Stakeholders see GPH-MILF initiative as last remedy to Moro problem

COTABATO CITY - The on-going peace initiative by government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) could be the last chance stakeholders have to put closure to a conflict that began in the 1970s.For most Moro leaders, it is even historically incorrect to label rebel forces, which are for them fighting for a homeland and religion, as non-state actors” in the Mindanao conflict since they belong to a race once ruled by sultanates that had economic and political ties with what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, China and Japan even before Ferdinand Magellan arrived in what is now Visayas on March 16, 1521.The government and the MILF signed a final peace compact on March 27, 2014, the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, after 17 years of negotiation.The measure to start with its implementation however, the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), meant to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with a more empowered self-governing Bangsamoro outfit, is still pending in Congress, mired by controversies. Whatever it takes, the MILF will always opt for a peaceful settlement of the Moro issue. War is not an option. The only option now is `peace,’ nothing more nothing less,” said the MILF’s chief negotiator, Mohaqher Iqbal, who chairs the 14-member Bangsamoro Transition Commission.The Mindanao peace process did not commence only last January 7, 1997, the day the government-MILF talks officially opened in Simuay District in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao.The initiative actually started in 1974, when then President Ferdinand Marcos started reaching out to a still monolithic Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by Nur Misuari.The MNLF was jointly established in the early 1970s by Misuari, then a professor in the University of the Philippines, and the Egyptian-trained Imam Salamat Hashim, a full-blooded ethnic Maguindanaon.The diplomatic efforts of Mr. Marcos led to the signing by government and MNLF negotiators of the vaunted December 23, 1976 Tripoli Agreement” in the Libyan capital Tripoli.The agreement, which became a reference in the crafting of the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace accord, acknowledged the bid of Moro people for self-rule in an envisioned southern homeland comprising nine cities and 13 provinces across Mindanao.Hashim bolted from the MNLF in 1978 due to ideological differences with Misuari and launched the MILF four years later, with Camp Abubakar, at the tri-boundary of Maguindanao’s hinterland Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns, as its first ever main headquarters.After the euphoria stirred by the crafting by government and the MILF of the CAB on March 27, 2014 in Malacañang came uncertainty and tension stakeholders now feel as both sides try to overcome the challenges lying ahead of a bilateral effort to put up a Bangsamoro entity via the BBL. It’s full of challenges and a long way yet, but we are not losing hope. Some see the GPH-MILF efforts as still an uphill struggle but we are not affected because we believe we will reach the finish line and emerge victorious and contented in the end,” said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, a staunch supporter of the Mindanao peace process.The GPH-MILF talks have had many ups and downs, to the point that it collapsed many times over, with peace brokers restarting the negotiation each time, in a bid to find a lasting solution to the nagging Moro issue” or the quest of Mindanao’s Muslim communities for self-rule under the international right-to-self-determination (RSD) doctrine.Call it twist of fate, the largest of the MNLF’s present three factions, the one led by former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, assured to recognize a duly enacted BBL as long as it is more meaningful than the ARMM’s charter, the Republic Act 9054. We are ready to recognize and help implement a BBL that is more powerful and more empowered than the ARMM law,” Sema said.Though Moro communities fought the Spaniards, the Americans and the Japanese during World War II, the so-called Mindanao Conflict,” in contemporary history, began with pockets of hostilities between Moro gunmen belonging to the so-called Mindanao Independence Movement and government security forces in Barrio Kabayuan in Buldon in the Empire Cotabato Province in the early 1970s, before the outbreak of the full-blown MNLF uprising in 1974 in Sulu, now a component province of ARMM.The conflicts in Buldon and nearby areas were followed by the simultaneous attacks on Oct. 21, 1972 at strategic areas in Marawi City, including the campus of the state-run Mindanao State University (MSU), by Maranaws armed with vintage World War II rifles.The armed Maranaws took over the government’s station dxSO inside the MSU campus, aired martial songs, and repeatedly called on Muslims to rise against government and fight for Mindanao independence.Poverty and underdevelopment in many flashpoint areas covered by the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF worsened during the first 11 of the shaky 17 years of peace talks by both sides.The GPH-MILF negotiations first collapsed in April 30, 2000 when then President Joseph Estrada declared an all-out war against the rebel group in a military adventurism that displaced about a million Mindanao residents.President Estrada, in fact, even led soldiers in celebrating the fall of Camp Abubakar on June 10, 2000, as a result of his campaign to drive away MILF rebels from all of their supposedly recognized 44 main and minor camps” scattered across mainland Mindanao.The peace talks again hit a snag when government forces took over the MILF’s last frontier, the Buliok Complex at the border of Pagalungan, Maguindanao and North Cotabato’s Pikit town in February 2003, under the pretext of a calibrated police action meant to flush out kidnappers from the 3,000-hectare guerrilla enclave.Hostilities again resumed after the botched August 5, 2008 signing by the government and MILF panels of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, which the Supreme Court eventually junked for being unconstitutional. The MILF returned to the negotiating table every after collapse of the talks. What else can be a good measure for its sincerity in dealing with government than giving meaning to such gesture and show of resilience? Let us open our eyes to that,” said North Cotabato-based Maranaw journalist Ali Macabalang, correspondent of a national newspaper.The zeal to fight for land, race and religion by Moro folks is undoubtedly deeply imbued in their hearts that there is certainty that no one, in proper frame of mind, would let go of what is for them the last chance for government and Mindanao’s Muslim communities to build peace in the region through bayanihan” tradition. Moro blood is cheap if it is to be shed for land, race and defense of its people. Even then, we don’t want wars and we are for a peaceful conclusion of this peace process, which can be our legacy to the younger Moro generation,” said Abdullah Salik, Jr., former vice mayor of North Upi, Maguindanao.Talib, a dying Tausug guerilla, to exemplify devotion, wrote in his own blood In kami parang sabil, nagbaug-bug sin hulah, bangsa iban agama” (we are martyrs fighting for homeland, people and religion) on the wall of one of the classroom rooms in the Notre Dame of Jolo College during the MNLF’s deadly siege of Sulu’s capital town Jolo in 1974.