No perfect world

“What kind of an animal is an ATS?” snapped journalist Jerry Tundag. Many came to know about “areas of temporary stay” only after the Oct. 18 firefight in Basilan.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front troops, from nearby Al-Barka killed 19 soldiers seeking to serve warrants on Dan Laksaw Asnawi and companions. Six soldiers were captured, and executed. Their bodies were mutilated.

Asnawi led a 2007 clash where 10 Marines were later found beheaded. Killers using cell phones of the dead Marines taunted their families. Asnawi escaped from a Basilan jail in 2009. The MILF has dragged its feet, so far, in having warrants served on Asnawi and his group.

The Koran forbids desecration of the dead. Even if it didn’t, both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law (RA 9851) prohibit wanton killing of detainees, Inquirer’s Raul Pangalangan points out.

MILF spokespersons ducked the mutilation  issue by blaming “miscommunication.” “By taking part in a cover-up, it invites application of the principle of command responsibility,” Pangalangan cautioned. Even if actual killers are not identified, commanding officers can be punished.

The Philippines ratified the ICC  two months ago. So, bring the MILF before the ICC, UP Prof. Harry Roque earlier suggested. It still “leaves the Philippine government enough wiggle room to talk peace without forsaking justice.”

By happenstance, the Al-Barka massacre occurred before the Philippines and 13 Asian countries meet in Kyoto, to buttress existing  mechanisms “to protect victims of armed conflicts… and promote strict observance of international humanitarian law.”

The roundtable discussion will consider the Additional Protocols I and II to the Geneva Convention, explained the convenors, namely: the International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are 171 states that are party to AP I and 166 to AP II, Ambassador Hideaki Ueda explained.

At Kuala Lumpur informal talks Thursday, both government and the MILF agreed that: “Investigations of the Al-Barka incident, through ceasefire mechanisms, shall continue.” Philippine  negotiator Marvic Leonen said the MILF reaffirmed pledges to “interdict kidnap-for-ransom groups, criminal syndicates and lost commands…”

Nakikilala sa gawa ang totohanang dakila, the old Filipino proverb says. “Deeds show what a man is.” The Al-Barka massacre meanwhile stokes fury—and probing questions.

Government “flirts with the status of a ‘failed state,’ if the MILF abuses ‘ATS’,” Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago warned. Sen. Panfilo Lacson pins ATS to an agreement, signed in Indonesia, between government and the MILF under Fidel V. Ramos’ watch. Sen. Francis Escudero frets ATS could trigger a fiasco like the 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in 2008.

Do ATS whittle down the nation’s sovereignty? Let’s get the facts right first, Judge Soliman M. Santos Jr. suggests in a new paper: “Of ATS and Other Spaces.”

UP Press published Santos’ “Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process” in 2002. He authored (2011) “In Defense of and Thinking Beyond the GRP-MILF MOA-AD.” He co-authored “Primed and Purposeful,” a study of armed groups and human security efforts in the Philippines.

Peace talks started in early 1997. The agreement in Indonesia during the Ramos administration (1992-98) dealt with the Moro National Liberation Front.

The May 6, 2002 Joint Communiqué, issued in Malaysia, saw the GRP and MILF agree “on coordinated and joint isolation and interdiction” of criminals. This included so-called “lost commands” operating in Mindanao, as may be found  in “MILF areas/communities.” Implementing guidelines were issued in December.

There is no definition of ATS in any peace document, Santos notes. It developed as an ad hoc arrangement on the ground. MILF forces and families backed away where the AFP “cracked down” on criminals. “You will never get that kind of cooperation from the New People’s Army [NPA] with its guerrilla fronts.”

Both arrangement and operation are time-bound. They were to be supervised by the Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities and the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group. ATS would be “dissolved” after AFP operations. MILF forces and families could then return.

That last ATS was for Barangay Guinanta after the 2007 beheadings of Marines, Santos says. Al-Barka is several kilometers away. (Further inland is Barangay Cambug where the massacre happened.)

“None has since been established or is existing…It is misleading to characterize ATS as ‘safe haven’ for the MILF as if to make it perpetually immune from attack by the AFP.

“In a perfect world, why should AFP soldiers be constrained from entering MILF areas? Fact is the AFP and the MILF are technically still in a state of war, albeit with a general ceasefire. A peace process is ongoing (precisely to resolve the war in a non-military way).

“The crucial need is for a ceasefire agreement pending a real and lasting peace. The peace process on the Moro front, with both the MNLF and MILF, has at least had the benefit of a general ceasefire that held for the most part.”

In contrast, that has been absent between the AFP and NPA in the peace process on the communist front. MILF forces and families are real people. Government considers them part of the Filipino people. Are people not more important than the abstract concept of diminution of national sovereignty?

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