BY RYAN D. ROSAURO, PECOJON
Rebels reaffirm faith in negotiations
“HISTORY has shown that war cannot resolve this conflict which continues to spawn the Moro struggle. Neither can we defeat the Armed Forces of the Philippines.”
The words came from Mohagher Iqbal, chair of the peace panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who has spent more than three decades in the Moro liberation struggle, joining it fresh from earning a university degree.
“The most civilized way (to end the conflict) is through a negotiated political settlement,” the soft-spoken Iqbal told journalists last July 1 in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao amid continuing offensives against rebel positions by Army troops searching for its ‘rogue’ commanders accused of atrocities against civilians.
The pronouncement of Iqbal, who sits in its central committee, suggests the equal primacy the MILF currently places on negotiation in order to advance its revolutionary goals after 32 years of rebellion that took it from conventional to guerilla warfare since 2000 at the fall of its main bastion, Camp Abubakar.
After a year-long war, Iqbal’s candor about the rebel group’s supposedly guarded politico-military position helps provide a whiff of fresh air for the Mindanao peace process.
The MILF considers its conflict with government as not in the “nature of eternal contradiction but political, which can be resolved politically,” Salah Jubair, a ranking MILF official, wrote in a fairly recent book ‘The Long Road to Peace’ that documented the ups and downs of the peace process until 2007.
Another Jubair account related that since its inception, the MILF “had firmly valued… the wisdom of conducting dialogues in lieu of armed confrontation in the resolution of even the most difficult cases of conflict.”
Moving from war
The restart of the peace process is an opportunity to measure up the Moro rebels’ words. And also for what remained of the tenacity of the “all-out peace” policy of President Arroyo whose term of office ends in nine months.
The government and MILF panels met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last July 28-29, the first in about a year when they initialed the MOA-AD. Their relationship soured by the year-long war, the meeting is considered a formal re-establishment of contact by the parties.
Today, the subject of ancestral domain—the issue that provoked renewed hostilities—will be the same one both parties should move forward with so that the strong foundation is laid for ending a conflict that has killed around 150,000 people in some 40 years. Unless a new framework for negotiation replaces the Tripoli Agreement on Peace of 2001.
But just as laborious was the crafting of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), so are the challenges in the way forward.
Primarily, the peace panels will have to contend with the Supreme Court ruling declaring the MOA-AD as unconstitutional. During their July 28-29 meeting, the peace panels have committed to “reframe the consensus points” of the ancestral domain agenda.
As a result of last year’s MOA-AD debacle, the MILF has sought a guarantee mechanism to ensure that parties to a consensus comply with commitments. Recently, both parties agreed on a framework for an international contact group comprising civil society organizations and governments.
Cementing the peace
Beyond the negotiations, the crucial work is preparing a social atmosphere conducive to cementing the peace consensus into the state’s legal framework.
“A final peace agreement will require Constitutional changes to accommodate the legitimate demands of the Bangsamoro people. The present charter is not designed to accommodate these,” said former Mindanao State University Prof. Rudy Rodil who was vice-chair of the government peace panel that negotiated the MOA-AD.
Prof. Marvic Leonen, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law, stressed that the basic charter must recognize the “multi-ethnic, multidimensional, poly-vocal character of Philippine society” and must embody “what we can aspire for.”
“Law follows reality,” he told delegates of the International Solidarity Conference on Mindanao last March in Davao City.
In a May 6, 2008 letter to then Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, President Arroyo spells out the opportunity for charter change for accommodating a negotiated settlement with the MILF.
“…Issues of a Constitutional nature, excluding independence, can be taken up with the framers when such an opportunity becomes evident. Such an opportunity may come soon because sixteen Senators have signed a resolution for Constitutional change and a large number of members of the House of Representatives have expressed support for it,” read Arroyo’s letter.
Air of caution
However, even before this can be made public, she is suspected of driving her House allies to a charter change initiative that serves her motives, igniting a political controversy. Among peace advocates at present, there is a very strong view against pursuing charter change until a new president sits in 2010. And their expectations of how the peace process must proceed are tempered by this major consideration.
Soliciting public support for the negotiated political formula is another challenge, which should largely be a function of determined leadership, cites Rodil.
“What we are solving here is a minority problem; it cannot be worked out through the traditional process of superiority of numbers which is after all, sham democracy,” he said.
This is closely related to the stance of ‘cautious transparency’ adopted in disclosing what transpired at every turn of the negotiations.
“If it (negotiation) was opened from the very start, it would have been shot down earlier,” Rodil said.
He also cites the need to define consultation, the supposed lack of which the local politicians were mad about and that sounded meritorious to the Supreme Court for the MOA-AD to be declared unconstitutional.
There is nothing more consultative than a plebiscite, which is also more inclusive as it hears the opinion not only of leaders but also the people, Rodil argued.
Oblate priest Eliseo Mercado Jr., a veteran peace activist, said the issues of credibility and legitimacy hounding the Arroyo administration is making difficult the social acceptability of bold political measures that advance the cause of peace in Mindanao.
Like a Blair
For Iqbal, reaching a comprehensive compact with government is still possible in the nick of time “if Arroyo has political will.”
He noted that the Good Friday Agreement that settled the conflict in Northern Ireland was reached towards the twilight of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s incumbency.
Whatever timeframe may be workable, the Mindanao peace process can count on the European Union for support. A European Parliament resolution last March 12, 2009 “Calls on the European Council and the Commission to support the government of the Philippines in its efforts to advance the peace negotiations, including by means of facilitation if requested as well as through support for the International Monitoring Team responsible for overseeing the ceasefire between the military and the MILF.”
In light of this, non-government group Mindanao Peoples Caucus has urged government and the MILF “to seize this rare diplomatic opportunity by formally requesting the EU to be on board at this toughest and most critical stage of the peace negotiations.”
Record strides
Despite Arroyo’s unpopularity, her administration is credited with achieving the most significant gains in addressing the Moro conflict. Through her “all-out peace” policy, she revived talks with the MILF in 2001, exactly a year after then President Joseph Estrada declared “all-out war” against the rebel group.
Save for a peace-making slip by launching a three-month war around the Buliok Complex in 2003, it is during the Arroyo years that an operational “path to peace” was laid with the Tripoli Agreement on Peace of 2001.
Critical mechanisms were also established that deepened trust and confidence between the parties. The third-party monitoring through the International Monitoring Team (IMT) which is also overseeing local monitoring teams (LMTs) strengthened the ceasefire regime. The Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) helped check on lawless groups through coordinated operations, which also lessens undue provocations from either side.
The peace process under Arroyo sought to build on previous gains. The 2001 talks kicked off with government honoring previous agreed points as sought also by the MILF. Rodil disclosed that they made sure no contradiction exists between the forthcoming pact with the MILF and the 1996 accord with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). He also said the envisioned comprehensive compact was even an enhancement of the 1996 agreement.
The extent and depth of negotiation gains on the substantive items like ancestral domain, reflects the depth of the Arroyo government’s understanding and appreciation of each subject matter. The government panel takes guidance from the President, through a Cabinet Cluster for national security, on what position to take on every negotiation item or agenda.
Three-decade wait
On February 1979, two MILF emissaries, accompanied by a legal counsel, exchanged views with the then First Couple in Malacañang upon official invitation. At that time, the MILF did not expect “anything substantial” to result as government was engaged in formal talks with the MNLF.
This top-level “backdoor diplomacy” happened just over a year after a faction of the MNLF broke away to form what would become the MILF with then vice-chair Salamat Hashim at the helm. The split has laid bare the two major thought streams driving the Moro liberation struggle: nationalist and Islamist.
Eight years after that Malacañang meeting, the MILF, upon arrangement by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), was supposedly part of an enlarged negotiating panel with the MNLF in talks with government. It could have been an opportunity to deal with the Moro struggle more comprehensively.
Such an opportunity waited for the next 10 years. Top-level government initiative to negotiate peace with the MILF only came after inking the Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF on September 2, 1996. The first formal meeting occurred between the technical committees on January 1997.