Will there be peace in Mindanao, Part 1

Will there be peace in Mindanao?

(First of a series)

Will there be peace in Mindanao? The question has been asked many times in the past. It is still being asked unto this day.

Mindanao is majestic and enchanting. It is a paradise. Anyone who goes there cannot help falling in love with the region. Abundant with natural resources, it is known as the food basket of the Philippines. It is said that Mindanao can feed the whole Philippines. It can provide the country with sufficient capital assets for national progress. Its potentials are beyond question.

            Mindanao is the seat of the Philippines’ rich cultural heritage. It is home to many of indigenous communities. It has been reported that there are at least 18 different indigenous groups island which are collectively known as the “Lumad”. The Lumad does not belong to the much numerous Muslim or Moros (see ). Their presence enriches the cultural heritage of the region and provides the evidence of the cultural roots of the Filipinos.   

However, it is also home to different Moro insurgents. The armed conflicts in Mindanao traced their history in the 1900s with the coming of the Americans which used armed violence to suppress what they considered as moro banditry. Subsequent Philippine administrations are said to have followed the lead of their foreign predecessor in their pacification campaigns in the Moro homeland.

Separatist movements began in the late 60s. Nur Misuari, a young idealistic Moro intellectual from University of the Philippines, founded the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1969. The MNLF declared war against the Philippine government in its bid to establish an independent Bangsa Moro Republic (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_National_Liberation_Front>). 

The armed conflict in Mindanao has resulted to untold miseries to the people in the region. An international conflict monitoring websites estimated that at least 6, 015 people were killed from 1989 to 2012 because of the armed conflict between the government and the Moro armed groups Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Bangsa Moro Freedom Movement (BIFM) and the Abu Sayaff Group (ASG) (see ).  Like the MNLF, these other groups claimed to wage a war of national liberation according to their different interpretations of the right to self-determination of the people of Mindanao.   

Peace efforts have not been lacking. Religious groups and non-government organizations have been promoting peace dialogues to ease the tensions in the region and to get the parties to the conflict into the negotiating tables. These peace advocates advance peace by working with the parties carry out development initiatives in the region.  Foremost of these advocates is the Bishop-Ulama Conference composed of Catholic Bishops, Protestant pastors and Muslim Ulamas. They provide religious justification in the search for peace and understanding between contending groups in the conflict (see ). 

The government had engaged the MNLF and the MILF in the peace tables. Because the ASG and the BIFM are considered as purely (kidnapped for ransom) terrorist groups, it engages them with full military might.

 In 1976, the Philippine government under President Ferdinand Marcos signed a peace agreement with the MNLF in Tripoli, Libya. The Tripoli Agreement intended to place 13 provinces in Mindanao under the administration of a local autonomous authority. However, the agreement did not come into fruition. According to newspaper accounts, the government reneged in its commitments and attacked the MNLF camps (see ).  

In 1996, the government under President Fidel Ramos and the MNLF signed a Final Peace Agreement. The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was a landmark in the implementation of the said Final Peace Agreement.

However, the Final Peace Agreement resulted to a temporary peace only. The Islamic Command Council, a splinter group of the MNLF, immediately declared that it would continue waging war against the national government to pursue its bid for a separate state (see ).

Sometime later, Nur Misuari, then governor of the ARMM, went underground with his followers. He blamed the government for its alleged failure to implement the terms of the Final Peace Agreement. He was arrested for rebellion during the term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2007.  His eventual release from prison did not restore him to his former clout in Mindanao.  On January 23, 2012, he declared the establishment of the Independent Bangsa Moro Republic in Mindanao. In September 2013, he called on to the Philippine government to implement the terms of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement. Thereafter, his followers attacked Zamboanga City. The bloody siege resulted in the deaths of many civilians and combatants and in the destruction of properties worth millions (see ). (End for first part)