Enabling environments for violence (2)

Another bloody incident, this time involving key actors in the current peace process in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) occurred early in the morning of June 18, in Barangay Damawatu, Datu Paglas, Maguindanao del Sur. Seven alleged members of the terrorist group Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) were slain in this early morning joint operation between the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Police authorities have earlier asserted that two of the fatalities were on the PNP’s watchlist of most dangerous persons. The Husain brothers Nasser Yousef aka Tutin Usop, and Norjihad Madidis aka Datdat Usop, were allegedly involved in criminal activities in the past. Among these were the bombing of the electric transmission tower of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines in Carmen, Cotabato province, and the 2021 attack and occupation of the Datu Paglas market in Maguindanao del Sur.

Both Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, the PNP director in BARMM, and Maj. Gen. Alex S. Rillera, commander of the 6th Infantry (Kampilan) Division and Joint Task Force Central, confirmed the joint police-military operation was legitimate, and it went through thorough deliberation and planning. Rillera stressed the two were engaged in “a wide range of grave offenses, emphasizing the importance of their apprehension in the joint operations …”

Police and military authorities cited they sent a coordination letter to the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (Ahjag) on June 15. Ahjag is one of the peace cooperation mechanisms agreed on by both the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) during the peace negotiation process between the two parties. This peace process ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) on March 27, 2014.

But MILF leaders have vehemently denied that the slain men were BIFF members, saying that the seven were bona fide, legitimate MILF members of the National Guard Front, 11th Brigade, Inner Guard Base Command of the MILF.

In an interview with a local television station in Cotabato City, Anwar Alamada, chair of the MILF Ahjag panel, argued that there was no coordination with them; it was true that the Joint Task Force sent them a coordination letter effective until June 15, 2023. Earlier, the chair of the MILF peace implementing panel, now Minister of Education Mohagher Iqbal, vehemently denied that the seven fatalities in the June 18 incident were members of the BIFF.

Last June 20, 2023, the MILF central committee issued a resolution strongly urging the national government, through President Marcos to give “paramount importance to justice, peace, and security,” and called for an independent investigation on the incident, to be done by a third party, preferably the International Monitoring Team (IMT). The IMT has since then ended their terms of reference as the independent monitoring group on the MILF-GPH peace process now that there is already a Bangsamoro government headed by MILF key leaders like Iqbal and interim Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim aka Al Haj Murad.

In their resolution, the MILF claimed that the tragic incident in Datu Paglas could have been averted had the operating team strictly followed the guidelines of the Ahjag that require the MILF and GPH to cooperate and coordinate with each other in responding to criminality and terrorism in communities where they are embedded, like the one in Barangay Damawatu.

More behind-the-scenes stories need to be surfaced now that only an impartial investigation can find out what really happened. But this incident eerily mimicked another tragic one in 2015—the bloody Mamasapano tragedy that killed more than 50 individuals, 44 of whom were elements of the Special Action Force of the PNP.

Similarly, the non-coordination with the Ahjag then was cited as one cause of the tragedy. Both parties were still new to this process, and this could have caused the bungling, although it was proven to be the result of several political dynamics at play then.

But this is 2023, more than nine years after the CAB signing, and with an MILF-dominated government of the day in BARMM, why do incidents like these persist?

(To be concluded)

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