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• EDD K. USMAN | X (Twitter): @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 |Facebook: SDN – SciTech & Digital News

COTABATO CITY, July 26, 2025 (SDN) — It’s been 11 years and four months since the signing of the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), but it seems more are to be done for its complete implementation.

This seems to be the gist of the Regular Meeting of the Central Committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF-CC) on July 19 at their administrative hub in Camp Darapanan, Crossing Simuay, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Sur, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Envisioned in the CAB is the achievement of the Bangsamoro region’s establishment which happened in January 2019 “that enjoys genuine autonomy…inhabitants enjoy adequate social services. peaceful co-existence between among its peoples, resilience from disasters and other shocks, support for increase socio-economic well-being of communities and households, and where there is reconciliation and healing, after facilitation of a transnational justice process.”

Many more are contained in the two-page resolution of the meeting of the MILF-CC chaired by Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, as it takes into account the still to be implemented provisions of the GPH-MILF peace accord that took 17 years of protracted and highly contentious negotiations.

The resolution notes that the “vision is enshrined in the Annex of Normalization, which provides for the different tracks that will facilitate the achievement of communities in the Bangsamoro of their desired quality of life.”

Ebrahim and Muhammad Ameen, MILF-CC secretary, signed the resolution that also emphasized the importance of the Normalization’s track on decommissioning of MILF forces and weapons.

It added that there, however, other tracks which are equally important, such as policing, redeployment of troops and units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), disbandment of private armed groups (PAGs), socio-economic development, detection and clearance of unexploded ordnances, transitional justice and reconciliation, and the confidence building measures of camp transformation, and amnesty, pardon and other available processes to persons charged with or convicted of crimes connected to the armed conflict in Mindanao.

It can be recalled that as a show of goodwill in 2015 to the administration of the then-President Benigno S. Aquino III, the MILF facilitated the decommissioning of 145 combatants and 75 weapons, June 16.

The process was resumed on September 7, 2019, with 12,000 combatants and 2,100 weapons, and on November 8, 2021, 14,000 combatants and 2,450 weapons.

Also cited in the MILF-CC resolution of July 19, 2025, is the former revolutionary group’s fidelity to its obligations as contained in the CAB, assuring its commitment to comply with its part of the bargain, including those in the Annex on Normalization.

Seems there’s a caveat, though.

“…to be true to the letter and spirit of the Annex on Normalization, there should first be some showing of substantial compliance of the socio-economic interventions for combatants who have been profiled for decommissioning before other combatants are made to undergo the initial steps towards decommissioning,” the MILF made plain its stand on the issue.

In so doing, the MILF again called on the GPH for good faith and good will, saying these are necessary ingredients in the CAB’s implementation. And that these requires both the parties to the CAB to lend an ear to the other side’s oft=repeated pleas to adhere to the written and signed accord.

The MILF in its resolution emphasized the centrality to the peace pact of the graduated compliance with the decommissioning that is “parallel and commensurate to the implementation of all the agreements of the parties” and was included purposively to bring the two parties to exact compliance from each other’s commitments as they jointly undertake the journey towards implementation.

After laying down these points, the MILF “resolved that the decommissioning of the remaining 14,000 MILF combatants and 2,450 weapons shall commence only upon the substantial compliance by the GPH in the other tracks of normalization, including the provision of socio-economic package as agree upon by the GPH and MILF Peace Implementing Panels to the 26,145 combatants (those under the 1st 3 phases).”

The MILF forwarded the resolution to its MILF PIP with copies to the GPH PIP and other concerned stakeholders of the peace process.

In previous statements of the MILF leadership, they acknowledged President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.’s repeated assurances of implementing fully the landmark peace accord signed in Malacanang, Manila, on March 27, 2014, with the late President Aquino and the then-Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia.

Representatives of foreign governments, non-government organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), including from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), among other partners of the GPH-MILF peace process, witnessed the historic signing. (√)

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