Peace process transforms toughest Army division into peace advocacy group

MAGUINDANAO – If military outfits are to be gauged on love for the government-Moro peace process, there is one unit - the Philippine Army’s 6th Infantry Division - that will surely stand out mighty.This, despite the division’s having lost hundreds of officers and enlisted soldiers in about a thousand encounters in the past two decades with forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Central Mindanao.The 6thID covers the neighboring Central Mindanao provinces of North Cotabato, Lanao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao, and the cities of Tacurong and Cotabato, all known bastions of the MILF.Thanks to four officers, the now retired Generals Anthony Alcantara, Ariel Bernardo and Rey Ardo and 6thID’s incumbent chief, Major Gen. Edmund Pangilinan, the division evolved into what is most known now as AFP,” meaning Army for peace, from what used to be the country’s most combat-exhausted unit.The 6thID even drew flak from groups hostile to the current government-MILF peace process for not providing artillery and air support to police commandos that figured on January 25 an 11-hour firefight with armed groups in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.The policemen were attacked while moving out from a barangay there after having killed in a dawn raid Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, most known as Marwan.At least 44 operatives of the police’s elite Special Action Force, 17 MILF guerillas and five innocent civilians were killed in the hostilities, which shook the entire nation to its core and, as a consequence, mired the congressional approval for the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).The bill, which is pending in Congress, is the enabling measure for the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with an MILF-led Bangsamoro entity, based on the group’s final compact with government, the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.For most local peace advocates, among them Christian religious leaders, the 6thID’s having adhered to the 1997 government-MILF Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities in handling the January 25 situation in Mamasapano prevented escalation of hostilities that could have derailed Malacañang’s diplomatic dealings with the rebel group. My position then, as commander of 6thID was based on wisdom and peace ideals,” Pangilinan told reporters from across Central Mindanao during an Army-media fellowship gathering on June 12 at Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao.Except for what is now known as the infamous Mamasapano incident” there was not a single encounter between MILF forces and the 6thID and its component brigades and battalionsfrom late 2009 until January 25. The January 25 `Mamasapano incident’ was, in fact, an encounter between the police and rebels in three areas in Mamasapano, not an Army-MILF encounter,” said a local official in Mamasapano in south of Maguindanao.The conversion of the 6thID into a peace advocacy unit was partly ushered in by the Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre” involving members of the then feared Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao and their private militias.The now detained patriarch of the clan, Andal Ampatuan, Sr., had used units of 6thID, capitalizing on his being a political benefactor of then President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo, to fight groups in the MILF he had wanted to drive away from the 11 towns in the second district of Maguindanao that was under his political principality, where there was virtual absence of partisan opposition.During Ampatuan’s incumbency as Maguindanao governor, a tenure that lasted from 1998 to 2008, commanders of 6thID were labeled as his puppets” for condoning blatant violations of GPH-MILF ceasefire protocols his private militias perpetrated.It was Alcantara and Bernardo, his deputy, that first reinvented the 6thID from something that was so isolated from the local communities and hostile to the MILF into a peace advocacy unit.Alcantara and Bernardo assumed as 6thID commander and assistant commander, respectively, in January 2010 following a revamp in the division leadership structure as a consequence of the Maguindanao Massacre, which left 58 people dead, more than half of them journalist, and led to the incarceration of leaders of the Ampatuan clan.Among Alcantara and Bernardo’s first major peace-building stride in tandem was their having declared Camp Siongco, the command center of 6thID, open 24 hours to all people with security problems, regardless of their faith and ethnic identities.They also both restrained 6thID’s component units from siding with local officials locked in clan wars owing to the involvement in most conflicts of active MILF commanders, many of them enemies of the Ampatuans.Among the bitter adversaries of the Ampatuans then was Imam Ameril Ombra Kato, who was to become the founder and figurehead of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.Kato, then chief of the MILF’s 105thBase Command, and his men figured in more than a hundred encounters with the governor's military-backed private army. Those peace initiatives then catalyzed the restoration of public confidence on the 6thID and improved the security climate in Maguindanao effectively, said Mayor Ramon Piang of Upi town southwest of the province.An ethnic Teduray chieftain, Piang, as member of the government’s peace panel, helped craft the wealth and power-sharing component of the GPH-MILF October 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro.Alcantara and Bernardo also dismantled the monopoly on candidacy of barangay officials in towns controlled by the Ampatuans to enable elders not hostile to the MILF to get to the helm of the leadership in barangays where rebel forces and combined members of the Ampatuan militia and soldiers had figured in bloody encounters. We eventually realized that over and above our security missions is a peace process we need to support for lasting peace to reign in these troubled lands,” said Sgt. Nelson Usog, a former photographer of 6thID, now a civil-military relations operative of the Army’s 57thInfantry Battalion under the 10thDivision.Ardo, who took over the 6thID’s top post following Alcantara’s completion of his term as division commander, was bolder in his peace maneuvers.He immediately built linkages with members of Central Mindanao’s Islamic Darul Iftah (House of Opinions), comprised of Moro preachers trained in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, the World Islamic Call University in Libya, and other religious schools in the Middle East and Pakistan, to boost Muslim-Christian relations in the 6thID’s area of coverage.Ardo was the first ever Philippine Army general to attend peace dialogues, involving the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process and top leaders of the MILF in Camp Darapanan, the rebel group’s main headquarters, in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao.Ardo and members of 6thID’s command staff even repeatedly hosted Iftar, the first meal after day-long fast, for members of Islamic religious groups during the 2011 Ramadhan fasting season. That was something we have not witnessed before. The gesture made us realize that this secessionist conflict in Mindanao can easily be won through diplomatic means, not through firepower,” said Cpl. Benito Baer.Baer, a Visayan, said Ardo’s examples inspired him to host, as a personal tradition now, at least one Iftar for his Muslim neighbors during the yearly 30-day Ramadhan season.Ardo had also offered to provide free medication for Kato at 6thID’s Camp Siongco Hospital when he learned that the rebel leader suffered a hypertensive stroke in 2011.Kato declined the offer and went on to live as a paralytic until April this year.Pangilinan said what his now retired superiors had started was worth continuing, especially their examples in settling family feuds involving big clans and rebel groups in Central Mindanao.Pangilinan and Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu had facilitated the settlement of more than 20 clan wars in the province in recent months.Mangudadatu had earlier settled more than 30 clan wars in the second district of Maguindanao with the help of Pangilinan, while he was still commander of the 601stBrigade in Tacurong City.Pangilinan was the assistant commander for the Mindanao peace process of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City before he assumed as 6thID chief last year. All of our current diplomatic efforts are being done for the good of the peace process,” Pangilinan said.The 6thID saw extensive combat actions during the time of past commanders, the now retired Generals Raul Urgello, Gregorio Camiling, Jr., Genereso Senga, and Agustin Demaala.Camiling was the commander of the division when soldiers liberated from MILF control in 2000 what was touted then as impregnable” guerilla stronghold Camp Abubakar in the tri-boundary of Maguindanao’s Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns.The celebrated fall of the camp, established in the early 1980s by the MILF’s founder, Egyptian-trained cleric Salamat Hashim, did not even weaken the group tactically.Urgello, while at 6thID, even taunted repeatedly the MILF in radio interviews every after an encounter anywhere in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.He would often challenge the group over the radio then to bring on the fight and, in some occasions, warned its forces not to mess with 6thID. (JOHN UNSON)