No peace deal in South seen this year
Is GMA Using Talks with Muslims for Money?

A University of the Philippines (UP) professor and a leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) believe that, contrary to government claims, no peace agreement will be forged this year or in the remaining years of the Arroyo administration. The MILF leader has also accused the Arroyo administration of using its peace talks with the MILF for money.

BY JHONG DELA CRUZ
Bulatlat

Prof. Julkipli Wadi of the University of the Philippines (UP) Institute for Islamic Studies said that he foresees no peace deal for southern Philippines in the remaining four-year term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

"It has always been that the government meant to contain the problem in Mindanao and not to resolve it," which is geared toward "preserving the status-quo (in Mindanao)," Professor Wadi said. Waiting on the
side as the peace talks are ongoing, he said, are the region's major stakeholders – multi-donor companies who are itching for the region's rich economic potential for oil, logistics and manpower, he said.

He also described as "unprecedented" the government's dependence on the United States (U.S.) for military assistance. "Every now and then they are concocting programs to make sure the U.S. maintains its hands in Mindanao," he said.

These quick-fix approaches will take Mindanao nowhere near peace, Wadi warned.

Money making

Meanwhile, a highly-placed MILF official accused the Arroyo administration of using the Mindanao conflict to source funds from abroad.

"The Mindanao conflict is being used by GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) as a source of funding abroad, part of its mendicancy policy," said the source who requested anonymity.

The MILF leader said that much of the money generated mostly from foreign agencies has never uplifted those who are affected by the long-drawn Moro rebellion.

The U.S., through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has been pouring in money as military aid for the Philippine government.

Since 2000, the U.S. has granted some $300 million in security funds, on top of additional funding for civic services and infrastructures. Some 25 percent of the funds were spent in Sulu alone.

This year, the government will receive from USAID $21 million supposedly to curb graft and corruption. Until 2009, Mindanao will be seeing much of U.S.' hand in the integration of some 1,000 Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) ex-combatants into the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as well as in education, health services and electrification of some 6,000 households.

The MILF source assailed Arroyo for mastering the use of "flattery, money and threat to rein in even the worst of her detractors," adding that the president has wielded no political power to address dirty
politics in the peace process.

The Arroyo government appears to be "dribbling" the peace talks, falling out in times of provoked fighting and rushing in to save its grip in Mindanao, he also said.

Bleak future

The Arroyo government is reportedly targeting either the month of September or the commemoration of Ramadan as the deadline for its peace deal with the MILF. The latter is awaiting the government's counter-proposal on territorial boundaries but Malacañang has not yet submitted this.

Because of this, the MILF source said, no final peace accord would be signed this year between the MILF and the government.

The MILF leadership earlier expressed dismay over the government's renewed retaliation campaign against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed component, the New People's Army (NPA).

The source said that it is possible for the Arroyo administration to wage a similar war against the MILF, thereby derailing for long, the stalled peace in the southern Philippine region.

Scuttled

Jimmy Labawa, vice chairperson of the MNLF central committee, said that fighting has raged between his group and the government despite a peace accord signed 10 years ago. As a result, he said that the MNLF is hoping that a high-level tripartite meeting will push through in Jeddah with the government and the influential Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in revising the 1996 Final Peace Agreement. The conference has been proposed by the OIC itself.

The OIC has reportedly agreed with the MNLF's view that only the Philippines has benefited from the agreement, rendering MNLF "co-opted" in the first phase of the peace program involving the integration of some 5,750 MNLF members into the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the creation of the Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD) purpotedly to spur development.

OIC Secretary General Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu revealed four impediments to the full implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement.

In his report to the 33rd session of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers last June, Ihsanoglu said that the enactment of Republic Act 9054 in 2001 served the government alone by expanding the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as ancillary administrative unit.

He also noted that the Philippine government "has been implementing unilaterally neither the Tripoli Agreement nor the 1996 Peace Agreement but RA 9054."

"[RA 9054] has become the greatest impediment and stumbling block towards the implementation of the Agreements," he said.

Unilateral

Labawan lamented that the MNLF integrees in the AFP were not organized into a separate unit which is supposed to operate under a deputy commander of the Southern Command. As agreed upon, the commander was to come from MNLF.

But AFP asserted more power, even using its dominance to deploy MNLF integrees in combat duties against MILF, and recently, against their fellow MNLF forces, Lagawan said.

Phase II of the accord, involving the establishment of the separate government for the autonomous region, was also stalled with the implementation of RA 9054.

"There were many violations," Labawan said, mainly on the government's "provocative actions" forcing the MNLF to take offensives.

In February 2005, the Sulu Massacre involving government forces and which claimed four lives was believed to have renewed skirmishes between the MNLF and the government.

Before the year ended, clashes happened anew in Sulu brought about by the presence of U.S. troops during the Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) joint military exercises. Bulatlat

BACK TO TOP ■  PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION  ■   COMMENT

© 2006 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Media Center

Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.