MILF guerillas arrest 40 drug addicts for spiritual orientation
BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES • 04:22 AM Sat Sep 10, 2016
1,215
By:
John Unson
MILF members arrested 40 drug dependents and dealers in an operation in Maguindanao on Thursday (Courtesy of Imam Mubarak Tiboron Domato)
MAGUINDANAO -- Guerillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Thursday brought
to their camp in Sultan Kudarat town for spiritual orientation by clerics 40
drug dependents arrested in nearby villages.
The move, with
imprimatur from MILF’s figurehead, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, was in support of
President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign.
The drug
peddlers and dependents, mostly ethnic Iranuns from Maguindanao’s Sultan
Kudarat and Sultan Mastura towns, agreed to proceed to Camp Darapanan when they
saw heavily armed MILF members cordon their villages, threatening to attack if
they resist.
More than a
dozen of them are related by blood to powerful politicians who keep arsenals of
firearms, including M-60 machineguns and shoulder-fire grenade launchers, which
they keep both as status symbol and as protection from adversaries.
Camp
Darapanan, the MILF’s main enclave where Murad resides and hold office, is
located northwest of Sultan Kudarat town in the first district of Maguindanao.
Sources from
the government's ceasefire committee confirmed the MILF's anti-narcotics
operation, which was coordinated to local officials, military and police units
in the two towns via its Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities.
MILF leaders
said their initial anti-narcotics operation in the two towns was done in
keeping with an obligation to help the police maintain law and order in areas
where there are rebel enclaves, based on their July 1997 Agreement on General
Cessation of Hostilities with Malacañang.
The 40 drug
dependents and dealers of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) are to undergo
religious formation sessions in Camp Darapanan, to be handled by Islamic
theologians, among them graduates of religious schools in Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and Libya.
The MILF had
earlier issued an edict declaring shabu as haram,” Arabic for forbidden.
The government
and the MILF are obliged to mutually cooperate in addressing peace and security
issues in flashpoint areas under the 1997 ceasefire accord negotiators of both
sides crafted in Cagayan de Oro City in July of the same year.
MILF sources,
who asked not to be identified for lack of authority to speak on the issue,
said hundreds of drug dependents were surrendered by their parents in the past
two months, now undergoing religious orientation by Imams in rebel camps.