Mindanao clashes subside by 1,200%
GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc
The Philippine Star 08/12/2005

How does one measure peace? In Mindanao, torn by 35 years of Moro secession but now steeped in peace negotiations, it’s by stories. For instance, when big news used to be of Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels ambushing government troops, it’s now of their "clashes" in basketball. Or, of families returning from refugee camps to replant cornfields. And, of tots learning once again to laugh, play and do school Math.

Statistics back up the stories. In 2002 under a shaky, because largely unsupervised truce, soldiers and rebels skirmished 112 times. When the Armed Forces pursued bandits inside the MILF’s Buliok camp in the first half of 2003, hundreds of fighters from both sides perished in 410 clashes. In the second half, when monitors from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya arrived to ensure cessation of hostilities, brushes fell to 33. From Oct. 2004, when formal talks to settle the conflict resumed, to June this year, only 37 cease-fire violations were reported. More tellingly in the same period, soldiers and rebels teamed up 21 times to hunt down rustlers and Abu Sayyaf terrorists, and confront warring clans.

Mindanao peace is still tentative, but it is holding so far. And, going by conservative forecast of government peace panelist retired Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, political concord may be reached by middle of 2006. Counterparts in the MILF team are more optimistic, saying a peace settlement can be signed after three more meetings in Kuala Lumpur.

A sign that lasting peace may be at hand is that businessmen from Christian enclaves have begun to venture jointly with Muslim traders. The Mindanao Business Council has taken the lead to train erstwhile rebels for livelihood projects backed by multimillion-dollar foreign aid. Most of the projects – banana plantations and seaweed culture for export as candied chips and carrageenan – are in MILF-held locales in the five provinces of the Muslim Autonomous Region. But the MBC will soon expand to the eight other provinces with large Muslim populations, chairman Antonio Santos vows. Any end of war brings commerce. But for now, says Santos whose son is married to a Moro princess, Christian and Muslim business leaders are helping instill confidence on both sides.

A major confidence builder was MILF chairman Hashim Salamat’s renouncing of terrorism before he died from illness last year. Manila authorities matched it with more funds to rehabilitate ruined communities. The US-Agency for International Development plunked in $26.5 million in 2004, a fourth of it for small businesses, and the rest to irrigate crops and transmit electricity. Other countries sent aid for educational-TV, farm tools and fishing boats. The World Bank has earmarked a $35-million soft loan once a peace treaty is signed.

Peace negotiators have hurdled so far two of the three major issues: security of armed units, along with joint anti-crime operations, during the cease-fire and beyond, and reconstruction of Muslim areas. Under the first, MILF rebels presently are driving Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadafy Janjalani and ten suspected Indonesian terrorists out of hideouts onto soldiers’ lines. Reconstruction has always been a government priority, although hobbled by perennial fund shortage.

Last in the list is the issue of ancestral domain, which would define the "Bangsamoro territory" under a peace accord. The term used to raise the hackles of civilian and military officials who interpreted it as separation from the Republic, and Christians who fear expulsion from their land and work. With new aspirations of Christian and Muslim leaders for a federal-type government, however, it now means peaceful co-existence and self-rule from imperial Manila.