Conflict’s long game

Those who take credit for the good must equally take responsibility for the bad. This is the predicament facing the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and its champions. They claim the region’s downward trend in violent conflict owes to the success of the peace agreement, but assert that subsequent spikes in violence must be driven by something else.

Let us examine the facts.

The peace agreement was signed in 2014, yet violence soared in the three years that followed, from 2015 to 2017. The trend line is an inverted U—indicating that violence began to rise after 2014 until it peaked in 2017, spurred by the war in Marawi. International Alert’s conflict monitoring dataset contains granular evidence from 11 years of panel data on violent conflict in the Bangsamoro from 2011-2021. The dataset and comprehensive reports on conflict trends in the region, published annually since 2014, have been widely used and cited by groups both inside and outside Muslim Mindanao: scholars and academics, development agencies and diplomatic posts, media, and national and local government officials—except perhaps the regional government of Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

University of the Philippines School of Economics Professor Toby Monsod put it clearly in her chapter of the book “Conflict’s Long Game: A Decade of Violence in the Bangsamoro” (2022) when she described the BARMM as being in a “conflict trap,” where both vertical and horizontal violence was now converging. Monsod noted how “the levels of violent conflict are far greater in the last three years of the decade than they were in the first three years, with horizontal conflict greater by 254 percent and vertical conflict greater by 125 percent.”

Indeed, when violence started to go down in 2018, it failed to return to the same levels in 2014. The numbers began to rise again in 2021 and 2022, in contrast to 2020. We are talking here about the magnitude of violence—both conflict incidents and deaths—and it is on the rebound.

Where there has been a decline in conflict and fatalities, most of it has occurred in the island provinces of Sulu and Basilan, mainly due to the incessant efforts of the country’s security forces to stamp out violent extremism.Meanwhile, violence is rife in the mainland and under the nose of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority and the BARMM. Clan feuding is on the rise, indigenous communities are being attacked, illicit economies in weapons and drugs are soaring anew, and factional fights between MILF commanders are taking their toll on innocent civilians. International Alert’s Conflict Alert report in 2019 flagged that commanders and combatants affiliated with the MILF were involved in at least 13 clan feuds, significantly due to land conflicts, which was the highest since 2011.

The recent statement of the Philippine National Police chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr. is illustrative of the real lack of decommissioning and normalization in the region.

Azurin must be applauded for his candor in admitting that there are areas of the MILF that the PNP cannot enter and need to get “permission to get inside to arrest persons covered with warrants.” Azurin shockingly revealed what many suspected all along—“majority of the wanted criminals in the region covered with warrants are former MILF members, and in the course of serving those warrants, policemen are either killed or wounded” (“PNP seeks BARMM help in policing MILF areas,” Regions, 2/24/23).

Surely, this statement alone should push all of us to recognize that it will get worse, that conflict will rise, and it will be cyclical and episodic, before things get better. We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that violence will decrease in the postconflict moment. We should heed the repeated warnings from the Conflict Alert annual reports that the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro could fuel clan feuding and revenge killings, a resurgence in land-related conflict, and an explosion in criminality from illicit drugs and weapons.

We urge the MILF, their champions, and advocates, to thoroughly reflect on the trends and analysis contained in the 10-year conflict report. Be careful what you wish for, because a postconflict situation can be more dangerous and deadly than the period that preceded it. Violent incidents and deaths are staring us all in the face, peacebuilders and development workers alike. We cannot ignore the data, dismiss the statistics, and absolve ourselves of responsibility for letting these atrocities pass.

Liezl PG. Bugtay is former team leader of International Alert’s conflict monitoring system from 2015 to 2021. She is currently working with Alert on research on the nexus between climate change and conflict. “Conflict’s Long Game,” Conflict Alert’s 10-year 2011-2020 report, is available at www.conflictalert.info.