Author Archives: Anoopjot Kaur

In one of my previous blogs, I had mentioned the female mayor of city of Tulunan we had met. She said this thing that has stuck with me because it speaks to our inherent need to find a way to cope with our circumstances. She said “when you stumble, other people laugh and you laugh with them”, to put it in context, she mentioned this when we asked her why people giggle while talking about very serious topics. So you can see that the laughter is used to mask something that is too hard to deal with, it a coping mechanism. We all do it, because we need to find a way to make sense of something so unspeakable.

I have never experienced or know anyone that has experienced the kind of grief we heard about on the ground, but after coming back from Mindanao, I had to find a way cope with everything. Actually, I am not sure if I really have found a way. I don’t think I have completely made sense of everything for myself. Some things I have simply casted of as incomprehensible such as the unnecessary violence or the lack of responsibility on the government’s part. But, I can now understand why it is so important to make sense of things and be able put them in neat categories, it’s away to keep yourself sane.

A poster on a door at a school we went to.

Even while we were in Mindanao, the nightly debriefs helped sometimes and other times they didn’t. At certain points everything would become so overpowering and emotional, that our group would even use laughter to diffuse the built up thoughts. Our van became this place where we could come back and look at each other and understand that everyone was having a difficult time making sense of things, it became a place where we could cope using laughter and the world that we understood. Now I try everyday to find a way to understand and make sense of the atrocious things I hear in classrooms, not to place blame on something or someone but to understand why these things happen and how have we become so okay with it. I think the best way is to be honest to yourself and remind yourself to do your best.

Resources of every kind are abundant in Mindanao, from various tropical fruits to precious metals to oil. This means that international corporations are also abundant, and ready and willing to reap the benefits. When we met the Mindanao Development Authority, they described the investment haven that Mindanao is, which essentially means that Mindanao is open for business and anyone and everyone is welcome. Land rights and explorations rights are given to foreign corporations as long as they meet the minimum requirements of investment, of which the national government takes the largest chunk and the locals see basically nothing. I think it is really important to point out the role that development has played in proliferating the Mindanao conflict, because the very land rights that people are fighting for on the ground is being handed out by the government without any concern for these very people.

Protests against a Swiss mining company. Source: ilps-phils.com

The conflict, although it may appear to be religious is equally about the land and whom does it belong to. It is really easy to understand why most Mindanaoans refer to Manila as Imperial Manila as the relationship between the two halves of the country is still very much based in its colonial roots. Development – infrastructure and management of natural resources – and peace building – values and principles of the community – are intertwined not just in Mindanao but also all around the world. People in Mindanao want their concerns to be heard by their government, but when foreign investment is given precedence over the concerns of people, the line between development and peace building becomes very stark. Locals are taken out of the equation and further marginalized by the companies that come in and take over local markets. I think that if Filipino the government wants to promote peace in Mindanao, it should really think twice about its priorities.

Peace is a conflated issue in Mindanao, everyone that could, has taken a crack at it. There are so many different philosophies and issues that the idea of peace covers that you are left wondering peace according to whom? Because, everyone has their own take on peace, for example every religious faction sees peace differently, the foreign NGOs see it differently, the government sees it differently and even the kids are seeing and understanding it differently. Peace education is one of the key ways that the national government has recommended that the topic be approached. The idea is, that if young people learn and understand the importance of peace from an early age, they will have a greater appreciation for it. However, what exactly is being done to teach peace to the young ones?

From what we gathered, not much. Schools are labeled zones of peace if the administration decides that it wants to be a zone of peace school and there is an unspoken agreement that no violence should take place near or within this school. Schools that are proactive (very few) send their teachers to receive training on peace and reconciliation but we did not hear of any targeted training provided by the government for teachers to teach students about peace. One very curious fact we heard at a school in the city of Columbio was that the students are not actually taught the history of the conflict, but rather the focus is placed on peaceful behavior. I understand that it probably won’t serve a real purpose teaching young children the history of the conflict – may even traumatize them – but in the long run isn’t it better to know what has taken place in your country to understand how important peace really is. The role of the department of education is highly lacking in promoting peace education and providing any substantial help to these schools or teachers. The curriculum is there but hardly any textbooks or teachers prepared to teach the topics mentioned in the curriculum.

These signs can be found in front of schools all over Mindanao

I would like to point out one idea that has been highly successful in teaching students the importance of peace. They are called “peace tables”, they are physical tables allocated to discussing quarrels between students and coming to an understanding and taking responsibility. Peace tables are the shining heroes of the peace education process; teachers gave us examples of how students from very different backgrounds come to an agreement over their differences. I think the idea of children openly stating what is on their minds and discussing why they may think differently is simply brilliant. I believe these techniques would probably even serve them well when they are older because the idea of understanding and appreciating the differences between themselves and others is even more important when they are older. Education in the Philippines and a concrete role played by the department of education requires a lot of work. The government has realized that children are the key to attaining peace in the future, now they just need to get serious about it.

Peace Tables explained

When I had first decided to do participate in this field research trip, I had joined because of my interest in learning about the displaced populations within Mindanao due to the ongoing violent strives. After the first couple days, I realized that the kind of data I would need to analyze displacement trends would be unattainable because of lack of time. I ended up researching instead the BBL, but I wanted to write about what we did hear about displacement. Over the span of the conflict, over millions of people have been displaced in Mindanao either due to violence or erratic weather. I want to go over two of the main displacement factors we learned on the ground.

Tulunan is a small city in the Maguindanao region, and according to the mayor of the city, displacement is very real within her city and surrounding areas as well. Displacement is temporary – anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months – and periodic, taking place every couple months according to where a fighting breaks out and how bad it is. Thus, the cities, including Tulunan have to be prepared, that is an area – usually a school or city hall – is designated to temporarily housing the displaced people and the local government provides food. People are expected to return to their homes and livelihoods after a reasonable amount of time, but according to the mayor, may people do not return to their homes because they feel that it is unsafe and are thus forced to locate alternate housing and work. This is a huge problem, because there are no jobs for people who are displaced to occupy in other regions, the government does not want to create a dependency culture, so people are left to fend for themselves. Cities such as Tulunan have an ad-hoc reintegration program that attempts to provide stress debrief and food but these programs are temporary and more often than not have no funding.

Another type of displacement that takes place often in Mindanao is due to the erratic weather, Mindanao is right in the middle of the typhoon belt and many communities have had to move when rivers overflow or due to mudslides. In 2012, Typhoon Bopha displaced close to 3 million people. The government does provide evacuation spaces but they are temporary, people are expected to locate housing or rebuild because their house have disappeared because of excessive flooding. The temporary housing that the government created in 2012 in Cagayan de Oro has now become permanent and people are still residing in them as there is no where else to go. The apartments are truly what you would could match stick boxes, barely one room and another room with kitchen and living space combined, and some of these places are housed by 5-8 people. The basic needs that I had mentioned in a previous blog come to mind, as people are surviving and making the best of what they have. Displacement in Mindanao is a very serious issue and one of the main reasons that the government is considering the BBL because addressing the root causes such as violence may help address future displacement.

So, last week we finally had our long awaited presentation on our trip to Mindanao on campus. I am not going to say that I was exactly excited for it because I am a terrible public speaker and having to act a role in front of a group of people is the worst thing that could happen to be. I went in to our rehearsal extremely nervous because I did not know the format of the presentation. Once everyone gathered and we started talking about the ideas that the planning team had come up with and got on the stage to act out our roles, suddenly everything fell right into place. Prof. Iyer was right in saying that we all knew what we had heard on the ground and what we wanted to convey to people, it just needed to said. Even though the rehearsal was tiring and lasted longer than we anticipated, the two groups (Los Angeles team and Mindanao team) came together seamlessly and helped each other achieve the results we all wanted. I think Prof. Iyer was the only common denominator between the groups and helped us understand the commonalities between the two very different places with very similar problems.

The Mindanao team!

Now, I am left wondering how and when will I ever get together with this group to talk and discuss everything that comes to mind about our trip. Off course we learned a great deal on this trip, not just about the conflict but about people and what compels people to flee their homes and take up arms. But I think we also learned a great deal about ourselves and the very tiny bubble of MIIS and what our education means and what do we want out of it. I know these are very big ideas and not everyone on the trip will agree with me but I think we were all compelled to contemplate various aspects of ourselves through out the trip, the debriefs, the conversations we had about Mindanao with others and even as I sit right now to right this blog. Self reflection is key in getting the most out of a field experience and I think or hope that we all have reflected to appreciate the lessons we learned. I want to thank everyone on the trip for allowing me the opportunity to learn from them and Prof. Iyer for all the work she put into giving us a life changing experience.

A stop along the way…

A sign in Maguindanao promoting BBL.

The Bansamore Basic Law (BBL) was all the hype when we arrived in Davao. To sum it up in a sentence, the BBL is a peace accord put forth by the MILF to the government of Philippines replaces the previous peace accord of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Some of the key differences are that MNLF had proposed the previous accord but BBL is the handy work of MILF, BBL would also bring Sharia law to the region, along with expanding the ARMM region to include more cities. So everywhere we went, we asked people about their thoughts on the BBL, do the support it? Do they think it will pass? Everyone off course, depending on their political leaning had a different response. Ranging anywhere from extreme excitement for the inclusive methods this new law would bring to intense disdain for being discriminatory to every other group of people in the region, BBL became a big part of our trip. One of the things that we heard that stood out was from a leader of the Columbio Multisectoral Ecology Movement Office (CMEM), she said that even if the BBL does pass or if it does not pass, violence in the region in inevitable because of the contrasting views of opposing factions. On the last day of our trip, I had jotted down in my journal that chances for BBL are looking well, but looking back now, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A sign outside the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society in support of BBL.

Due to the Mamasapano incident, in which over 60 individuals were killed in a police operation, including 18 MILF members. Before this incident even occurred, many people were against the BBL and the idea of government reaching an according with another rebel group. The Mamasapano incident provided just the right reasoning for bashing BBL and reminding the people of Philippines that the government should not engage with outlaws. Immediately after the incident, all talks on the BBL were officially suspended; leaving people that had been working to promote it for the past two years foundering for air. I am again reminded of the statement that the leader from CMEM had made, that either way violence would be inevitable, but the BBL is not even close to passing and the chances have become so slim. Talks are officially to resume on April 20^th, and I have no inkling as to what will come out of them. It was easier to gauge and understand the opinions of people when we were on the ground, now just reading the latest news clips thousands of miles away just leaves me confused and frustrated.

A sign outside the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society counting down days till the decision on BBL is made.

Any place around the world that is rife with conflict, practitioners think immediately how to resolve this conflict and how to bring peace. That’s what we learn in school too, various conflict resolution techniques and what peace means. While in the field, I learned the simplest and the most intrinsic ways that people wanted peace. The average Mindanoan is not concerned about the policies being enacted at the national level or to understand the impact the conflict in Mindanao has had on them psychologically. Every organization (private or federal) that we heard from spoke to the need for good governance and the various methods they are using to train people in good governance. However, after talking to everyday people and what they need, all they wanted was food on their table and shelter over their heads and maybe good governance. That is not to say that good governance and understanding the underpinnings of a conflict is not important, but rather that while we pursue these avenues, we forget about the most basic needs that human beings have.

Food served to us at a civil society organization.

Since I have been back to Monterey, I have seriously contemplated how unnecessary and conflated our needs are on this side of the world. Our lives are so complex and there is so much that we constantly want…yet, even if we do achieve that, there is always more. For me, that speaks to our basic needs, and how much we take them for granted. Looking at the bigger picture, our privilege justifies these needs while others are barely able to put food on their tables. I am not exactly sure where I am going with this, but I have been meaning to write about the insane privilege we posses in the western world. The people we met in Mindanao, especially those that are affected by these macro level policies and the laws just want their basic needs met. I am not sure if we as a society have forgotten that people only need the simplest things to survive, but then again, these very conflicts exist over these very simple things such as food sources and land.

The food in the image above was grown in the land behind the house.

While we were in Mindanao, listening to people tell us their stories, their insider story of the conflict that has plagued the region for years, I would always find myself thinking about how hard it is to tell your stories to an outsider. Especially when those stories are about wounds that never healed and I am asking someone to open up and tell me about these wounds again. I soon found out that the retelling of these stories may not have necessarily been painful but rather cathartic, as people were willingly tell us about violent community clashes and personal losses as though they needed to tell someone and they just wanted someone to listen. It is pretty straight forward if you think about it, how often have we found ourselves in a situation where we feel the need to convey a thought or story to someone but that did not happen. When a conflict lasts as long as the one in Mindanao, people have more and more painful stories to tell and most people are not heard; and you find yourself in a place where someone is willing to listen, you tell.

The stories we heard were so diverse in subjects and time that we would often have to confirm with each other whether we had heard some pieces correctly. The impact that these stories made means that these stories will never be forgotten either for the teller or for the listener. One of these stories that have stuck with me is that of a former female MNLF fighter. The reason I mention “female” is because it was a huge deal to be able to meet a former fighter and that too a woman, it helped us understand a new side of the conflict we didn’t know about. The former fighter retold her story of how she joined MNLF and the various roles she played, such as providing financial assistance, food security, covertly delivering messages and an impromptu medic. She nonchalantly mentioned that at times they had to perform a serious operation such as severing a limb. She also told us that she had joined MNLF because it was a way of seeking safety within the jungles rather than stay at home and be abused my the military. I had read about some soldiers at the time sexually abusing women but when she mentioned that the reasoning for her joining a rebel group was because home was no longer safe, we were all left aghast. I had put a face to a horrid fact I had read in an article, and that is something I will never forget.

Since we have returned from Mindanao, many people including my friends and family have asked what people in the Philippines think of the conflict, or what did I think of it? So, every time I have thought about all that we heard and learned in Mindanao about the conflict, I am left wondering what were people really trying to tell us? Or in other words what they wanted us to hear and what did I really hear. I know it may sound a bit unclear now but I want to hash this out using some examples of different people we met.

One of the first organizations that we met in Mindanao was a government development agency. This agency is responsible for coordinating incoming socio-economic projects, with a focus on infrastructure and thus acquiring investments to build that infrastructure. They provided us with a great deal of statistics on the development and international investments taking place in Mindanao and the various programs that are being put in place currently. As a bureaucratic government agency, what did they want to us hear when they presented this information to us? They wanted us to know that Mindanao is an investment haven and that the national mentality was shifting from combat to peace building, with a focus on the building. As they are a development agency, it is clear why they would want to focus on the success of their various development projects and convey a sense of security to future investors. However, we are not investors, just students, thus the pitch was not exactly successful on us. What I heard at the end and wrote down in my notes was that there was a serious effort made to brush the conflict and its unseemly end products under the rug, because inflating your short comings to outsiders will not exactly help you gain future investments.

We also met an Islamic cooperative that focuses on peace building, livelihood and capacity building at the local (barangay) level in the Maguindanao region. They work on various small-scale programs to increase food and physical security through improved governance. The individuals that are part of the organization participate in various training programs offered by NGOs on peace building. We were informed of various aspects of daily life that have been improved because of the improvements in governance, such as agricultural practices, education programs and conflict resolution methods. The group present wanted us to hear and understand that they had the situation under control, they had figured out a way to address the problems they face. However, after our group had questioned them on health and women related issues and the lack of attention paid to these very important aspects of peace and capacity building; I left with a very different understanding from the intended. I understood that the paradigm of what is needed for peace building and governance was determined by a the male faction of the group, this meant that issues that were of concern to women would not be considered important in terms of livelihood and capacity building. It led me to question every time I heard the words peace building and conflict resolutions, that is to say peace building according to whom? And conflict resolution according to whom?

Our class officially ended yesterday…and yes it was a bittersweet experience. Sweet because we have all gained so much knowledge and have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. Bitter, because when you have an experience like the one I had, it is sad to see it come to an end. I just arrived in Manila yesterday, and after sleeping for 16 hours and having eaten, I am back to thinking and writing. In this post, I want to address the similarities and the differences between Mindanao and Manila that I noticed right of the bat and some curious conversations that I had.

View of Metro Manila from the roof of my hotel.

While we were in Mindanao, there were many different versions of the imperial Manila that we heard. The first being the notion that Manila is in control of Mindanao but it doesn’t know Mindanao, this is the view that people from Mindanao have had since the Spanish were in Manila. I think the people in Mindanao are just in their thinking because for over four hundred years the government in Manila has passed laws and decrees that have affected Mindanao negatively (forced migration, rights to aggressive mineral exploration to international companies, excessive military operations, etc.) and the trickle down effect from Manila to the south does not exactly happen the way it should. After just spending one day in Manila and observing the stark difference in the amount of development that has taken place and is going on is mind blowing to put it in the most apt terms. I wondered again how someone in Manila would see someone from Mindanao and curiously enough when I checked into my hotel, the receptionist asked where I was coming from and I said Davao (I don’t mean that I am from Mindanao, she was aware that I am American but had traveled through Philippines), she retorted back with, “Why, are you a missionary?”

Another idea that I had heard from a young lady in Cotabato city regarding Manila was that people in Manila do not like people in Mindanao. She had mentioned her previous job in hospitality was in Manila and people were purposely mean to her knowing that she was from Cotabato. I, off course did not take this too seriously; I assumed it was an isolated issue. However, upon being in Manila and having had conversations with people about Mindanao, I am beginning to see what this young lady was trying to convey to me. I don’t think people from Manila dislike everyone from Mindanao that is just a gross exaggeration. I do think that there is a certain detachment between the north and south, a sort lack of concern if I may say. I don’t think this wrong either, everyone is busy living their lives, who truly has the time and energy to expend on issues that they can do nothing about but then again I am pulled towards everything I saw and herd in Mindanao and I am left wondering, why doesn’t anyone care?

View 2

Now lets talk about the superficial differences and similarities. Manila is very big in every way compared to every part of Mindanao that we saw. The buildings, the ideas, the lifestyle, and the changes are all very big. There are so many high rises that are being built and so much road construction to build flyovers to decrease traffic. My taxi driver mentioned that one flyover project can take anywhere from 2-3 years, and they are all being built by private companies, that means people will have to pay a toll. This leads me into things that are similar; the people are exactly the same, hospitable. The language, the focus on learning from others, religious fervor, the bureaucracy, and the dilapidating civil service buildings are all exactly the same. I think the difference have stood out so much for me because of all that I saw and learned in the past two weeks and I found myself getting irritated by the bourgeois society that is very much part of Manila. I still have loads to think about, may be I will come back to this as I learn more and see more in the next two days.