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| Bangsamoro Politicization: The Brutalization of the Moro IDPs |
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| Written by Datu Michael O, Mastura |
| Friday, 16 October 2009 07:26 |
 COTABATO CITY (MindaNews/04 July) – THE MILF visiting delegation was seated in an elegant lobby of the Europa, reputedly Belfast’s most bombed hotel in Europe. And so, I have thoughtfully contextualized the Moro armed struggle with Mohagher Iqbal, Maulana Alonto and Abdullah Camlian within the long armed conflict between the Irish republicans and the British state. With the British policy of Ulsterization, a reformist notion, what then emerged from moving towards ‘criminalization’ and ‘normalization’ was to de-legitimize the IRA struggle. But to the IRA, they were engaged in a legitimate political-military campaign to achieve freedom in the face of ‘occupation’ and ‘oppression’. Clearly, we reflected, a broader international sympathy was mobilized in a way embarrassing to Westminster at that time and showed the political dimension in terms of depth in their modern troubles for the grand bargain. Not all volunteers of the Bangsamoro movement think so while brutal antagonisms persist around the politics of violence for that structure and blueprint to organize outside the Philippine state remain a high risk strategy. Attempts to criminalize the so-called MILF “rogue commanders” on the part of the Cabinet Cluster-E thus far are parallel strategies designed to depoliticize MILF armed struggle for the right to self-determination (RSD). What emerges as the brutalization of Moro masses in the aftermath of MOA-AD litigation is the grim sequence of recurring internal displacement of persons (IDP). Both AFP and PNP have militarized the conflict although it demands a political solution. Philippine Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce branded IDPs as “enemy reserve forces” of the MILF before a media forum in Cotabato City this week. If this is the way the AFP thinks, then the MILF is on the right track on secession. They are Moro noncombatants who now look at the AFP as “occupation forces” in their homeland (ingud). The victimization of civilian population by AFP military operations accompanied by paramilitary units that go on and on has evoked hate-figures marking the “State of Bakwit in Mindanao” according to INGO volunteers. Could the GRP and MILF stand-off be ended when the international event jolting things backward was the aborted MOA-AD itself? When Ambassador Peter Beckingham, the envoy in the British embassy in Manila, granted our delegation a U.K. visa the MILF Central Committee saw it as a political pragmatic step to reach out. The justificatory narrative is not that the MILF could use the noncombatants as “civilian shields” (as a military spokesman incorrectly avers) but the Bangsamoro people’s moral position (jihad) to resist aggressive occupation forces of their homeland. If defense is the first foundation stone for the edifice of MILF legitimacy, the justness of the Moro original position under the state structure is the second. Defensive armed struggle is a morally correct form to fight impunity of massacre with the use of excessive force and “acts that shock the conscience of all of us.” To underplay the degree of State tyrannical tactics and repressive measures resembling “ethnic cleansing” in violation of human rights and humanitarian law impels a greater political energy and content to it. Politicians and military spokespersons feel they must invent farcical remedies but massive flashing out of population is a mark of ethnic cleansing itself. Here we place on record that the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Secretary-General has cited Mindanao as “the 2009 most neglected displacement situation for World Refugee Day” (06/18). It is listed as No. 1 higher than that of the figures in Iraq and Somalia. There are precedents for human protection purposes (East Timur, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo) that led to mobilizing moral danger. We hold accountable the Arroyo Administration for grave harm.” Truth is the AFP has screwed up her policy of from this angle, the anomaly of collective punishment of Muslim communities in Mindanao fits the communitarian conflict, with GRP deliberately acting in bad faith. The cultural factors of discrimination sway the will of the people in the field (grassroots) along Islamic thinking that influence the culture of MILF members, its organization’s imagery and activity. Now there’s a newly formed independent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS)—in which former President Fidel V. Ramos served as a member—launched in 2000 by the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to meet then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s challenge to the international community. Specifically, the 2001 Report provides that “no one is prepared to defend the claim that states can do what they wish to their own people, and hide behind the principle of sovereignty in so doing.” Ironically, it is a declared principle in the 1987 Philippine Constitution that “the AFP is the protector of the people and the State.” If it is not outright political discrimination, in the face of violation of human rights and humanitarian law the AFP deals with the noncombatant Moro Muslim communities apart from the rest of the Filipino people Within MILF leaders thinking at this stage, the politicization of the Moro masses has moved far beyond the Muslim traditional assumptions for a very different kind of constitutional nationalism from the violently aggressive brand marketed by the Islamic movements in the Middle East and West Asia. The Bangsamoro people are defined by the deep-seated sense of fardu jamai (or collective duty) of both the Islamic movement and the present-centered national liberation for their practical politics coupled with theories of justice and their realist guerrilla warfare. (I intend to return to this point in part 2). Our MILF research team could see the key articulation of broadening Islamic republican vision validated in “lessons learned” from the Belfast peace process. “A successful war of liberation cannot be fought exclusively on the backs of the oppressed, nor around the physical presence of the Army . . . We need a positive tie-in with the mass of the people.” Much strivings have been devoted to absorption of historical works on Mindanao by public intellectuals but it is more about ‘anecdotalism’ that the press focuses on the political statements. Abuses of governmental power exercised with militarist impunity are practically non-event in Muslim areas, and have become of no interest in media, except to the victims. How could you know? Citizen ignorance of what government does and what media reports may be out of date. While dubious Filipino political elite activities (not to forget MOA-AD rejection) could sustain disaffection from the MILF Islamist leaders and their commanders, it has become necessary for the Bangsamoro movement to pursue positive politics. If it has to maintain the necessary momentum outside constitutional politics, the MILF leadership politically mounted an irrepressible mass movement for broadening-out the Moro cause and mobilizing the opinion dimension domestically and internationally. As I often argue, the absence of leverage upon Washington could be gained by means of international opinion about the U.S. visiting forces (exercises) because of their embarrassing stories emerging from their role in the Filipino military’s counter-insurgency project in Mindanao. The need for U.S. aid on GRP security masks their “shared intelligence” shaping joint governmental policy. Why does U.S. military mission look the other way or turn blind spots on “the humanitarian protection claims” of Muslim communities in Mindanao evacuation centers? Why do American troops take their eyes off the precautionary balls, such as: right intention, last resort, proportional means and reasonable prospects for human protection purposes? ARMM has no structural role on security matters but it is within this context that Islam and the Muslims get crosswinds of American security policies. America’s intentions in Mindanao have sidelined Moro interest 100 years ago in favor the Christian population, yet it still haunts the superpower today. Central to the talks, MILF peace negotiators put forward an end to GRP suppressing the Moro Question initially contrived by U.S. “regime change” policy defining their status in the Moro Province. This is not some kind of pointless historical dispute. Seventy-five years of republican Filipino “misrule” convincingly shows that its political aims had failed as a unitary state. Aware of the odds and political pressure facing at first the MNLF that isolate their discourse from the armed struggle, how can the MILF rework the constitutional issues? The isolation of the Bangsamoro movement around the armed struggle, in MILF opinion, is more dangerous, since in the case of MNLF, it has led to a cycle of violence in the island provinces of Sulu and Basilan despite the renewed presence of the American soldiers there. Yet, in other ways, the MILF leaders sought to internationalize their struggle not only within the OIC but by reaching out to the EU. Alongside the IMT-driven backing and support from donor countries like Japan, Canada, Sweden and so on, the idea of the “guarantor group” evolved to offset the political isolation as the stated aim of the GRP to stall talks with rebel armed group. I find in this prism the big change in all the political pressure on the MILF leadership after the aborted agreement on ancestral domain. By reaching out to the Turkish and now the British, I think the conscious efforts towards politicization have a part to play by learning to function as Islamic homegrown leaders preparing to build institutions for governance. Also, we believe solidarity contacts abroad have a prestige value to establish standard norms. So the MILF leadership accepted one such overture by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to come to London and Belfast for dialogue with key figures in the Good Friday Agreement from June 20 to 27 this year. Our delegation set their objectives to validate the GRP-MILF principled negotiation track. What rationalized the engagement is based, first, on the equality agenda set by the 2001 GRP-MILF Tripoli Agreement of Peace. The dynamic in this path of the justness of the Moro original position follows “the equality of peoples” translated into “parity of esteem” in the Belfast approach. A transition phase is based, next, on the process of maximum (space) democracy. The entrenchment of Bangsamoro juridical entity for power sharing is agreed in the Consensus Points (and contained in MOA-AD) during a transition period with timeline and sequence. The question to which it related is interwoven with the right to determine the future political status of the Bangsamoro people free from any political imposition coupled with the “principle of choice” of the Indigenous peoples. There’s a clear acceptance of the new formula that corresponds to “the principle of consent” in the Belfast framework. In sum, conflict transformation through ‘power sharing’ means that retaining the ‘status quo’ is not an option. The advantages of principled peace negotiations increase the MILF’s profile as a non-state actor just like the major players in the British-Irish negotiation process. International influence of civil society and the good offices of civil society can contribute here to shift public opinion in the form of unofficial private diplomacy. (Datu Michael O. Mastura is a lawyer, historian, a former representative of Maguindanao to Congress and now a senior member of the MILF peace panel.) |