The real victims of the Sabah “standoff” crisis are ordinary Mindanaoans as Mindanao continues to be ruled by Manila as if it were a mere backwater colony, where Mindanaoans’ rights to “self-determination” is paid mere lip service. Manila is obviously of no use to Mindanao today. Throughout the crisis, the only clear words fielded to the besieged fighters of Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III by President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III were as pathetic as they were misguided: “Surrender now, without conditions.”
To be fair, it seems everyone was caught flat-footed by the unexpected incursion of Kiram’s fighters into the territory of Malaysian-governed state of Sabah. Both Kuala Lumpur and Manila were in the middle of setting into motion the execution of the “framework agreement” with Al Haj Murad, head of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), creating an autonomous “extended” Bangsamoro region. The agreement is effectively a peace deal with Murad the main feature of which is the MILF’s renouncing any further separatist posturing and recognising Manila’s sovereignity over the Bangsamoro region.
[Photo courtesy MNLF Advocacy Blog.]
Indeed, Kuala Lumpur and Manila have a lot of political and diplomatic capital invested in this project which is being bandied around as a significant milestone in the road to “peace” and economic prosperity in the Philippine Muslim south…
Helped by Bangsamoro’s main international backer, Muslim-majority Malaysia, the head of the MILF, Al Haj Murad, has been on a roadshow drumming up support and investment for the new, non-sovereign entity. The week before last he was an honoured guest at the eighth World Islamic Economic Forum in Johor Bahru, where his hosts, led by Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, treated him on a par with heads of state and national representatives. Very nice for the MILF, but also good politics for Malaysia. With a general election coming up, the Malaysian government wants to claim as much credit as it can for the peace agreement, which it helped to broker.
Unfortunately, left out of the loop in this much-celebrated erstwhile posterboy of international “peace” collaboration were “smaller Islamic militant groups in Mindanao” which, as is now clearly evident, includes people and groups still loyal to the Sultan of Sulu as well as the MILF’s “main rival” the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). Interestingly, the origins of the MILF as a militant breakaway group from the more moderate MNLF was over disagreements with the direction being taken by the MNLF leadership back in 1977 towards renouncing its own separatist agenda in favour of a more “conciliatory” deal with Manila then, a direction which bore fruit ten years later for the MNLF…
In January 1987, the MNLF signed an agreement relinquishing its goal of independence for Muslim regions and accepting the government’s offer of autonomy. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the next largest faction, refused to accept the accord and initiated a brief offensive that ended in a truce later that month. By one estimate the Mindanao-based Moro Islamic Liberation Front fielded around 3,000 troops.
With the MILF now as gentrified as the MNLF and in bed with the creations of former colonial masters — the Kuala Lumpur and Manila governments of Malaysia and the Philippines respectively, it’s déjà vu all over again for the Philippine south’s Moro militants.
As the wise saying goes:
The common denominator in all your bad relationships is you.
Over the last 400 years, Manila under its various overlords has been the lowest common denominator in the many incarnations and “frameworks” of toxic relationships between the Philippines’ Christian north and their southern Muslim “brothers”. You’d think a person going through his or her fourth divorce would be getting the hint by now. The Philippine Government should seriously consider shopping around for a new therapist or life coach. A new “boss” perhaps? Anything to get it subscribed to more sensible thinking would be a welcome development after 400 years of the wrong argumentsalways “winning”.
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