Securing Peace In Mindanao

The Mindanao Problem

The current volatile peace and order situation in Mindanao may have been triggered by the cancellation of the signing of the GRP-MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). The failed Agreement would have “restored” to the Muslims in Southern Mindanao their long-sought homeland, and they would have become the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (a largely autonomous state within the Republic). The Mindanao problem, however, is not a recent phenomenon but has its roots in the long history of Spanish colonization of the country.

Betrayal

The decision of President Arroyo to cancel the signing of the Agreement simply festered an old open wound. It was taken by some quarters in the MILF as another treachery; a betrayal to a cause that would have brought peace to Mindanao. But Arroyo was left with no option because many local government officials in Mindanao questioned the constitutionality of the Agreement before the Supreme Court. There was also this issue of non-consultation on a very crucial matter that affects governance in Mindanao, where a wide area would be carved out to give way to the Bangsamoro ancestral domain. The area proposed for segregation to become the Bangsamoro homeland covers a good number of Christian-dominated communities. The group opposed to the MOA, which increased upon its exposure, claimed that the agreement clearly violates the Constitution as it dismembers the territory of the Republic and allows the establishment of a separate state. The high court declared the MOA-AD unconstitutional before its scheduled signing on August 5, 2008 in Malaysia.

The killing, burning and looting rampage of MILF Commander Bravo in Lanao del Norte and that of Commander Kato in Cotabato areas in the middle of August 2008 is symptomatic of a mishandled settlement of the Mindanao conflict. The resumption of war has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians and has spiraled the body count in the war zone. Indeed, there is a need for sober minds to rethink a way out from the present mess.

The “Muslim-Christian” Conflict

About a century earlier before the arrival of the Spaniards, Arab traders and missionaries were already in the country converting the natives to Islam not by force but by conversation and by its attractive way of life. Conversion and intermarriages of royal bloods resulted to the establishment of a number of Sultanates in Sulu and Mindanao. A sultanate is a Moro state where religious and political laws and practices are converged to form a way of life. When the Spaniards arrived in the country during the 16th century, they were very much surprised to find that their hated enemies in Europe – the “Moors,” actually the native adherents to Islam, were already effectively entrenched in the southern islands. The small states were progressive with organized armies and navies and were linked together at times by military alliances.

The enmity of the Spaniards towards the Muslims who invaded and occupied south of Spain in the 8th century was deep-seated. This was the reason why the Christian-Muslim War or, more specifically the Spanish-Muslim War, was exported to the Philippines to last for three centuries of costly running battles. The Spaniards could simply have avoided the local Muslims, pejoratively called latter as “Moros,” in the southern islands and concentrated their efforts in colonizing the fragmented barangays in the north. Instead, upon pacification and subsequent colonization of the natives in the Visayas and Luzon, they used the Christianized people in their intermittent raids, assaults and looting of Muslim villages. The Moros would also retaliate with equally ferocious and bloody pillage of Christianized communities in Northern Mindanao and the Visayas. This was the beginning of what is wrongly perceived as the “Muslim-Christian” conflict in Mindanao.


The Bangsamoro Struggle for Independence

In the later part of the 19th century, the Moros experienced more and more defeats in their battles with the well armed and more efficiently organized Spanish military. But until the end of Spanish colonization, they were never Christianized nor effectively conquered or ruled by the Spaniards.

The end of the Spanish-American War in the Philippines deprived the Filipinos of their well deserved independence from Spain. This led to the Filipino-American War that lasted for three years ending in the overwhelming defeat of the Filipinos.

Meanwhile, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the Spaniards, in the Treaty of Paris, ceded to the Americans their “Philippine territory,” which included Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, at the price of $20M. The Filipinos considered the cession anomalous as the Spaniards had no more rights over the Philippines as they had already defeated and overthrown them. The Moros, who did not consider themselves Filipinos at that time (and still some today), considered the cession of territory as illegal and null and void because it included the sale of their homeland – Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan, a territory that was never owned by the Spaniards.

How could one sell something that he does not own or possess? Argued the Moros. In their push to recover their homeland and recapture their independence the Moros assumed a more holistic identity as Bangsamoro (Moro nation) at the turn of the century. The Bangsamoro claims their ancestors were the original inhabitants of Mindanao and its adjacent islands, including Palawan and the Sulu archipelago before and at the time of Spanish conquest or colonization. Indeed, although the Spaniards were not able to control Sulu and nearby islands, and parts of Mindanao and Palawan, they were smart enough to include them in the territory they ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris.

Separation from the Christian Filipinos

Once the Americans had secured their rule of the Philippines the Bangsamoro people started to distance themselves from the Christian Filipinos. In 1921, 57 prominent Moro leaders signed a petition addressed to the US government declaring and manifesting the desire of the people of Sulu that Sulu Archipelago be made permanent American territory.

The petition complained of the failure of the Philippine Legislature to work for the benefit of the Moros; to recognize their religion; to pass any laws recognizing their marriages, and other customs and traditions.

The petition closed with these words:

“We, the people of Sulu, guarantee that we ourselves will maintain law and order in the event our territory is made part of the American nation. We feel assured that the American Government at Washington will provide special laws for our people, protecting our religion and our customs, and under the protecting arm of America we will have just courts, wherein we will receive justice” (Gowing, Muslim Heritage and Horizons, 1979).

In 1926 the US Congress placed on record a “Declaration of Rights and Purposes” sent to it in 1924 by a group of Moro leaders. In Moroland there was widespread support to the sentiment expressed in that Declaration (Congressional Record, 1926:8836, cited by Gowing, 1979):

“...in the event that the US grants independence to the Philippine Islands without provision for our retention under the American flag, it is our firm intention and resolve to declare ourselves an independent constitutional sultanate to be known to the world as the Moro Nation..”

That year their lobby in the US Congress secured them the Bacon Bill of 1926. The Bill, which was never passed, proposed to exclude Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan from the Philippine territory to be granted independence and make them part of the US territory.

When the U.S granted the Philippines its independence, the Bangsamoro leaders vehemently objected the inclusion of their homeland to the Philippine territory. Again, they would rather be under the control and supervision of the U.S.A. than to be part of the newly independent country. This attitude and political stand were born from deep distrust and insecurity of being together and be ruled by the very people they had fought for centuries with their Spanish patron and mentor.

Indeed, on foresight, if they have remained under the U.S.A they could have regained their independence the moment the United Nations decided for the decolonization of territories under the control of colonial powers.

Another proposal initiated by the Bangsamoro people to regain their independence was to hold a referendum in Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan. The referendum would allow the people in these areas to decide on the issue “whether these territories would be incorporated under the government of Luzon and the Visayas, or become part of the territory of the United States, or become independent” 50 years from the grant of Philippine independence in 1946.

This proposal gained no grounds and finally died in 1996 (50 years after the grant of Philippine independence), subsequent to the signing of the Peace Agreement between the GRP and the MNLF under the Ramos administration which expanded the benefits of Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) through the creation of the Zone for Peace and Development (ZOPAD) in Mindanao.

The Bangsamoro continued to work for its independence from the Philippine Government. However, their leaders realized that to work with the government and abide with the political regulations of the country gave them no opportunities of attaining their ancestral heritage. Thus, the MNLF under Nur Misuari who “slept” with the government under the peace accord of 1996 was discredited and kept in the cold. The cudgel for liberation transferred to the hands of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Cotabato splintered group of the MNLF under the late Hashim Salamat. The goal of the MILF is no less than to build an Islamic state to rise in the Bangsamoro ancestral land.

Government Action or Reaction:
Appeasement, Negotiation, and War

Different government administrations employed different strategies in dealing with the Mindanao problem. The immediate post war regimes adopted a policy of appeasement. To restrain political leaders from committing disturbances, public development funds were disbursed to them that rarely reached or benefited at all their constituencies. This only worsened the plight of the Bangsamoro people. Pres. Marcos waged battles, made peace settlement here and there and likewise “bribed” influential Muslim leaders with positions in government and public work funds. President Joseph Estrada went beyond rhetoric and declared and engaged the MILF in an all-out war. Again the Bangsamoro rebels may have been defeated but not destroyed. They were able to recoup loses and were sooner back to their fighting form. When Arroyo came to power, she negotiated for ceasefire and began another peace talk with the rebels.

Mismanagement and External Influence on the Peace Process

The Arroyo peace initiative, which resulted to the ballyhooed breakthrough - the GRP-MILF Agreement Ancestral Domain and the consequent establishment of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), was actually undermined by mismanagement and the apparent intrusion of external interest into the accord.

The Arroyo dispensation put everybody in the dark as to the substance and extent of the agreement to the eleventh hour. The Congress, local government officials and the Supreme Court were not on board of the peace process. The backlash of protests and legal actions following the announcement of the scheduled signing of the MOA only showed how un-transparent the agreement was pursued.

On the other hand, the creation of a Bangsamoro state, which the MOA-AD by all intent and purposes was all about, was apparently influenced, shaped and supported by the US to protect its interest in Southeast Asia. This is evidenced by some preparatory moves - the heavy outpouring of US economic and capacity building assistance in Central Mindanao during the last decade, such as the massive road, airport and other infrastructure project in General Santos- Cotabato areas, and the many other confidence building projects under the USAID Growth and Equity in Mindanao (GEM) and Ecology Governance (EcoGov) in Muslim Mindanao, Basilan and the Sulu archipelago. It was also no coincidence that the amiable lady US Ambassador had been unnaturally visible in the war-torn areas while the MOA-AD was being forged.

Arroyo’s Flirtation with China

The flirtation of the Arroyo regime with the Chinese after the withdrawal of the Filipino contingent in Iraq, which irked Washington, apparently shaped developments in Mindanao. Arroyo had the Chinese smiling with the many favors given them, such as the joint exploration of the offshore resources in the Philippine waters near Kalayaan islands and Palawan, the controversial ZTE broadband and DepEd IT deals, the North Luzon Railway project and, lately, the mining concessions granted them. This maneuver to spread China’s sphere of influence worried the US to no end. This may have caused the rush schedule (sans public consultations) for the signing in Malaysia of the aborted GRP-MILF AD Agreement on August 5, 2008. It seemed to appear that Pres. Arroyo might have also been put in the dark by her lapdogs (negotiators) who warmly wagged their tails to their US master.

Apparently, the fingerprints of the US were all over the Agreement. A Bangsamoro state, whose people are historically friendly with the Americans, would allow the US to jointly exploit with the Bangsamoro the rich natural resources of the area, as well as likely to establish a military base within its territory, thereby recovering its geopolitical and military hegemony in the area that is now strongly challenged by China.


Back to the Negotiation Table

Of late, there is an apparent consensus to resume talks and attend to the various issues obtaining in the aborted ancestral domain agreement. Accordingly, the GRP wants to pursue peace negotiation with DDR as the guiding principle. The DDR refers to the peace process framework of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. The MILF, however, views the framework as a strategy to return to the status quo, that is, to the period prior to the initialed MOA-AD. To operate within such framework is perceived as recapitulation, almost an abandonment of what has been reached in the aborted accord. Indeed, how the negotiation will proceed and end is a tricky question considering the many conflicting interests on and under the negotiation table.


Perspective

The Mindanao conflict is a complicated puzzle to solve. A win-win solution has eluded the peacemakers. What agreements reached in the past proved nothing but shaky compromises to suspend grand-scale bloodshed. Consider, for instance, the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and the Zone for Peace and Development in Mindanao (ZOPAD). Both were hailed as breakthroughs in peace negotiation. But even before the ink had dried on the peace document the combatants on both sides were already back in the warpath.

It requires most of the time blood to rewrite history, or to reverse the imperatives of history.

Mindanao, or a great part of it, might have been a Bangsamoro homeland. But it could as well be the homeland of the Lumads before some of them converted to Islam. The reality of the time, however, is that Mindanao is no longer the homeland of either the Lumads or the Bangsamoro but the homeland of the people who are now called Filipinos. To ignore this truth, to continuously harp on old favorable historical facts that have been covered by layers and layers of more recent and opposing facts, renders the search for justice and peace an exercise in futility.

Pragmatism should rule in the negotiation table. A win-win solution is a solution that addresses the aspirations of people within the framework of the current reality in Mindanao – that the island is now the homeland of a people who are there by virtue of their being a Filipino. While some special rights may be granted to some people who have different beliefs and traditions, this should not in anyway deprive others of their fundamental rights as citizens of the land.