1754. That blast had the force of
a nuclear bomb, and the jargon they use to
describe it is similar: “ballistic projectiles”fell over seven kilometres away; the
“base surge”, a mixture of gas and frag-
ments moving at up to 100m a second,
reached up to 20km away. No one died
from the direct effects of the eruption on
January 12th; a 1754-style explosion, in
contrast, would be catastrophic.
This is not what those trying to re-
sume their lives want to hear. The cur-
rent threat assessment of 3 on a scale of 0
to 5 risks being viewed as normal by
locals. And just as President Donald
Trump downplays climate change, so
populist Filipino politicians downplay
nature’s forces. President Rodrigo Du-
terte promised evacuees he would “pee
on that damned volcano”. The vice-
mayor of Talisay, Charlie Natanauan, a
local businessman who is campaigning
to unseat the mayor (his brother, as it
happens), goes further by urging locals
not to believe the “idiot” scientists. Taal
is not going to explode again, he insists,
because he knows its history; if he’s
wrong, he adds, then throw him into the
crater. What’s more, the scientists’ warn-
ings about poisoned tilapia are off-the-
mark too, and he will eat as many fish as
needed to prove it. It goes down a storm
with locals.
Sitting on a veranda by the lake, next
to a gold-painted statue of himself toting
a rifle and pistol, Mr Natanauan lays out
his plans. They include a canal cutting
through to the sea so that luxury yachts
can travel up it; modernist glass resorts;
and firework shows to put any eruption
to shame. How, Banyan asks, do his ideas
fit with the volcano’s even more sweep-
ing and whimsical plans? Pah, Mr Nata-
nauan says dismissively, the next time
Taal causes trouble, we’ll all be dead.
Behind him, dozens of dead tilapia float
upside down, slapping against his jetty.
Just beyond, the volcano gently steams.Taal volcano is a reminder of Asians’ vulnerability to natural forcesregions, a reduction in raids and check-
points, and due process for the many Push-
tun youths abducted, tortured or killed by
the army and police. “It has taken us almost
15 years of suffering and humiliation to
gather courage to speak up, and to spread
awareness about how the military tram-
pled our constitutional rights through both
direct action and a policy of support for the
militants,” Mr Pashteen said last year.
Such open criticism of the army is un-
heard-of. Mere mention of the ptmcan in-
duce apoplexy in the top ranks. Its com-
plaints detract from the hard-foughtvictory over the ttp. Thousands of troops
died in the campaign, which has led to a
dramatic improvement in security.
Moreover, the army says it has tried to
fix the problems the ptm has raised. It
claims to have become less heavy-handed
at checkpoints and is building schools and
markets to help revive shattered towns.
But the generals are more adept with
sticks than carrots. Journalists have been
told to stop reporting on the ptm. Senior of-
ficers have stated ominously that its time is
up. In May the army shot into a crowd of
ptmsupporters heading to a sit-in, killingat least 13. (The soldiers said they were fired
on first.) Two ptm-supporting parliamen-
tarians were arrested and spent four
months in detention.
The trigger for Mr Pashteen’s arrest may
have been the fresh campaign of rallies that
the ptmrecently initiated. He has been de-
nied bail, and ptmmembers protesting his
detention have themselves been arrested.
For the most part, Pakistan’s courts seem
unconcerned about the abuses that Mr
Pashteen has railed against. But daring to
complain about the army’s impunity—now
that is a serious offence. 7