Security News

Lessons from a peace pact

This is an article repost.

HONOLULU — Every administration tries to have one: a formal peace agreement is nice to cite as a presidential accomplishment.

President Aquino is no different. He has bended over even farther backward than his late mother, who met with Nur Misuari only in Sulu to jump-start peace talks with the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). P-Noy met with the head of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in a foreign land.

The founding members of the MILF broke away from the MNLF in 1981. Will there be another breakaway group if ever the MILF signs a formal peace pact with the government?

MILF chieftain al-Haj Murad Ebrahim no longer looked like a bandido in his photo op with P-Noy in Tokyo. Age mellows rebels.

But the MILF has many younger militants, and they might still be a long way from being bored with armed conflict. If they feel left out in a peace deal, or are unhappy with it in other ways, they might just leave the mellowed fogies in their group and start a new rebellion, just like the MILF did.

Many attacks attributed to MILF militants, including village raids and kidnappings, have fueled speculation that the MILF leadership has a tenuous hold on its members. Among the worst incidents was the deadly rampage staged by MILF members led by Ameril Umbra Kato after the Arroyo administration failed to railroad the approval of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in 2008.

When the government demanded that the MILF hand over Kato, the group’s leaders refused. I think this was not out of support for one of their own, but because the MILF leaders could not make him surrender.

In such embarrassing instances, MILF leaders simply declare their uncontrollable militants as rogue or breakaway elements.

There was no need for such a declaration in the case of Kato. Last year he formed his own army, called the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. That’s one breakaway group, and a dangerous one, set up even before a peace agreement is signed with the MILF. How many militants can Murad claim to truly represent at this point? Himself and 10 others?
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To be fair, perhaps the MILF is getting more recruits these days. But this won’t be due to the entry of more members like Kato, militants who must go along with a peace deal if it is to fare better than the one with the MNLF.

What could be swelling the ranks of the MILF these days is the possibility of finally having political control over its own enclave. Or, in the words of MILF commanders, a “sub-state.”

What that creature is exactly has yet to be clearly defined. MILF vice chairman Ghazali Jaafar said they have dropped their struggle for an independent state and were prepared to settle for “a nation but not separate from the republic.” In this sub-state the MILF would have control over major aspects of governance except national defense, foreign affairs, currency and coinage, and postal services.

Doesn’t that sound too much like terms recycled from the MOA-AD? The MILF is also sticking to its stance that it wants no part in governing the original Islamic sub-state, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which Jaafar described as “inutile.”

P-Noy’s decision to postpone the ARMM elections is said to be part of a grand scheme to lay the groundwork for lasting peace in Muslim areas of Mindanao, which factors in a role for the MILF.

Under the grand scheme, while the intricacies of carving out a sub-state for the MILF are being worked out, P-Noy would name officers-in-charge (OIC) for the ARMM — individuals of probity who can give one of the most impoverished regions in the country a taste of two years of good governance. The Palace hopes such reforms will be irreversible, that the ARMM will not return to the old ways of clan wars, endless violence, and corrupt governance sustained by patronage.

P-Noy’s problem is choosing the right person for the job. He must remember that it was his late mother Corazon Aquino who gave Andal Ampatuan Sr. a big break in Maguindanao, when she appointed him OIC town mayor of Maganoy, now Shariff Aguak, in 1986.

Among those reportedly being considered to head the ARMM are former Anak Mindanao party-list representative Mujiv Hataman, who is said to be backed by P-Noy’s adviser Ronald Llamas; Yasmin Busran-Lao, the only Muslim woman in the Liberal Party’s Senate slate last year; former ARMM vice governor Nabil Tan, who is an undersecretary of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa; and former ARMM governor Zacaria Candao, and Misuari.

If it’s Misuari, there goes the reform agenda for the ARMM. But Misuari, who is recognized by the Organization of Islamic Conference, cannot be completely sidelined. The government is said to be considering a sweetener for the MNLF to get on board in the peace process with the MILF. Palace officials are reportedly hoping that eventually, the nation will see “convergence” in the interests of the two groups.

Those are several major IFs, I told an administration official. He branded me a cynic.
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The peace pact with Misuari also offers another lesson that must be avoided in the case of the MILF: rebels cannot hold on to their weapons. The Philippine National Police, not the MILF’s own militants, must handle law enforcement within any sub-state. Otherwise, P-Noy will simply be legitimizing the existence of what could turn out to be the country’s largest and strongest private army.

That rarely bodes well for peace. After Misuari met with Cory Aquino in Sulu, I interviewed him in a hotel in Davao, where I was amazed by all the firepower brandished in public by his many bodyguards. Most of those guys not only never let go of their guns, Misuari even used money earmarked for development projects in the ARMM to build up one of the largest personal arsenals in the country.

The government should not fall for the saying in Mindanao that you can’t part a Muslim and his gun. If the MILF wants peace, its members must become Filipino citizens, pledging allegiance to the flag and subjecting themselves to Philippine laws, including those governing gun ownership.

Otherwise, P-Noy will end up with yet another peace pact covering a badly governed “sub-state” abundant with guns and little else, with the commanders getting richer and everyone else getting poorer.
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By: Ana Marie Pamintuan – Sketches
Source: The Philippine Star, Opinion, Aug. 10, 2011
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