“If the peace process were derailed, how many more graves would we have to dig?”
President Benigno Aquino asked this question on a televised speech, asking for continued support of the Bangsamoro peace process following the January 25th Mamsapano raid in Maguindanao province The raid was led by the Special Actions Forces (SAF) of the Philippine police and resulted in a deadly clash with members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). This action was undertaken by by the SAF to capture a Malaysian bombmaker known as Marwan who was on the FBI’s most-wanted list and whose death is now considered verified. But so too were the deaths of 44 members of the SAF, 17 members of the MILF, and 7 local villagers, including a five year old girl. Many wondered if the peace process would be a casualty as well; following the Mamsapano incident, deliberations on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) were immediately suspended.
It didn’t end there. According to Philippine news sources and an OCHA report, clashes subsequently erupted between BIFF and MILF fighters over a “rido” or a intra-Moro clan conflict in Pagalungan and Pikit, and later it was reported that BIFF members burned down the homes of villagers said to be MNLF members. These incidents were followed by an “all-out offensive” launched in late February by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) against the BIFF . A March 27th International Migration Organization (IOM) report gives the number of displaced people as being over 120,000. The IOM conducted assessments of evacuation centers on March 12th and 13th and determined that food would run out in 20 days.
We heard so many stories of what life was like for people in these centers. I read about three young Muslim women who had just evacuated to a center in Tulunan last month. We visited Tulunan, where the first “peace zones” were established, not through negotiation but desperation; in the late 80’s, the villagers in the municipality of Tulunan were watching their children die of illness and starvation in the evacuation center and so as a group they decided to return to their homes, whatever the consequence. “Primal courage,” they called it. I spoke privately with an older man in the sitio of Bituan who remembered what it was like in the center at that time. In our public meeting, many had stated that as a people they had healed and moved on, and believed in peace. I asked this man if that was true for him, if he had found healing. His drawn face looked haunted. “No,” he said, looking away. “No.”
Nearly everyone we spoke to in Mindanao was hopeful and believed that the BBL would mean peace. Even Dr. Zachary Abuza, a longtime analyst of the region, described the BBL as “legislation whose implementation will end the 43 year-old Moro insurgency in southern Philippines.” Very few would countenance the possibility that the peace process might again fail, and those that did only considered the alternative in hushed tones. Deliberations are set to resume on April 20th, but recently, the chair of the House of Representatives’ Ad Hoc Committee on the BBL was optimistic about the passage with the exception of some of the provisions which have been deemed unconstitutional, as well the possibility for the expansion of the new Bangsamoro territory through a petition that, if signed by 10% of residents, would allow contiguous areas to vote on whether or not it should be included. So we’ll see what an approved BBL looks like, and more importantly, we’ll see what the Midnanaoans think the approved BBL looks like.
Meanwhile I wonder about those we met in the villages of Maguindanao province, how those who were forced to flee may return to find their homes and fields destroyed, their precious animals lost, as they have so many times before. According to OCHA, 17,000 people have just returned to their homes in Pikit after the recent conflict; Pikit is where the “Space for Peace” in the “tri-people” sitio of Baruyan in the Nalapaan barangay was created in 2000. When we visited Baruyan with Father Bert Layson, we were told that in previous conflicts the villagers could not trust each other, were divided among themselves according to who they believed was supporting which side (MNLF, MILF, AFP). But intense community work supported by people like Father Bert and village leaders created a sense of a mutual collaboration for peace that unified them and allowed them to negotiate successfully for ceasefire and safety among many different armed combatant forces. Once, they told us, when conflict flared they ran away separately, divided even in displacement as Christians, Muslims, and Lumads. Their efforts as a Space for Peace could not end the larger conflict, but now they say when they must run, they no longer run in different directions: they run together.