By Luke Hunt
Can the new Aquino administration broker a lasting peace agreement with the MILF in Mindanao? Luke Hunt and Karl Wilson report.
In a clearing just outside the southern Philippine town of Sultan Kudarat the leader of the country’s biggest Muslim group contemplates an uncertain future.
After 40 years of conflict, Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), hoped the new Philippine government of President Benigno Aquino would finally do what past presidents have failed to do—bring peace to this south-eastern corner of the Philippine archipelago.
But with some commanders having already broken away from the MILF central command, and the government considering starting negotiations from scratch, Murad isn’t so certain anymore.
‘At the moment we’re getting mixed signals from Manila,’ Murad told reporters at the MILF’s administrative headquarters at Camp Darapanan in the Southern Philippines. ‘We already have a comprehensive compact with the last government that will bring peace to Mindanao. Now we are told the government wants to start from scratch.
That agreement was struck in mid-2008 only to be overturned by the courts in Manila as unconstitutional, signaling resumption in a civil conflict that’s heading into its fifth decade, with widespread violence forcing half a million people to flee their homes.
Murad’s sentiments are echoed across the Sulu Sea on the northern tip of Borneo where between 200,000 and 300,000 ethnic Filipinos have sought refuge—to the irritation of their Malaysian hosts—from the fighting that has wracked their homeland.
And the refugee population has grown rapidly, impacting enormously the local way of life as MILF intensified its efforts to create an Islamic homeland in Mindanao for the Bangsamoro people. Exact figures aren’t available, although thousands more arrived in East Malaysia after the latest fighting erupted two years ago.
Initially, camps were established by the United Nations in Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Lahad Datu and Tawau for the small numbers that arrived here in the 1970s. The United Nations currently has very little to do with camps, and human rights workers fear the world body has simply walked away from the issue. So far it has declined to comment on its position in regards to the camps, and activists in Malaysia say to succeed, peace talks must also address the needs of tens of thousands of Filipino refugees.
It’s all a festering sore that the new administration in Manila wants cleaned up, and Aquino’s May election to the top post has raised hopes of a concerted effort to bring peace to the country's forever troubled south.
Irene Fernandez, executive director of Tenaganita, a Malaysian organization that works to protect the rights of women and refugees, says any effort to find a lasting peace must also resolve the fate of Filipino immigrants in Malaysia, who are often blamed for every social ill in their adopted towns.
Photo Credit: Keith Kristoffer Bacongco
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
Paul Booth
An Islamic lady on a BBC documentary about the Mindanao troubles said it was impossible to ignore the rights of Muslims in Mindanao. But have not the Indonesians ignored the rights of Christians in their hinterland. Philippines is Christian and Indonesia is Muslim. Full stop.
J.P. Katigbak
It would be difficult for both the Philippine Government and Moro rebels to make peace with each other because that requires a level of caution.
I assume this is very important to the peace efforts in southern Philippines. The questions are: When will it be true to use caution during the peace process? Is it possible to reveal how extent the current situation in Mindanao? Can both sides tackle the real issues in the southern part of the country?
People in our homes across the Philippines and elsewhere around the globe like me really need serious answers from those who coordinate a series of lectures on the peace process, those who spearhead efforts to keep the peace in the south, those who conduct peace talks between the country’s government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front organization, those who devote “peace activism”, etc.
I personally say there is no turning back in bringing peace to the muslim part of Southern Philippines – and to ensure that the idea of bringing peace must be put into practice and nothing else!
It is also important to bring a peaceful settlement that adds (and reinforces) not only political stability, but also providing an even better foundation for economic growth & stability as well as accompanying social change that is meaningful and well-understood in the context of southern Philippines’ muslim areas (remember: ideologically-motivated social change is the wrong answer to such woes affecting Mindanao today).
Thank you and be safe as of now.
mode20100
A+ would read again
Michael
Another typical right-wing Western response to what is undoubtedly a more complicated problem. I’m an (ethnically) Christian Filipino myself and the issue is more than just about terrorism and pandering to terrorists.
Let’s address some misconceptions. First, the assertion that the Bangsamoro are going to take 40% of the Philippines’ land area. The whole of Mindanao is not included in the MOA-AD; just the existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao plus 700 more barangays (villages). More importantly, it’s ridiculous to claim that simply because they’re taking a share of territory disproportionate to their population means that we should immediately reject any agreement with them, especially if that will be the price of peace and lasting economic development for Muslims, Christians, and Lumads (those following indigenous religions).
Second, Sharia Law has historically in the Philippines has applied only to Muslims and will continue to do so even after the creation of a Bangsamoro quasi-state.
Third, most of the Christians in the Bangsamoro areas were never native to the area. They were immigrants from the North introduced by the Spanish and American colonial administrations to drown out the once-Muslim majorities in these areas, which never had a choice about whether to assimilate into the Philippines. While it would be foolish to evict the Christians as their living in the area is now historical fact, the point is that the Bangsamoro people still have rights to this land and as such these should be granted in some way.
Truth is, most of the Muslims in this country are quite peaceful and are in no way “Islamo-fascist”. Leave it to people like you to remain ignorant of the facts and intolerant of what has been a beautiful contribution to Filipino, and for that matter, world civilization.
James Fairbrother
Moslems are 5% of the population of the Philippines, yet they demand 40% of the land area as a separate state. The reporter ignores the lives of the Christians (50% of the population in the areas the Moslems demand as their own), Christians who have called these areas “home” since Magellan stopped the advancing Islamic hordes slaughtering everyone who disagreed with their “faith” 500 years ago.
Are these Christian people (50% of the people in the supposedly “moslem-dominated” areas) to be ignored or ethnically cleansed? Or will the new terrorists-turned-government simply impose Sharia law on everyone and burn down all the remaining churches (the few remaining that they haven’t torched)?
You don’t win anything by giving in to terrorists. Extend the hand of peace to a terrorist and he will cut it off at the wrist.
The only answer to Islamo-fascism is to fight it and to kill it. In the Philippines, they have had 50 years and longer to learn this. They know it, and no number of do-good progressive, sympathetic-to-the-poor-misunderstood-terrorists Westerners are going to change that.