MAGUINDANAO, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / May 11, 2008) – The Philippines’ largest Muslim separatist rebel group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, warned that fighting may erupt in Mindanao if peace talks with the Arroyo government fail.
The MILF accused President Gloria Arroyo of reneging on an earlier commitment that would grant a separate homeland for about four million Muslims in the country’s second largest island which is home to more than 17 million Christians and indigenous tribes.
Talks had been stalled since last year after Manila rejected MILF demands for territories in the strife-torn, but mineral-rich region in Mindanao.
MILF leader Muhammad Ameen said Arroyo will have blood on her hands if hostilities break out in the south. “President Arroyo is reversing her policy from all-out peace policy to an all-out war,” he said.
Arroyo opened up peace talks with the MILF, an army of about 12,000 mujahideen, and signed a cease-fire deal in 2001. But the slow progress of the negotiations is threatening the volatile peace and security in the region. Many rebel commanders are getting more restless and wanted to abandon the peace talks.
“This is a tragic decision. She has done an irreversible damage to the pacific ways of resolving conflicts, which the two parties, the Malaysian government, Libya, Brunei, and Japan, and other members of the international community, have nurtured for years.”
“She will be hounded by her conscience, if she has one, until she dies for abandoning the peace talks in favor of a bloodbath in Mindanao,” Ameen said.
Malaysia, which is brokering the seven-year old peace talks, has already recalled about two dozens cease-fire observers deployed in Mindanao over the weekend because of the stalled negotiations. Kuala Lumpur said it wanted progress in the peace talks and blamed Manila for the delay in the negotiations.
The MILF said government troops are beefing up firepower in Mindanao and is causing tension in the region, considered as a hotbed of insurgency and terrorism. And the extreme poverty situation, especially in Muslim areas, is further aggravated by the lack of basic government services.
Ameen said they wanted peace to reign, but his group is also prepared to defend their freedom. “We do not like war, war is a menace to everyone, but for those who want peace to prevail must prepare for war,” he said. “Readiness and preparedness are normal tasks in a revolutionary struggle such as the MILF.”
The MILF, a breakaway faction of the larger Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), has been fighting more than three decades for the establishment of a Muslim state in the southern Philippines.
The MNLF, under Nur Misuari, signed a peace deal with Manila in September 1996 ending decades of bloody war. After the peace agreement was signed, Misuari became the governor of the Muslim autonomous region. But despite the peace accord, there was a widespread disillusionment with the weak autonomy they were granted.
Under the peace agreement, Manila would have to provide a mini-Marshal Plan to spur economic development in Muslim areas in the south and livelihood and housing assistance to tens of thousands of former rebels to uplift their poor living standards.
Misuari is now facing rebellion charges after his forces tried, but failed to overrun a major military base in the southern Sulu province and another group held hostage over 100 people in Zamboanga City in 2001 in an attempt to stop the elections in the Muslim autonomous region. (Mindanao Examiner)
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