Fear was the currency of the campaign when Rodrigo Duterte launched his war on drugs in 2016.ย Fear of crime. Fear of addicts lurking in neighborhoods. Fear that the state had grown weak.
Duterte offered something simple and seductive: order through force.
The early years of the drug war felt like a restoration of control at least for many in the middle class and the elite. Streets seemed quieter. Police were visibly active. The nightly news delivered a steady stream of โnanlabanโ reports โ suspects allegedly killed after resisting arrest.
The message was unmistakable: the state was in charge again.
But we must now ask a harder question: Was that security real โ or was it a security built on distance?
The Geography of Violence
The violence of the drug war was not evenly distributed. It was concentrated in urban poor communities โ in narrow alleys, crowded barangays, informal settlements.
Rarely did it cross into gated subdivisions or high-rise condominiums.
For those living far from the knock-on-the-door operations, the campaign felt like protection. But for those in the crosshairs, it was terror.ย Security, in this sense, became stratified. The middle class experienced fewer visible signs of disorder. The poor experienced funerals.
This geography mattered. It created the illusion that the problem had been solved, when in fact it had merely been contained within societyโs margins.
The Psychology of โUsโ and โThemโ
The drug war succeeded not only because of police operations, but because of narrative.
The victims were framed as criminals โ addicts, pushers, irredeemable threats. In this framing, their deaths became a public service.
When violence is directed at a group already stigmatized, society can rationalize it. โIt will not happen to us,โ many thought.ย But the erosion of due process does not stop at one social class. Once the rule of law becomes flexible, it becomes flexible for everyone.
The same state power that can bypass courts in the name of efficiency can one day bypass them for political convenience.
Institutions Matter
The drug war did not just target individuals; it reshaped institutions.
It normalized shortcuts in policing. It blurred lines between justice and vengeance. It brought the Philippines into conflict with the International Criminal Court, which launched an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity tied to the campaign.
Let us be clear, however. Institutions are the quiet foundations of real security. They protect contracts, property, rights, and stability. When they weaken, the costs are not immediate โ but they are cumulative.
Investors watch. Civil society reacts. Political rivalries harden. Trust erodes.
Douglas North in his book, Violence and Social Orders (2009) argues that a society cannot shoot its way through the barrel of the guns into long-term stability.
The Difference Between Fear and Peace
Supporters of the drug war argue that crime rates dropped. Critics question the data and the methods.
But beyond statistics lies a deeper distinction.ย Fear can suppress crime while justice can prevent it.
Fear works quickly. It is dramatic. It produces headlines. But justice is slow. It requires institutions, reforms, social services, economic opportunity.
One produces silence. The other produces stability.
The drug war delivered silence in many neighborhoods. But silence is not the same as peace.
The Cost of Comfortable Security
For the middle class and the elite, the drug war offered comfort โ the comfort of distance.
Violence was real, but it was not theirs. Rights were eroded, but not visibly in their living rooms and gated houses. The Constitution remained intact, but bent in practice.
Yet history teaches us a sobering lesson: when the rule of law weakens for the least powerful, it weakens for everyone.
A society that accepts extrajudicial solutions in one context may find those tools repurposed in another โ against dissenters, critics, rivals.
Security built on selective vulnerability is fragile. It feels solid until the circle of vulnerability widens.
Beyond the Illusion
The deeper crisis the drug war exposed was not merely about drugs. It was about inequality, weak institutions, and the publicโs frustration with slow justice.
Those frustrations were real.ย But a politics that answers fear with force often postpones the harder work of reform.
If safety depends on who you are, where you live, and how much power you hold, then it is not genuine security. It is conditional safety.ย And conditional safety can disappear as quickly as it was granted.
The question now is not whether the drug war made some Filipinos feel safe.
The question is whether we are ready to build a form of security that does not depend on fear โ one grounded in institutions strong enough to protect both the poor in the alleyways and the professionals in the condominiums alike.
Lest everyone forget, the rule of law, once weakened, does not discriminate. It would make everyone unsafe.
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