The decision by the Manila government to call off talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main group fighting for an independent Muslim state in the southern Philippines, is a serious mistake. After three decades of conflict in Mindanao, it is clear that the only way the dispute can be resolved is through dialogue.
Both the government of President Gloria Arroyo and the MILF know that. Both committed themselves to a political solution when they agreed to a cease-fire in 2001. The fact that the cease-fire has broken down with the MILF back on the offensive — its latest attack on the predominantly Christian town of Siocon on southern Mindanao island being the reason for the government’s scrapping the talks — is no justification for such action. By calling the talks off, it gives the impression that it can live with permanent war in the south. Maybe it can, but the people who live on Mindanao, Muslim and Christian, cannot.
That is not to say that the MILF bears the smaller blame. On the contrary, it seems to have decided, in response to a military offensive against it, to target civilians. Over the past few months it has launched a series of attacks which have been invariably directed against civilian targets. Two weeks before the Siocon attack, at least 16 people were killed when it attacked M’lang, another predominantly Christian town on the island; it has also been blamed for earlier bomb attacks at Davao City Airport in which nearly 40 people died. Its protests that all these attacks had military objectives, that at Siocon an army battalion headquarters was the target and that there had been no intent to harm civilians, are unconvincing. It is difficult to see how Siocon’s public market, which was set on fire, or the town hall and a hospital, which were seized, count as military targets, let alone why it then decided to take civilians hostages.
The problem may be that the MILF is not a united and disciplined force and its leadership seems unable to control its grass roots. There is also the problem that Mindanao’s Muslims are themselves deeply divided, which opens the door to ever more radical groups trying to seize initiative. Fears of being outflanked by the radicals of Abu Sayyaf or the so-called Pentagon kidnap gang may have contributed to a radicalization of the MILF over the last year.
Certainly the suspicion will not go away that it is now on an ethnic cleansing rampage, intent on terrorizing into fleeing those who do not support it. If true, it is not going to succeed. All that will do is harden attitudes among the Filipino military; and just as the government cannot win by military means, neither can the insurgents. If the MILF is going to have any success in redrawing the political map of Mindanao, it has to abandon the armed struggle and sit down and talk with the government in Manila.
But it is President Arroyo’s government that has the primary responsibility to bring about peace in Mindanao. To insist that it will not talk while violence continues is a self-defeating tactic that is heard too often elsewhere in the world. All it does is hand the situation to the militants on both sides, neither of whom want a solution. The Moros’ dreams of greater freedom will not be smashed out of existence by military muscle; the MILF cannot win autonomy through terror. Dialogue is the only answer.
