Who killed Marawi?

That is not the title of a fictional play or movie. It is reality. Marawi City is dead, not just figuratively but literally. She drew her last breath when some smart-aleck military commanders, feeling like Gen. George Patton reincarnate, employed his strategy of “rapid and aggressive offensive action” with lightning air strikes instead of relying on ground troops — a case of burning the house to catch a rat. In Marawi, the administration’s much-touted “build, build, build” infrastructure program became “bomb, bomb, bomb.”

A caveat: The question deserves extensive investigation and discourse, and this limited space cannot do justice to it. Readers will note that snippets of the answer to the question have been mentioned randomly in my earlier commentaries. Whodunit?

It’s a classic case of irony: Marawi, an “Islamic city,” ruined by attacks principally by advocates of Islam—radical Islam, that is. The rebels, or at least the ideologues among them like brothers Omar Khayyam and Abdullah Maute, are preaching a return to Wahabbi-Salafist Islam circa the Muhamad (PBUH) era to establish a caliphate. But their campaign is perverted by the beastly conduct of their advocacy, distorting Islam itself. The Prophet never employed human bombs or waged a campaign of terror, but evangelized unity and understanding with other “people of the Book,” meaning Christians, etc. The jihadists are easily the “killers” of Marawi, or what we call in law principals by direct participation, sharing the same degree of culpability with the pilot bombers of SF-260 trainer jets. These pilots, cynics derisively say, used Marawi as training ground to test the newly acquired jets from South Korea. (The joke is: When bomber planes zoom in the air, the first to cower are the soldiers, lest they be hit.) And now some lunatics are suggesting that unmanned US bomber drones responsible for the carnage in Syria and Iraq be deployed in Marawi, in violation of the Constitution and the PH-US Mutual Defense Treaty.

The government’s culpability is aggravated by gross negligence, for failure to notice the “red flag” when madaris proliferated in Morolandia teaching principally Islam as religion and culture and excluding Philippine history and social science (lately, reform toward this end was instituted). Likewise overlooked was the alarm of the Toril system in which Muslims of tender age are secluded in a compound away from their parents to be taught—nay, brainwashed about—Islam. This system molds the aversion of children to integration and insulates them from a multicultural Philippine society, which makes fertile ground for training radicals.

Government defense and security authorities insist there was no failure of intelligence. Granted. But what did they do to prevent the incipient inroads to peace?

Equally guilty are the alim and ulama educated in Middle East universities, for importing and evangelizing extremist Islam after their exposure to the teachings of the Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State or Daesh, and the Arab Spring phenomenon. They are the accessory “killers” of Marawi.

Rebellion thrives when local governance is ineffective, if not kaput. When residents can no longer look upon local executives for help, they seek the rebel organization as a parallel government for assistance and speedy justice. These governors (barangay leaders included) are unwitting accomplices to the growing feeling of discontent and injustice among Moros. They saw signs that the jihadists would attack Marawi, yet did nothing. They too “killed” Marawi.

Some Maranao are unknowing conspirators to the tragedy. Their deviation from the teaching of the Holy Quran drew the wrath of Allah SWT, and they are now suffering for their sins of plying the drug trade, kidnapping, robbery and other crimes. They face indictment also for their apathy and lack of vigilance when the torching of Marawi by rebels seemed eminent.

The verdict: Marawi is a victim of unintended conspiracy by these culprits and John Does.

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Macabangkit B. Lanto (amb_mac_lanto@yahoo.com), UP Law 1967, was a Fulbright Fellow in New York University for his postgraduate studies. He has served the government as congressman, ambassador, and undersecretary, among other positions.