For 17 years the GPH-MILG peace talks went through a gauntlet of obstacles, some are expected in a negotiation between enemies, others from anti-Moro senators and congressmen, and from many bias and prejudiced Filipinos with the mindset of Spanish conquistadors.
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By EDD K. USMAN | Twitter: @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 | Facebook: SDN — SciTech and Digital News
MANILA, 26th March 2023 (SDN) — March 27, 2023, is regional holiday in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Balawag “Al-Hajj Murad” Ebrahim issued on March 24 Proclamation No. 0001, Series of 2023, declaring March 27 as a Special Non-Working Holiday region-wide in the BARMM to commemorate the signing of the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
March 27 was the day in 2014 the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the CAB. It was 17 years in the making!
The CAB was born out of the struggle for the right to self-determination of the local Muslims, who now pride themselves and call themselves Bangsamoro Nation. It was attained amid rivers of blood in Central Mindanao, spilling on the ground from thousands of deaths and wounds from the many battles that sprung from a the secessionist (or separatist) rebellion waged by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the MILF in a fight for the independence of Southern Philippines. Blood from thousands of civilians and other non-combatants caught in war’s cruelties, as well as from Moro rebels and soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and policemen of the Philippine National Police (PNP).
MNLF and MILF fighters against AFP and PNP combatants, fellow Filipinos, pitted against each other by designed, fate, and duty in an internecine war that lasted around 40 years, more or less.
Guests at the CAB signing event in Malacanang Palace in Manila on the historic day included then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamadd Najib Bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak, other foreign leaders from governments and international organizations, Moro government officials and other politicians and those from the Moro community. Many foreign actors played key roles in the success of the GPH-MILF Mindanao peace process that started in January 1997 in Cagayan de Oro City, Mindanao.
There’s the International Monitoring Team (IMT), the International Contact Group (ICG), and other observers who helped guide the negotiations’ direction to its desired conclusion.
Five Presidents had the GPH-MILF peace process passed through them
Razak, because it was Malaysia that hosted and facilitated the peace talks, spending hundreds of millions of Malaysian ringgit for the formal talks in Kuala Lumpur and its IMT contingent in Mindanao, among other coffer-draining expenses in the name of peace, which for nearly two decades was as elusive as eel in a river.
The signing of the landmark agreement ended 17 years of protracted peace negotiations punctuated by major and minor shooting wars, among them the GPH’s all-out war in 2000 on Camp Abubakar As-Siddique, the MILF’s Main Stronghold in what is now Maguindanao del Norte, the all-out offensive in 2003 on Buliok Complex (which then became the MILF’s new Main Stronghold), and countless skirmishes you can’t count on a hundred people’s fingers.
The then President Fidel V. Ramos was the architect of the Mindanao peace process with the MNLF and the MILF; it was his solid determination the GPH-MNLF 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) was signed; he then started the GPH-MILF peace talks a mere four months after the forging of the FPA.
His legacy on the GPH-MILF talks went through President Joseph Estrada, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President Benigno S. Aquino III and, finally, the stubbornly determined President Rodrigo R. Duterte.
Estrada, so far the Philippines’ only disgraced President arising from his impeachment and conviction in a plunder case, will forever be remembered by the Bangsamoro people for his all-out war he waged on the MILF under the leadership of its founder and chairman, Dr. Ustadhz Salamat Hashim. Estrada, known in Philippine movies as “Erap” as a former popular Filipino actor, will also be always in the minds of the local Muslims for feasting on “lechon” (grilled pig) and alcoholics drinks inside a “madrasah” (Islamic school) in Barangay Sarmento, part of Camp Abubakar, which was named after one of the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) close aides, Abubakar Al-Siddiq, a convert to Islam.
His utter lack of religious sensitivities was, perhaps, his biggest undoing as Muslims performed a series of prayers and supplications for his comeuppance, a.k.a. karma.
Macapagal-Arroyo’s name will always be associated with the aborted signing in 2008 of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) and her all-out offensive on Buliok Complex, where the MILF transferred its Main Stronghold after Estrada’s all-out war. Her waging war on the MILF was timed with the Muslim world’s celebration of Eid’l Adha (Feast of Sacrifice), on February 11, 2003. Buliok Complex straddles the provinces of Maguindanao and Cotabato.
But let’s not forget that it was she who revived the GPH-MILF talks which Estrada scuttled. She was the deposed and convicted Estrada’s Vice President.
She sent her Vice President Teofisto Guingona to resume the dormant peace negotiations to Tripoli, Libya, in 2001. Ebrahim, now Bangsamoro Chief Minister, was then MILF vice chairman and chief negotiator. Macapagal-Arroyo later won in the 2004 presidential election and served nine years in total.
The Libyan government hosted the resumption of the GPH-MILF talks with Saif Al-Islam, a son of Revolutionary Leader Moammer Qaddafy, facilitating the engagement.
To Macapagal-Arroyo’s credit and eternal gratitude of Muslim Filipinos, she signed the laws, Republic Act No, 9177 and Republic Act No. 9649, respectively, that made Eid’l Fitr (Festival of Breaking the Fast) and Eid’l Adha as national holidays in the entire Philippines. The festivals are Islam’s only two major celebrations.
President Benigno S. Aquino III etched his name in the annals of the GPH-MILF negotiations when he risked his presidency for his two-hour clandestine meeting with MILF Chairman Ebrahim in Narita, Japan, on August 4, 2011. The meeting was held in the month of Ramadan when Muslims do their fast.
It was a trying and dangerous time for Aquino as the anti-Moro sentiments among Filipinos were still palpable because of the Maguindanao Massacre that killed the wife, relatives and followers of a Maguindanao political leader and scores of Mindanao-based journalists.
Honor those who fell in the Mindanao war, put in place reformed Moro governance
Last but not the least, President Rodrigo R. Duterte, the Philippines’ only Chief Executive from Mindanao, the Land of Promise, navigated a host of obstacles to steer the passage in Congress of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) in 2018, the Charter of the BARMM, the Bangsamoro new political entity (NPE) that replaced and abolished the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Duterte is regarded by the MILF as the “father” of the BARMM. Without his determined stubbornness and huge desire to create a stronger autonomy for the local Muslims, there still would be no Bangsamoro region today.
But let’s not forget the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, the “father” of all the MNLF and MILF peace accords with GPH which was on account of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Sr., who got the MNLF to talk peace.
In the sense that Marcos, Sr. started negotiations with the MNLF back 47 years ago, the Mindanao peace process has come full circle as now that the Philippine President is Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., who has inherited from Duterte the 2014 CAB’s full implementation.
“Full implementation” because while Duterte is the architect of the establishment of the BARMM, he also started the CAB’s implementation but still a long way before GPH and MILF sign their Exit Agreement. The Exit Agreement marks the CAB’s full implementation.
For months on end, the MILF and the Moro people were worried the BOL would have the same fate of the ill-fated Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which failed to muster support in Congress because of the Mamasapano Incident in 2015. A total 44 Special Action Force (SAF) officers and operatives were killed in an a gunbattle with MILF forces and its breakaway group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), which resulted from a bungled serving of arrest warrant on Malaysian militant and bomber Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan.
But Duterte summoned all his allies in both chambers of Congress, even certifying a new BBL as measure as “urgent” piece of legislation in 2018. The President’s action did the trick! Congress passed the BBL, which was later re-named the BOL.
After the BOL’s ratification and two plebiscites later, the composition of the region was completed.
Established in 2018 by the BOL to implement the 2014 CAB, the BARMM is made up of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao (now split as Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte), Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi, the cities of Cotabato, Lamitan, and Marawi, as well as the 63 barangays or villages dubbed Special Geographic Area (SGA) that voted “yes” in a plebiscite in February 2019 to be under the BARMM jurisdiction.
According to the Philippine Atlas has 4,404,288 people. It has 116 municipalities: Basilan, 11 municipalities; Lanao del Sur, 39; Maguindanao, 36; Sulu, 19; and Tawi-Tawi, 11. Its component cities are Cotabato (the regional center and capital) in Maguindanao; Lamitan in Basilan; and Marawi in Lanao del Sur.
As the Bangsamoro region marks the ninth anniversary of the CAB’s signing, it is hoped that those who died in the Mindanao war will not go in vain. And that the BARMM will remain through to its commitment to bring reform in Moro governance, peace and economic development in the region. (✓)