Cotabato City rivers guarded against lawless groups

COTABATO CITY --- Authorities are now setting up five guarded boat docks here to prevent criminals and Islamic militants from launching attacks from any of the large rivers crisscrossing the city.Cotabato City, covering 37 barangays, is traversed by rivers that spring from the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta in the upper valley of central Mindanao and tributaries of the Rio Grande de Mindanao that springs from Bukidnon province in Region 10.Halima Satol-Ibrahim, information officer of the Cotabato City government, told this news outfit Wednesday that the security measure is premised on an executive order signed last September 11 by Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi.Guiani-Sayadi is the presiding chairperson of the inter-agency city peace and order council.Besides putting up five boat berthing sites in the city’s riverside Bucana, Matampay, Tamontaka, Kalanganan and Timako areas, the mayor also ordered the tagging of boats cruising through the barangays here with numbers and identification marks as part of the security initiative.Satol-Ibrahim said the operation of the docks will be monitored closely by the city police and Army units under the Joint Task Force Kutawato, comprised of Army and police units and law enforcement outfits under the mayor’s office.The task force was launched last April through efforts of Guiani-Sayadi, Major Gen. Arnel Dela Vega of the 6thInfantry Division and Chief Supt. Cedrick Train, director of the Police Regional Office-12.The task force has been guarding for three months now all of the rivers and large waterways that cut through isolated areas here to prevent any infiltration by terrorists.Personnel of the Army's 5th Special Forces Battalion are patrolling the rivers here periodically using Australian-made airboats fitted with machineguns.The city is not too distant from towns in the second district of Maguindanao where combined government forces and Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerillas are locked in a showdown with militants led by Esmael Abdulmalik.Abdulmalik, also known as Abu Toraife, is self-proclaimed amir, or chieftain of a third faction in the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.The outlawed group uses the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as its revolutionary banner.Authorities have also been monitoring the coming in of watercrafts from seaside towns in the second district of Lanao del Sur, whose provincial capital is Marawi City.Dela Vega, who has tactical control of all military units in central Mindanao’s Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato provinces and several towns in Lanao del Sur, said Cotabato City is safe from any infiltration by terrorists owing to the vigilance of incumbent local executives. Local officials and barangay captains are the ones in the forefront of these security efforts. Their volunteerism inspires us to support them well. Our men and our armor assets are there for them, Dela Vega said.Dela Vega said he is also thankful to city officials and their constituent-barangay leaders for supporting actively the enforcement of the martial law in their communities since its declaration by President Rodrigo Duterte on May 23 after Maute terrorists laid siege to Marawi City, sparking hostilities that have since dragged on.