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Those of us whose lives had been haunted and demolished by a war
that killed hundreds of thousands, separated families, displaced
millions and decimated billions of property in war-torn Mindanao
have our nightmares resurrected anew.
Saber-rattling and war-mongering are ascendant
again, guaranteeing that the nation will never have a day in peace
as long as the tension spawned by the government’s allegedly
deliberate flip-flop on the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) issue
remains unresolved.
It is not just the Bangsamoro, but also even
those with only an elementary perception of realpolitiks, who feel
that all parties have been had by a government using them as pawns
to promote Charter change.
Charter change is a proposition that never saw
the light of day since 2001, no matter how hard the current Malacañang
tenant pushed it from her very first State of the Nation Address. In
a blood curdling way, she has efficiently shifted from using her
well-provided political allies in Congress, local government units
and those running the government, to using as pawns an entire
Bangsamoro nation already deprived of life, land, liberty and
property in many ways for more than a century in this unending and
expensive political game called cha-cha.
War, especially when triggered by a perception
of continuing oppression and deception, turns human beings into
savages. That is the very simple explanation behind the series of
attacks on hapless civilians in the villages of Lanao del Norte,
North Cotabato and other areas of Mindanao. All that horrendous
violence manifests that some Moros are demanding, in all possible
ways, that the government make a political payback for their
continuing deprivation.
If the Moros are demanding a sizable piece of
Mindanao to be known as the BJE, note that in 1903, a Moro province
was created by the American colonizers, indicating areas where the
Moros were numerically dominant. It included “all of the territory
of the Philippines lying south of the eight parallel of latitude,
excepting the island of Palawan and the eastern portion of the
northwest peninsula of Mindanao.”
Farther back in history, the Muslims had
numerous sultanates all over Mindanao, all displaced with American
civil-military incursion starting in late 19th century. The Moros
displacement was cemented with the incursion of the Christians who
took their land under government sponsorship in the 20th century. If
the Moros were numerically fewer now in many areas of Mindanao, this
is a later historical development, perhaps an artificial situation.
The unfortunate soldiers who died in the line
of duty have actually paid for very serious unresolved historical
mistakes, the latest of which (the BJE fiasco) was committed by
their current commander-in-chief, with their own lives.
It does not bode well for peace that the
government has already pledged hot pursuit operations, indicating
that resources will be primarily spent for military needs. The war
might even turn its civilian employees into military targets, as was
the case some decades back.
With a war-mongering government, very few
parties can now take the cudgels for peace in Mindanao. The
development community and civil society are not ready, at this point
in time, to absorb stresses in this latest threat to Mindanao’s
uneasy peace. Beyond the United Nations (UN) agencies and the
development funders, many groups were never resource-rich, never
ever ready to absorb war’s stresses.
The new round hostilities actually douse all
anti-war efforts. The Mindanao-Palawan Consultation on the
Indigenous People’s Ancestral Domain and the BJE, organized by the
Legal Resource Center and supposed to be held from August 19 to
August 21, was postponed indefinitely. It was to be held in Cagayan
de Oro City, less than 200 kilometers away from the
hostilities-ravaged Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte. The organizers
cannot guarantee the safety of its participants, who might not even
be able to go back to their communities after the conference.
War eats up a lot of energies and resources
that could be put to better use. The United Nations’ World Food
Program (UN-WFP) that provides feeding for malnourished kids in many
Moro areas is probably now diverting resources from its program
areas to non-program ones. It has lately dispatched 325 tons of rice
to 13,000 families (or about 78,000 persons), and has agreed with
Government to provide 250 metric tons of rice worth $207,000 to
assist 10,000 families in the two Lanao provinces for at least a
month.
As have been proven by many historical
precedents, one can never win against a passionately determined
adversary, especially if the prized plum is not cash-based but
self-identity, self-respect, self-autonomy and self-rule.
Considering how some determined Moros fight and the propensity of
the Philippine government to prove power and politico-legal might,
it is not saber-rattlers and war-mongerers that we need, but
peacekeepers.
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HealthDev.net, an international online network
of health workers and development practitioners, emailed me to say
it is posting my column on tuberculosis. If you are interested in
the dynamics of health and development work, and want to look at
certain trends and perspectives that are also applicable to the
Philippines, visit its website at www.HealthDev.net.
--ngamolo@manilatimes.net
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