Mamasapano notwithstanding, I am certain that the vast majority of rational Filipinos prefer continued pursuit of peace in Muslim Mindanao, and renounce the call for the resumption of all-out war by some hawks among us. Even a direct survivor of the Mamasapano clash from the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police has launched an online petition asking government to stay the course in pursuing the peace process. “The true face of war is not that dead soldier or rebel on the battlefield,” he writes. “It is a mother fleeing home with a cartload of offspring, amid sounds of gunfire.” Indeed, the true cost of war in Mindanao is not measured in the lives and limbs of the combatants, but in the untold deprivation and misery suffered by countless people deprived of normal lives as they get caught in the crossfire.
Barely five years ago, the Mindanao Development Authority asked me to lead a team from Brain Trust Inc. that they commissioned to facilitate the formulation of a 20-year peace and development blueprint for Mindanao, dubbed “Mindanao 2020.” The members of the team, who were almost entirely from Mindanao, went all around the islands hearing out people from various sectors and varying perspectives. These included Moro National Liberation Front chair Nur Misuari and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) vice chair Ghadzali Jaafar, along with their respective colleagues. We took a highly participatory and holistic approach to mapping the course for Mindanao’s future up to 2030, from the multiple perspectives of peace and security, human development and social cohesion, economy and the environment, and governance and institutions. As Mindanao’s Peace and Development Framework Plan for 2011-2030, Mindanao 2020 laid out a deliberate roadmap to secure and maintain peace, embodying the aspirations and sentiments of a cross-section of the Mindanao populace. Its peace and security chapter, cobbled together from widely gathered ideas and sentiments, merits renewed attention during these troubled times.
The peace and security vision articulated in Mindanao 2020 is “a peaceful and prosperous Mindanao whose inhabitants feel safe and secure, and live in harmony with and among one another regardless of ethnicity, religion or cultural background.” The shared goals are (1) peaceful and negotiated political settlement, marked by satisfactory autonomy, genuine self-determination, and redress and elimination of age-old injustices in various forms, (2) successful implementation and completion of a generally acceptable disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of all former combatants from all sides of the conflict, (3) an entrenched policy environment for sustained peace, development and human security in Mindanao, supported by effective institutions for sustained peace and development, (4) full reconstruction of conflict areas, with vital social and economic infrastructures and facilities restored and enhanced, thereby transforming them into focal points of development, (5) a firmly-entrenched culture of peace and social healing sustained through the integration of peace education in the formal educational system, and (6) supremacy of the rule of law within a justice system widely perceived to be fair, responsive and equitably accessible to all.
Short-term targets for 2016 include achievement of satisfactory peace agreements completed and signed between the government and the MILF (done) and the National Democratic Front; no more internally displaced persons (IDPs) arising from violent conflict (increased anew since the Mamasapano clash); and indigenous peace education that is well integrated in all official school curricula at all levels. The last is particularly important if we are to break the inter-generational perpetuation of Mindanao’s ethnic conflicts.
How would Mindanao get there? Mindanao 2020 identifies the following imperatives, among others:
- Make peace a concern of all government instrumentalities, and address all policy and institutional impediments to sustained peace, development and human security in Mindanao.
- Formulate a massive and deliberate public investment program to reconstruct and rehabilitate conflict-affected areas and normalize the lives of affected communities.
- Reform and strengthen the justice system for wide accessibility and responsiveness to peculiar needs of Mindanao cultures and communities, including an acceptable modus vivendi between Sharia law and the modern legal system.
- Integrate peace education in the official curricula at all levels and ensure cultural sensitivity of textbooks, teaching methods, school calendars, and even physical landscapes.
- Forestall potential new threats to peace and security, by anticipating and proactively managing potential conflicts, particularly those arising from environment and natural resource pressures and mismanagement.
- Harness partnerships for peace among government, private sector, civil society and international development partners.
Mindanao 2020 translates the above into a rich array of concrete actions and measures, much of which is embodied in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.
More than once, I have written that Mindanao is the future of the Philippines, for a good number of reasons—and I hold on to the conviction that this is so. Losing this future to yet another decade or so of violent conflict—or heaven forbid, to secession—simply cannot be an option. But the peace and development in Mindanao envisaged by Mindanao 2020 starts with a deliberate choice to pursue peace.
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E-mail: cielito.habito@gmail.com