The massacre of 44 elite police commandos in the clash with Moro guerrillas in Maguindanao province on Jan. 25 sent the government’s agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on the establishment of an autonomous Bangsamoro substate in Mindanao to the brink of collapse amid recriminations over who was responsible for the carnage.
The encounter, in which government forces were slaughtered with savage atrocity, took place inside a territory held by the MILF and inflicted the heaviest casualties in more than a decade of desultory talks on the proposed ancestral domain for a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE). The clash erupted despite a ceasefire agreement between government forces and Moro guerrrillas.
The Aquino administration declared a period of mourning for the slain policemen, extolled as heroes, but as the corpses in coffins draped in the Philippine flag arrived in Manila for necrological services, the sight ignited public indignation and clamor to scrap the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) amid accusations of treachery by the MILF and that the government sent the policemen to be slaughtered in hostile territory in operations marked by blunders described by the government and its apologists as mere “misencounter.”
The encounter unmasked the fragility and imperfections of the MOA-AD that calls for the BJE with its own “basic law,” police and internal security force, and system of banking, finance, civil service, education, and legislative and electoral institutions, as well as full authority to develop and dispose of mineral and other natural resources. The BJE includes the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
On Aug. 4, 2008, the Supreme Court stopped the signing of an earlier MOA-AD amid strong public opposition and clashes in Mindanao, prompting the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to announce that it would not sign the agreement and to dissolve its peace panel.
On Oct. 14, 2008, the Supreme Court declared the MOA-AD unconstitutional, describing the process that led to its drafting as “whimsical, capricious, oppressive, arbitrary and despotic.” It affirmed its decision on Nov. 11, triggering MILF attacks on Christian communities in Mindanao that sent 750,000 people fleeing from their homes and leaving 400 dead.
In July 2010, the successor administration of President Aquino formed a new panel to resume peace talks.
Three years after the revival of the talks, things took a turn for the worse when Mr. Aquino secretly met with Murad Ebrahim in Tokyo in August 2011, where they agreed to speed up peace negotiations, which implied that the Aquino administration had given recognition to the MILF as a sovereign entity ruling a territory separate from the Philippine Republic.
In that meeting, the MILF was reported to have insisted on its proposal that a Moro substate be formed in Mindanao based on the assertion: “Let the Moros run their affairs. Let them decide their destiny… Gone [are] the days when the government in Manila designed everything for them.”
MILF demands
Since then, this concept of Bangsamoro autonomy framed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) that has defined the peace talks between the Aquino administration and the MILF and its unruly Moro satellites in a relationship that held hostage the issue of war or peace in Mindanao to the demands of the MILF.
The tragic ramifications of this paradigm to escalate violence in the region came to a head in the Jan. 25 massacre of police commandos in Maguindanao.
The encounter flared up when a battalion of 392 police commandos—members of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) sent to arrest wanted terrorists “Marwan,” a Malaysian member of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah allegedly behind numerous bomb attacks in the country, and Filipino Basit Usman—was attacked by Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and MILF guerrillas as they withdrew from the village.
Marwan, a bomb expert, was on the list of most wanted terrorists of the US government and had a $6-million price on his head.
Director Getulio Napeñas, the SAF commander, was relieved pending investigation of the fiasco leading to the massacre of his commandos. He has admitted that the operation to get Marwan and Usman was deliberately not coordinated with the military and the MILF, which were observing a ceasefire following the e signing of the peace agreement. He also said he did not coordinate with the MILF because he did not trust them.
Against sovereignty
The peace process has put in place coordination systems as joint action committee precisely to keep government security forces and MILF guerrillas from fighting. But without coordination with the military and the MILF, the SAF commandos went into hostile and treacherous territory. Napeñas said the MILF base commands were all in Mamasapano.
As a result, the commandos walked into a trap where they were vulnerable to slaughter. According to the MILF, it was the SAF commandos who fired the first shot, triggering a gun battle where the commandos were outnumbered. The policemen found themselves like sitting ducks contained in an open cornfield.
Even the government security forces were uncoordinated in the secret operation, where senior interior department officials were kept in the dark by suspended PNP Director General Alan Purisima, who was calling the shots on the operation.
President Aquino has come under fire for being late in receiving the dead bodies as they arrived in Manila, during which he was inaugurating a car manufacturing plant, even as he called a period of mourning for the fallen police heroes. It did not help that the MILF laid the blame for the massacre on the Philippine security forces for venturing into their area “without proper coordination.”
Mr. Aquino was slow in holding the MILF responsible for the carnage by guerrillas who have gone out of control of their leadership. Why should the Philippine government be obliged to ask for the permission of the MILF to allow law enforcers to serve arrest warrants to terrorists who have been given sanctuary by the MILF on Philippine territory?
Obviously, the peacekeeping mechanisms set up by the peace process are not working to ensure Philippine sovereignty over its national territory. Why should we be collaborating with a rebel group we cannot trust to save the Bangsamoro enterprise from collapse?