While the MNLF negotiated a ceasefire with President Corazon Aquino in 1986 after the 1985 fall of the Marcos regime and finally accepted the government’s offer of autonomy in January 1987, the MILF rejected the accord. Talks between the MNLF and the government eventually collapsed, and the MNLF resumed its armed insurrection in February 1988.⁷

Another failed attempt at peacemaking took place during the government of Fidel Ramos, who had signed the 1996 peace agreement with the MNLF. However, three years later, a bloody confrontation erupted between government forces and Muslim guerilla fighters over the alleged violation of the July 1997 cease-fire agreement.

In the year 2000, President Joseph Estrada adopted an “all-out-war” policy against the Muslim rebels of Mindanao. After the fall of the MILF’s headquarters, Camp Abu Bakar, in July 2000, Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado declared that “this long and useless war is finally over.” Despite Mercado’s pompous assertion, the conflict dragged on, and the devastating effects of Estrada’s “all-out-war” policies now confront the new administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

After the events of September 11, US intervention in the Philippines complicated matters in the islands. In late January 2002, the Bush Administration sent 660 troops to the Philippines, deploying them to the south of the archipelago to assist the government in fighting the militant Abu Sayyaf group. For several weeks, the US Navy was secretly flying P-3 reconnaissance missions over the Sulu archipelago to provide badly needed intelligence to Philippine Army forces battling about 250 Abu Sayyaf rebels hiding in the mountainous jungle.⁸ By summer 2002, the Philippines was becoming an integral part of the US military’s Southeast Asian second front in its war on “terrorist” networks supposedly affiliated with al-Qaeda.⁹

Surprisingly, despite the death of almost 100,000 people and a refugee population numbering over 500,000, the three-decade long civil war in the southern Philippines has received very little attention in the international media.¹⁰ Furthermore, the Philippine government’s military campaign against Abu Sayyaf and other Moro organizations – which had displaced 150,000 people by the end of November 2001 – went largely unnoticed.¹¹ In fact, current press coverage of the Mindanao conflict predictably simplifies the factors involved in separatist groups’ demands, relying on buzzwords like “Islamic fundamentalism,” “terrorism” and “extremism” to lump the issue with a seemingly worldwide phenomenon.

As is the case with other conflicts in which Islam plays a role, there has been a tendency to conveniently ignore issues which are at the heart of the conflict: Competing national, religious, and regional identities, flagrant economic disparities, unequal land distribution, historical trends, and differences within and between various Islamist separatist groups.¹² For any peacemaking effort to lead to a just, durable, and long-lasting peace, a sound appreciation of these issues must be sought, and policies aimed at subordinating Muslims must be reversed.

Demographics, Economics, and Land Distribution – The Means of Oppression

Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines. Rich with natural resources, it is known as the “Land of Promise.” However, it also has the least developed provinces in the country. The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has the highest infant mortality rate (64%) and the lowest functional literacy rate (60%) in the country. Six of the ten poorest provinces in the Philippines are located in Mindanao. Spending levels on social services such as health and education are below the national average of 91% and are the lowest in the country.¹³

The current turmoil in Mindanao is symptomatic of the fundamental problem of a weak Filipino national identity arising from a weak Philippine state. Most states are composed of several ethno-linguistic groups. The situation becomes polarized when a group dominates the rest by using the state or its instrumentalities for particularistic interests. In polarized societies, the dominated groups tend to highlight their distinct identities and seek to subordinate others. In the southern Philippines, the Muslim Moros are now an anomaly in a country dominated by Catholics and heavily influenced by Spanish and American culture.¹⁴

Nation-building efforts by the Philippine government have often required the subordination of minority Muslims. The Muslims of Mindanao are a historically autonomous and distinct people who have rebelled against insensitive and heavy-handed attempts by central authorities to impose “national” values, that is, values of the Catholic dominant group, on the Muslim minority.¹⁵

Ever since the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the mid-1500s, governments in Manila have aimed at both political domination and religious conversion in Mindanao. An integral part of this effort has been transmigration, where Christians from other parts of the Philippines were encouraged to settle in the south. These programs altered the ethnic and religious balance in Mindanao – from an overall Muslim majority in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago at the end of the 19^th century to less than 17% of the population today¹⁶ – and precipitated bitter conflicts over land distribution and ownership. Even in tiny Basilan Island, where Muslims constitute 71% of the population, Christians own 75% of the land, with ethnic Chinese controlling 75% of local trade.¹⁷

Thus, Catholic transmigration from the north not only dispossessed Muslims of their ancient and communal land rights, but also reduced the Moro population in Mindanao to a minority in their own homeland.¹⁸ Moreover, “Catholic Filipinos see Muslims as inferior, and have proceeded, with the assistance of corrupt local officials and the police, to take over vast tracts of land in Mindanao for the purpose of agriculture and plantation activities, thus depriving local minorities of their land, rights, and means of livelihood.”¹⁹

Resettlement of Christian Filipinos from the north in the south has effectively contained Muslims in enclaves of underdevelopment and deprivation. Muslims see government-sponsored movement of northern Filipinos to the “Mindanao frontier” as an encroachment on their land, and ownership disputes began to take on religious and ethnic overtones when the frontier was filled to capacity in the 1960s. Land has actually been the most fundamental source of the conflict, as Muslims native to the island have been systematically deprived of traditionally-based ownership.²⁰

In addition, the struggle for energy resources is also a factor in the conflict. Mindanao holds a significant portion of the archipelago’s oil and natural gas deposits, much of which is located in Muslim-populated territories. The MILF, which lays claim to these areas, has alleged that the latest intensification of attacks by the Armed Forces of the Philippines are primarily motivated by the government’s desire to access oil-rich areas.²¹

There is also a current water-related dispute between the MILF and the government. Recently, the Philippine government accelerated plans to build a dam on a major tributary of the largest river in Mindanao. Unsurprisingly, this dispute has a lot to do with energy supplies. The MILF exposed the proposed project as yet another attempt to retrieve oil and gas from the Liguasan Marsh, the deposit-rich portions of which the dam would effectively drain and therefore render easily drillable. The dam poses an additional threat to the livelihoods of those living along the river: It will flood several thousand hectares of farmland owned and worked by Muslims.²²

The Burden of History – Centuries of Oppression and Resistance

Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, Chairman of the MILF

The twenty-first century Islamic insurgency in the Philippines is, in many respects, a continuation of a struggle that began in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Arab merchants and Muslim missionaries introduced Islam to the Philippines in 1210. By the time of the Spanish colonization, Islam had penetrated many of the coastal communities of the major islands of the Philippines, including Manila.

By the 16^th century, Islam had spread throughout the islands of the Sulu archipelago into Mindanao, pushing further north. These Muslim communities, constituting the southern Philippines, were based on their own developing concepts of authority, social relationships and sovereignty. They collided violently with Spanish explorers seeking to establish colonies based on supposed rich resources, trade routes, and a population they tried to convert to Catholicism. The Spaniards called the Muslims they encountered in the Philippines Moros or Moors, a reference to their old Muslim enemies in Europe and North Africa.²³

Muslims immediately began a rebellion to resist the Spanish conquest. Moro resistance continued until 1898, when the United States defeated the Spanish in the Spanish-American War. The Philippines were ceded to the United States under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, reigniting Muslim resistance in the south. Moros resented the incorporation of Muslim lands into the US-controlled Philippine state.

Moro resistance against the Americans was fierce and very dedicated. In comparison to American soldiers, Moros were poorly armed, relying on old rifles and brass canons. They were, however, very skillful in close combat and the use of the sword. Moro fighters seemed to have an extraordinary capacity to advance even after being shot multiple times. More interesting, however, was their use of kamikaze operations against the Americans, reminiscent of recent Palestinian bombings against the Israelis.

Moro resistance continued from 1902 until the official end of military rule in the Philippines in 1913, only to be resumed during World War II against a new occupier: the Japanese.

With the end of the Second World War, the Moros found themselves incorporated into the Republic of the Philippines, in 1946. The Filipino government sponsored the migration of Christian Filipinos into the traditionally Muslim lands of the south and transferred massive tracts of Muslim lands to Christian Filipino ownership, to the extent that some have compared such policies with those “enacted by Israel against the Palestinian people.”²⁴ Moreover, Moros were unwilling to subscribe to Manila’s secular civil, political, judicial, and penal constitutional system.²⁵

It is against this sociopolitical and economic background that the separatist Islamic insurgency in the southern Philippines has been fought since 1971.

An Anatomy of Islamist Groups in Mindanao

Peace plans failed as they dealt with Mindanao from a security perspective, rather than reversing Muslim segregation and subordination.

The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the largest of the Moro armed organizations, historically served as the main focus of armed Islamic resistance to Manila in the southern Philippines. The MNLF was founded by Nur Misuari in 1971, and argued that the Moro people constituted a distinct Islamic historical and cultural identity with a legitimate right to determine their own future. Hence, they argued, the Moros have a duty and obligation to wage a jihad against the Philippine State.²⁶

The top MNLF leadership was primarily composed of fresh college graduates, said to be influenced by Libyan President Gaddafi’s concept of Islamic socialism.²⁷ The formation of the organization was sparked by the “sectarian” violence in the southern Philippines, where Christians instigated attacks on Muslims communities. It was also aggravated by President Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law, which led to the centralization of power in Christian hands. The MNLF leadership maintains that the Front’s ideology is “Islamic and democratic,” and it favors a democratic federal republic because it recognizes that not all the people in Mindanao and the other Islands were Muslims.

After the MNLF made peace with the Manila government in 1996 in exchange for the establishment of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and a stake in the Philippine political process, the only two groups now operating militarily in the southern Philippines are the MILF and Abu Sayyaf.

In 1980, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was formed as a splinter movement of the MNLF. This group was critical of the more leftist orientation of the MNLF and is far more religiously oriented than its parent movement, emphasizing the promotion of Islamic ideals rather than the broad-based pursuit of nationalist Moro objectives. The organization also insists that there can be no permanent solution to the Mindanao problem in the absence of full Islamic independence, an issue the MNLF has been willing to compromise on since the mid-1970s.²⁸ The armed wing of the MILF, the Bangsa Moro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) has grown tremendously since then, with a standing army of about 35,000, eclipsing the MNLF.²⁹

The end of the Soviet-Afghan War was also a major catalyst for the radicalization of Filipino Muslims. Many returning Moro, disillusioned with the MNLF’s leniency with Manila and with political and economic conditions in the southern Philippines, joined the MILF, or later participating in the formation of the Abu Sayyaf group (“sword bearer”).

The formation of Abu Sayyaf can be traced back to 1991, when Amilhussin Jumaani and Abdurajak Janjalani founded the group. The overall objective of the Abu Sayyaf group is the establishment of an independent and exclusive Islamic state in Mindanao.

In terms of tactics, the MILF generally adopts “orthodox” guerilla tactics and hit-and-run operations against the Philippine military, whereas Abu Sayyaf targets the military as well as all Filipino Catholics and foreigners living in Mindanao and elsewhere in the South.

Abu Sayyaf’s overall support base is no more than 1,148, with a regular armed component consisting of approximately 330 fighters.³⁰ The majority of the group’s members are Muslim youths aged between 16 and their early 30s, with many of their older cadres reportedly veterans of the International Islamic Brigade (IIB) which fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.³¹

Conclusions

It might be premature to judge whether current peace moves in the Philippines will lead to a long-lasting peace in the troubled islands. Some encouraging signs have been the willingness of important regional players, such as Malaysia, to endorse the federation proposal, in addition to significant support from senior Filipino politicians and President Arroyo herself. However, one has to remember that older peace plans failed because they eventually dealt with the Mindanao problem from a security perspective, as opposed to making sincere efforts to reverse historical trends that perpetuated Muslim segregation and subordination. Given the overly militaristic and anti-Islamic security attitudes that have pervaded the globe since the September 11 attacks, doubts remain as to whether the Philippine government will be able to transcend such tendencies and seriously consider Muslim grievances.

More importantly, a US-brokered peace initiative would be a disaster to current peacemaking efforts, given the US’ historical role in suppressing Muslim separatists and its current myopic preoccupation with security whenever any conflict involving Muslims is dealt with. Filipino Foreign Affairs Secretary, Blas Ople, said that a US delegation from the US Institute of Peace (USIP) is expected to take part in the process.³² One only has to remember how a decade-long, US-brokered, “peace process” between the Palestinians and the Israelis crumbled when the US persistently intervened to ensure Israel’s supremacy over the Palestinians. In the process, the US became party to the conflict and ceased to become an honest broker.

One thing remains certain: Failure to reach a durable, long-lasting, peace that resolves the root causes of the conflict will only recreate the same conditions that ignited the conflict, and further perpetuate it.

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.

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1- “Manila Signs Ceasefire With MILF,” BBC News July 18^th, 2003

2- Raymund Jose G. Quilop, “The Uneasy and Costly Road to Peace in Mindanao,” The Asia-Pacific Area Network 

3- Kazi Mahmood, “MILF Mulling Federation Proposal,” IslamOnline.net, July 25^th, 2003

4- Sammy Martin, “Pimentel Pushes US as Mindanao Peace Broker,” The Manila Times, May 13^th, 2003

5- Ibid.

6- Catherine Denni R. Jayme, “The Challenge for Peace in Mindanao: Counter-Insurgency Policies of the Estrada and Arroyo Governments For Southern Philippines,” Maxwell Review

7- John Gershman, “Moros in the Philippines,” Foreign Policy in Focus October 2001

8- Eric Schmitt, “Muslim Rebels Are Blamed For Bombing in Philippines,” New York Times, October 5^th, 2002: A12.

9- John Gershman, “Is Southeast Asia the Second Front?”  Foreign Affairs (July/August 2002)

10- Andrew Tan, “Armed Muslim Separatist Rebellion in Southeast Asia: Persistence, Prospects, and Implications,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 23 (October-December 2000)

11- John Gershman, “Is Southeast Asia the Second Front?”  Foreign Affairs (July/August 2002)

12- Alyson Slack, “Separatism in Mindanao,” ICE Case Studies May 2003

13- Catherine Denni R. Jayme, “The Challenge for Peace in Mindanao: Counter-Insurgency Policies of the Estrada and Arroyo Governments For Southern Philippines,” Maxwell Review

14- Raymund Jose G. Quilop, “The Uneasy and Costly Road to Peace in Mindanao,” The Asia-Pacific Area Network.

15- Ibid.

16- Angel Rabasa and Peter Chalk, Indonesia’s Transformation and the Stability of Southeast Asia (Washington D.C.: RAND, 2001) : 85-86

17- Walden Bello, “A ‘Second Front’ in the Philippines,” Nation, March 18^th, 2002.

18- Peter Chalk, “Separatism and Southeast Asia : The Islamic Factor in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh,”  Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 24 (July 2001) : 247.

19- Andrew Tan, “Armed Muslim Separatist Rebellion in Southeast Asia : Persistence, Prospects, and Implications,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism  23 (October-December 2000)

20- Alyson Slack, “Separatism in Mindanao,”  ICE Case Studies May 2003

21- Ibid.

22- Ibid.

23- Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. “Bearer of the Sword,” Military Review (March/April 2002) : 38.

24- Ibid., 41-42.

25- Peter Chalk, “Separatism and Southeast Asia : The Islamic Factor in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh,”  Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 24 (July 2001) : 247.

26- Angel Rabasa and Peter Chalk, Indonesia’s Transformation and the Stability of Southeast Asia (RAND, 2001) : 86.

27- Catherine Denni R. Jayme, “The Challenge for Peace in Mindanao: Counter-Insurgency Policies of the Estrada and Arroyo Governments For Southern Philippines,” Maxwell Review.

28- Peter Chalk, “Separatism and Southeast Asia : The Islamic Factor in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh,”  Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 24 (July 2001) : 247.

29- Andrew Tan, “Armed Muslim Separatist Rebellion in Southeast Asia : Persistence, Prospects, and Implications,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism  23 (October-December 2000)

30- Peter Chalk, “Separatism and Southeast Asia : The Islamic Factor in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh,”  Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 24 (July 2001) : 248-249.

31- Ibid., 249.

32- Kazi Mahmood, “US Wants Major Role in Mindanao, Experts Suspicious,” IslamOnline.net August 1^st, 2003

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