Perfecting the peace with the MNLF: GPAP, Part VII

Philippine Marines in Mindanao

The peace between the Philippine government and the MNLF (established by the 1996 FPA) is at best an imperfect peace.  While large-scale hostilities have stopped, frustrations and complaints have been repeatedly raised by the mujahideen.

At the local level, some MNLF mass-based communities became ‘peace and development communities’ benefiting from livelihood, cooperatives, and other projects with funds coming from international and foreign development organizations.  Yet according to Santos (2010a), the MNLF felt that the peace process, particularly Phase 1, was being concluded unilaterally, and that its important socio-economic development elements were not being satisfactorily implemented.  The introduction of Phase 2 was signalled by the 2001 New Organic Act for the ARMM (Republic Act No. 9054) which the MNLF saw as violating aspects of the 1996 peace agreement, notably control over strategic minerals.  It viewed the expanded ARMM (to include Basilan province and Marawi City) as too weak to address even basic health and education needs in some ARMM provinces (which are admittedly among the poorest in the country.

MNLF fighters

Frustrations with the perceived failure to implement the peace agreement and Misuari’s feeling that he was being eased out of his positions of authority in the ARMM and MNLF sparked an outbreak of hostilities between the government and Misuari’s forces in Sulu and Zamboanga in November 2001.  These developments led to Misuari’s arrest.  The MNLF leader started to view the peace agreement as a shackle from which the MNLF would be better off freed to pursue a new phase of struggle for independence.

MNLF leader Nur Misuari

To be sure, warlord clans such as the Ampatuans beholden to the central government in Manila took over control of the ARMM largely through the active support of Malakanyang during Arroyo’s tenure.  The MNLF had its own share of mistakes, including a failure to maintain or recreate itself either as a politico-military mass organization or as a political party.  Concessions, co-optation, divide-and-rule, demobilization, splits, and worse, political defeat or marginalization through its own mismanagement of the ARMM (and its funds) have degraded the organization to a moribund status.

The leaders of the Ampatuan clan

Thus it could be said that the MNLF lost both the war and the peace.  Since then, splits have further weakened the movement.  The MNLF (Misuari faction) showed signs of revitalization through armed hostilities with government in February and November 2005.  This residual hostility was the result of the failure to integrate a number of armed fighters (and their relatives) into the Republic’s security forces.^[1]  To the extent that the MNLF has not returned to the battlefield and has not conducted conventional warfare as before, one can argue that the 1996 peace agreement was successful.  To the extent that legitimate grievances are not fully addressed, then the peace is imperfect.

Abu Sayyaf bandits

The weakness of a still armed MNLF has helped spawned more aggressive anti-state rivals (Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF] and the Abu Sayyaf) as well as allowed conservative and reactionary elements like the Ampatuans (is the incumbent ARMM governor Mujiv Hataman, who is reportedly involved in the murder of a congressman from Basilan province, any better?) to take control of regional autonomy structures.  To that extent, peace remained elusive in Muslim Mindanao.   As a result, the Philippine government is currently engaged in a multi-pronged effort to maintain peace and order combat the Abu Sayyaf and other criminals, and at the same time to forge peace with the MILF and perfect the peace with the MNLF.  On the agenda of the GPH-MNLF talks to implement the 1996 FPA are the key issues including amendments to the organic law of the Muslim autonomous region (RA 9054), the Bangsamoro development assistance fund (BDAF), and suitable formulas for revenue sharing.  These are among the challenges confronting the Noynoy Aquino government.

References

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[1] As vice president of the National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP) in the late 1990s, I participated in the vetting of these MNLF commanders and fighters.  The latter wanted to be commissioned as officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) or the Philippine National Police (PNP).  However, they could not all be accommodated since most of them were illiterate and nearing the mandatory retirement age.