Peace in Mindanao: Still a Long Way to Go

By Carlos H. Conde

This article first appeared in the October 17, 2004, issue of Bulatlat.com.

DARAPANAN, Maguindanao – In his brown safari suit, black leather shoes and a Muslim head gear called kupiya, Al Haj Ebrahim Murad did not exude anything that people normally associate with a revolutionary. He looked and sounded amiable, more like a professor than the chairman of the main Islamic separatist movement in the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The only thing, perhaps, that was inconsistent with the grandfatherly air about the 54-year-old mujahideen were the dozens of armed MILF guerrillas in camouflage and fatigue uniforms, some wearing combat boots, some wearing flip-flop slippers, most with an alert look on their face. They milled outside Murad’s hut, a dozen or so eavesdropping on this late afternoon conversation in this camp about 20 minutes drive from Cotabato City.

The Armalites and grenade launchers around him notwithstanding, Murad exuded coolness and calm. As we were talking that Saturday afternoon, 43 Malaysians had just arrived to observe the implementation of the ceasefire between the MILF and the government. Lately, people concerned with the negotiations had been talking about two of perhaps the most contentious issues in the peace process: ancestral domain and what some in the MILF have unfortunately called “the final solution” to the conflict in Mindanao.

Murad is barely into his first year as MILF chairman; Salamat Hashim, the MILF’s founding chairman, died in July last year and it took weeks before the MILF named Murad as the successor. The former vice-chairman for military affairs, Murad seemed the logical choice: he had commanded the troops and, as we realized while talking with him, he is intelligent and articulate.

“The only hope”

Murad can be straightforward. To the insinuation that internal rifts are threatening to splinter the MILF and compromise its position in the negotiations, he had this to say: “The Bangsamoro people feel that their only hope is the MILF. There is no other viable organization that can represent the Bangsamoro people.”

On the charges that the MILF continues to harbor Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorists, Murad was frank. True, he said, foreigners who later turned out to be extremists may have infiltrated the MILF camps but this was only because, for the longest time, the MILF’s Camp Abubakar, its former base that was destroyed by the military in 2000, was open to all sorts of people. But to say, he added, that the MILF continues as an organization to accept and train terrorists is utter nonsense.

In his earlier pronouncements, Murad did not mince words in saying that some sectors in government, notably the military, did not want the MILF to go into the mainstream and did not want the peace process to succeed. This is the reason why the MILF, he said, is continually being lumped with Jemaah Islamiyah.

(Immediately after the 2003 bombings in Davao City, the government and the military blamed the MILF. Earlier this year, the government retracted and dropped the charges against the MILF, which had been a major obstacle in the negotiations.)

U.S. interests

Meanwhile, the United States, Murad said, is very concerned with terrorism in Mindanao and would want the peace process to succeed. This is why the U.S. has had indirect involvement, through the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). “It is in the best interest of the Philippine government and the United States to find a solution to the Mindanao problem,” he said. He added that the U.S. is afraid that if Mindanao continues to be mired in conflict, terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah would exploit the situation.

When asked about U.S. economic interests in Mindanao, where the USAID has been plunking millions of dollars in aid and where a number of U.S. companies operate, Murad replied that these could be the U.S.’s “long-term goal but its short term goal is fighting terrorism.”

At any rate, the peace process, which is scheduled to resume after the Ramadan, is now at a most crucial phase: the issues of ancestral domain and the solution to the conflict.

For years, the negotiations were hampered by the seemingly endless violations of cease-fire agreements and the government’s military operations in such areas as the Buliok Complex. Now, a more workable ceasefire mechanism is in place, with both government and MILF ceasefire teams actually working to defuse tension — many of them instigated by clan and tribal wars, not by the MILF or the AFP – and investigate complaints.

The relative calm in central Mindanao nowadays has afforded both sides the opportunity to move ahead with the peace process, Murad said.