Philippines
From dKosopedia
The Philippines is a country located on an archapelago of islands between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean with a population of roughly 86 million.
Parts of the Philippines have been a Spanish colony from 1571 to 1898, when the authority over the territory was transferred to the United States in the wake of the Spanish American War. U.S. troops fought a Philippine insurgency for six years, and granted the Philippines independence in 1946 in the wake of World War II, after ending wartime Japanese occupation of the territory.
Ferdinand Marcos led a de facto dicatorship in the country from 1965 to 1986.
The U.S. closed its military base there in 1992 in the wake of a volcanic eruption and local dissatifaction with the U.S. presence.
While the nation is predominantly Roman Catholic, there has been a significant Muslim seperatist insurgency on the island of Mindanao for many years, on and off. This has led to U.S. military involvement in the country as part of the Bush Administration's War on Terror.
