The Philippines: Counter-Insurgency Vs. Counter-Terrorism in Mindanao

Intertwined with the three groups are about two dozen foreign jihadis. Half are believed to be under MILF protection in a JI camp known as Jabal Quba 3 in Maguindanao; the rest, led by Indonesian national Umar Patek, are working with the ASG. The latter group includes some JI members, including Patek himself and his better known but less important colleague, Joko Pitono alias Dulmatin, who frequently has been reported dead only to turn up several weeks later. The unit, however, is a mixture of non-Filipino South East Asians from at least three groups (JI, KOMPAK and Darul Islam) and Philippine Muslims from ASG, MILF and the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of converted or born-again Muslims.6 It appears to be completely independent of the JI leadership and has only sporadic communication with the group in Jabal Quba. Its Indonesian links are more with KOMPAK, but it is now more accurately seen as an ASG offshoot.

Over the last decade, these groups have interacted and realigned in a way that makes any effort to address one in isolation from the others nearly impossible.

The MILF

The largest group of rebels continues to pursue peace talks with the Philippine government, while being unable or unwilling to control commanders who work with the ASG or foreign jihadis. A 1997 “Agreement for General Cessation of Hostilities” became the baseline for all subsequent negotiations. The implementing guidelines established government and MILF Coordinating Committees for the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), with six members on each side. These committees remain the principal ceasefire monitoring mechanism.7 Negotiations collapsed in 2000 after the Estrada government launched an attack on MILF headquarters; they resumed, with Malaysia facilitating, in 2001, but after five years of slow but incremental progress, they ground to a halt in late 2006 over the key issue of Muslim “ancestral domain”, including the territory to be included in the new autonomous region. Nevertheless, what the sides called “clarificatory” and “technical” meetings took place in December 2006, August, September and October 2007 and January 2008.

On 24 October 2007, both sides announced with great fanfare in a joint statement that the peace process “is firmly back on track towards the holding of the Formal Talks before the end of the year”.8 However, in mid-December, just before a memorandum of agreement was to be signed in Kuala Lumpur, the MILF decided not to participate, saying the government had introduced “new and extraneous elements” that violated the consensus. From the beginning, there had been an agreement that the government would not raise the Philippines constitution, which in the MILF’s view reflects non-Moro interests, and the MILF would not raise independence. But in the government’s draft agreement, the inclusion of new territories in the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity was to be “subject to constitutional processes” – meaning there would have to be a plebiscite in the communities to be added to the existing ARMM, many of which have mixed Muslim, Christian and indigenous populations.9

The MILF argued the constitution is premised on a unitary state that does not permit genuine power-sharing, and a plebisicite would be Manila’s escape clause, allowing the government to renege on treaty obligations, as it had after the 1996 treaty with the MNLF.10 Other conflicts around the world, such as Bougainville in Papua New Guinea and southern Sudan, had been settled through extra-constitutional means, they argued. Although at least two proposals, discussed in more detail below, have been floated to get around the stalemate, the talks remain stalled. Despite the impasse, the MILF’s moderate head, Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, who succeeded Salamat Hashim after the latter’s death in 2003, reinforced his commitment to the peace process at an “expanded” MILF central committee meeting (8 to 11 March 2008) in Butig, Lanao del Sur, on the Mindanao mainland.

Frustrated at the slow pace of the talks, Malaysia, their facilitator since 2001 and leader of an International Monitoring Team (IMT) in Mindanao since 2004, announced in April 2008 that it would begin withdrawing its ceasefire monitors on 10 May. The 59-strong IMT has played a key role, supporting the CCCH and civil society Local Monitoring Teams (LMTs) in dampening down recurrent skirmishes between government and MILF forces,. Without international support, these mechanisms may not be able to withstand a drift towards renewed conflict.11