The Supreme Court, however, on Aug. 4 issued a temporary restraining order on its signing following a petition by North Cotabato Vice Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, supported by another petition filed by Zamboanga City Mayor Celso Lobregat and two congressmen.
Renewed hostilities
The non-signing of the MoA-AD gave rise to a re-escalation of armed confrontations between government troops and the MILF in Lanao del Norte, North Cotabato, and Maguindanao – provinces known to be strongholds of the MILF. Following the outbreak of renewed hostilities, the government ordered a manhunt for MILF commanders Abdurahman Macapaar a.k.a. Commander Bravo, Ameril Ombra Kato, and Alim Pangalian – who have been dubbed as “rogue MILF commanders” and leaders of “lost commands”.
On Sept. 3, the Arroyo administration announced the dissolution of the government panel in the peace negotiations with the MILF and declared that it would henceforth implement “disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation” (DDR) as the framework for all peace negotiations. Both the MILF and the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) interpreted this as simply another term for surrender “negotiations”.
Shortly after, the Supreme Court declared the MoA-AD as unconstitutional – in effect, as Iqbal sees it, sending the talks “back to square one.”
The re-escalated conflict has led to the deaths of at least a hundred civilians, based on data gathered by Amnesty International, and has led to the displacement of at least 500,000 more according to Kalinaw Mindanao.
Peace overtures?
On Dec. 14, Malacañang announced that the GRP-MILF peace negotiations could be resumed by Dec. 22. “Malacañang believes that informal talks between the government and the MILF are expected to start shortly after the President’s official visit to Qatar, possibly by Dec. 22,” said Hermogenes Esperon, presidential adviser on the peace process, in a statement released by Malacañang.
Esperon said the government “sees Qatar as an international guarantor in talks between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front,” and that the MILF “had been calling for international guarantors in the peace process and Qatar could be one of them.”
The Arroyo administration had, on Dec. 1, appointed Rafael Seguis, foreign affairs undersecretary for special concerns, as chief government negotiator in the peace talks with the MILF.
But the MILF has denied that there is any resumption of peace talks in the offing. In a statement posted on the website www.luwaran.com, Khaled Musa, deputy chairman of the MILF’s Committee on Information, said the announcements on the resumption of peace talks are “part of government propaganda gimmicks in order to give false hope to the people especially those in the conflict-affected areas and the international community.” Jun Mantawil, who heads the MILF peace panel secretariat, meanwhile said they have yet to receive any notice from the Malaysian government, which facilitates the GRP-MILF peace negotiations, about any resumption of talks scheduled this month.
Roots of conflict
Moro historian Salah Jubair traces the roots of the present conflict in southern Philippines to the US annexation of Mindanao and Sulu into the Philippine territory in 1946. Jubair argues that the Bangsamoro are a people with a socio-political, economic, and cultural system distinct from that of the Filipino people.
The inclusion of Mindanao and Sulu in the scope of the 1946 “independence” granted to the Philippines paved the way for large-scale non-Muslim migration to the two islands. This large-scale migration, which began in the 1950s, brought with it the problem of land grabbing.
At some point the government even instituted a Mindanao Homestead Program, which involved giving land parcels seized from Moros to landless peasants from the Visayas islands and Luzon and also to former communist guerrillas who availed of amnesty. This was intended to defuse the peasant unrest and the revolutionary war that was staged in the late 1940s and early 1950s by the communist-led Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB or People’s Liberation Army), which was basically a peasant army.
The Jabidah Massacre of 1967 triggered widespread outrage among the Moros and led to the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that same year.
The MNLF signed in 1976 the Tripoli Agreement with the Marcos government after the latter, weighed down by the costs of the Mindanao war, negotiated for peace. The peace negotiations and the signing of the agreement were sponsored and hosted by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The pact involved the grant of autonomy to Muslims.
A breakdown in the GRP-MNLF peace talks in 1978 over the issue of autonomy drove a group led by Salamat Hashim to break away and form the MILF.
In 1996, the GRP and the MNLF signed a Final Peace Agreement, which was supposed to serve as an implementing mechanism for the 1976 Tripoli Agreement.
The next year, the MILF began peace negotiations with the GRP. These talks have gone on and off for 11 years, often bogging down in the last few years over the ancestral domain issue. The eruption of renewed hostilities resulting from the aborted signing of the MoA-AD has further dimmed hopes of peace in Mindanao.
The renewed armed confrontations between government troops and the MILF go on – almost each day adding to the toll in deaths, homes lost, and property damaged.(Bulatlat.com)
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