It is a drama that has captured a nation's attention. Three workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross — two foreigners and one local — were kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf bandits and are now trapped, together with their tormentors, in a mountain range in the southern province of Sulu. A threat to behead one of them if government troops would not leave the area and contain themselves only in the capital town Jolo area was not carried out. Having bought time, the kidnapped victims and government forces still do not know how the Abu Sayyaf will play out the drama. Neither does the public that follows the drama.

As I write this article, a deadly cat-and-mouse game intensifies. It does not threaten three lives but hundreds, both innocent and guilty alike. Around the mountain and the large band of bandits with their prisoners are the Marines and civilian militia coming from all the local government units. The Abu Sayyaf threatened to behead one of the kidnapped Red Cross workers because I believe they saw how they could all be massacred by the superior numbers and position of government forces. A simple threat put the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on hold. Once in a while in the Philippines, a life counts, especially if it is white and if it belongs to an international agency.

When Philippine National Red Cross chairman Dick Gordon makes a plea for the lives of the three Red Cross workers, I cannot help but shed a tear with him. And what Dick, a senator, may not be able to show in public but may be very much alive in his heart is a rage I cannot help but also feel. Sympathizing with victims is natural. What is not so clear is the cause of my rage, not just at the inhumanity of banditry for profit but the many lives that will be lost in the future if a settlement is reached and the kidnapped victims are returned alive and safe. What is not clear, even to me, is why a drama can whip up so much public sympathy for the Red Cross workers but almost nothing for the slain soldiers from the Marine Corps.

Are lives of ordinary Filipinos so devoid of value that the death of hundreds under the strangest circumstances that upset international human rights agencies create no public furor? Does it have to be like the case of Mary Jean Lacaba whose threatened life draws so much attention because she is part of the Red Cross? Even when we appreciate, or do not, one human life because it belongs to an ordinary Filipino, it is almost automatic that foreign lives, especially Caucasians, will elicit more importance from us.

I was in Sulu last week, part of a contingent from Gawad Kalinga visiting our first GK village in Patikul and preparing for our second in Panglima Estino. While media plays up the drama of an unresolved kidnapping and a most fluid situation which, in the end, can only end up with more lives lost, a miracle quietly unfolds where landless and homeless Tausug families in a “barangay” [village] in Patikul discover that life is not all that hopeless. A generous landowner and just as generous a corporation produced land and homes for the poor.

From a very successful first initiative where the provincial government, Marines, civil society personalities, a municipal bureaucracy, and poor residents of a barangay converged in a Gawad Kalinga program, a template for replication is emerging and exciting those who have been traditionally frustrated at how things simply do not work in a conflict-torn area. The town of Panglima Estino is somewhere in the middle of Sulu; it is a place most Filipinos may never have heard of. Yet, its mayor and the governor of Sulu asked Gawad Kalinga to establish a village in Panglima Estino after seeing how the residents in the first GK village in Patikul are so enthusiastic about their new homes and community.

Several more GK villages are planned for the next twelve months. Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan has been such a persistent advocate for GK in his province and is moving heaven and earth to produce funds for the houses and communities he wants to build with Gawad Kalinga. And the Marines led by Gen. Sabban and Gen. Ecarma believe that development the Gawad Kalinga way may trigger not just development but even friendship. It is unfortunate but somewhat anticipated that intermittent violence is still part of a pattern which is not so easy to break.

Sulu is dangerous not because of its terrain, which, by the way, is so beautiful with shores covered by white sands. Neither is it dangerous because it is home to the fierce and proud Tausug people. It is dangerous because we have allowed historical prejudice and religious competition to overtake the brotherhood that had been our birthright before being colonized and driven to fight against each other. And it will become even more dangerous if we do not struggle to dismantle four hundred years of Christian-Muslim conflict.

In the heat of the moment when bandits who terrorize for profit try to have their cake and eat it, too, what is beautiful in Sulu and its proud people remains hidden from view except from very up close. Sulu teaches us many lessons, many of them sad ones. Sulu reminds us how a divided people are not only weak but destructive to one another. How, then, can a Philippines ever be a strong nation with a fractious, quarreling population, jealous of their religions, resentful of their past and despairing of their future?

The road to peace in Sulu had long started. The path to friendship has begun between Christians and Muslims who are building homes and communities together. The passageway for the rediscovery of our fraternal bonds lies in our hearts if we choose courage over fear, generosity over greed, nobility over compromise.

When a friend from the military coined the phrase “dangerously beautiful” in reference to peace, he did not mean the usual meaning of danger. He was speaking about a personal experience, about how a beautiful land and people would captivate someone not from the place and make him giddy with infatuation. He was sharing, in two words, a love story that began from conflict and now wants to blossom in harmony.

Dangerously beautiful. Sulu.

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