MARAWI, Philippines, 25 Sept. — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday disowned the group of armed men from Lanao del Sur province who surrendered on Saturday to government forces.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the 117 men led by a certain Batak were no revolutionaries but "remnants of former Lanao del Sur Governor Ali Dimaporo’s private army, better known as Barakuda."
"Most, if not all of the surrenderees, were from Masin, the hometown of former Governor Dimaporo," Kabalu said, quoting "reliable" informants.
Batak, the MILF spokesman said, is known to be the chief of the Barakudas.
According to Kabalu, the periodic surrender of supposed MILF fighters is actually a scam being done at the expense of both the revolutionary group and Filipino taxpayers.
Batak’s group gave up 98 pieces of firearms. In return, the government will pay a maximum amount of 15,000 pesos for each firearm, depending on the kind of gun surrendered.
In addition there is also a livelihood component to be granted to each "surrenderee."
According to Kabalu, it is the livelihood component where the scam happens. "… usually this benefit no longer reaches the individual beneficiary. Instead their sponsored which is normally a politician will just share it with the military official who facilitated the surrender affair."
"In other words, the surrender activity in the Lanao area is a combination of business and some military officials are key players,"
He said the perpetrators of these alleged surrender scams cannot even hide their bad arithmetic. He noted that if the number of firearms surrendered over the past two years were to be totaled, the MILF should have run out of guns already, considering the military’s repeated assertion that the separatist group had only about 9-11,000 guns throughout Mindanao.
Because the total number of men who have surrendered is now close to 10,000, the MILF should have been left slightly 1,000 men by now, Kabalu added.
Also yesterday, the MILF said none of its fighters were involved in a shootout with army soldiers at about 8 p.m. in Tuburan town in Lanao del Sur.
No one was reported injured in the fighting, which the military claimed to have started when the armed group fired a grenade launcher at an army detachment.
