MNLF, MILF concede to OIC-supervised peace, solidarity forum

COTABATO CITY – Rivals Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have agreed to hold quarterly dialogues under the supervision of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to reconcile their separate peace overtures with Malacañang.

The consensus was reached by both groups during a two-day meeting from October 13 to 14 of the Bangsamoro Coordination Forum (BCF) in Manila, which the OIC facilitated through special envoy Ambassador Syed El-Masry, a representative of the Egyptian government.

The OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF truce.

The OIC has also been observing the national government’s Mindanao peace process through its Southern Philippines Peace Committee, comprised of senior government officials from member-states, among them Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The MILF’s chief negotiator, Muhaquer Iqbal, and lawyer Randolph Parcasio of the MNLF, signed on October 14, before El-Masry, a three-page communiqué enjoining each other’s group to cooperate in furthering a shared, viable peace blueprint for Mindanao through the BCF.

Parcasio is the official representative of MNLF founder Nur Misuari, now wanted for allegedly instigating the deadly September 2013 siege by his followers in Zamboanga City.

The activation of the BCF was an offshoot of a solidarity conference among the MILF, the MNLF and the OIC in Dushanbe in Tajikistan on May 18, 2010.

The Tajikistan engagement was attended by Misuari and the MILF’s figurehead, Hadji Murad Ebrahim.

The MILF and the MNLF both acknowledged, in their initial joint Tajikistan communiqué, the importance of continuing coordination in addressing political and security issues besetting Mindanao’s Moro communities.

Iqbal said the October 13-14 Manila BCF meeting, which El-Masry presided over, was cordial.

Iqbal said the MILF has been keeping up with its avowed inclusivity policy in finding lasting solution to the nagging, decades-old Moro issue.

The Manila BCF event was preceded by two MILF-MNLF dialogues, held December 6-7, 2011 and, subsequently, on June 14, 2014, at the OIC’s central headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Iqbal said they do not have problem working with any Moro sector in pushing the Mindanao peace process forward.

The MNLF was jointly established in the early 1970s by Misuari, who is from Sulu, and cleric Imam Salamat Hashim, an ethnic Maguindanaon, who finished an Islamic theology degree at the Al-Azhar University in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Salamat and his followers bolted from the MNLF in the early 1980s, due to irreconcilable differences with Misuari, and established the MILF, which is more religious in stature.

In 1999, Misuari, while governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, broke bread and smoked the proverbial peace pipe with Salamat during a historic visit to the MILF’s main bastion then, Camp Abubakar, at the forested tri-boundary of Maguindanao’s Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns.

The firebrand Misuari again became hostile with the MILF after the crafting of the October 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro (FAB), which he said rendered useless the now 17-year GPH-MNLF peace accord.

The FAB was to become  the main reference for the government-MILF March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, and the draft Basic Bangsamoro Law, an enabling measure for the creation of a Bangsamoro entity that would replace the ARMM.

The GPH-MNLF final peace accord, signed by Misuari and former President Fidel Ramos, led to the integration of about 7,000 former guerillas into the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police and the assimilation of rebel leaders into the Philippine political mainstream.

In a statement Thursday, the largest MNLF faction, led by former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, said there was considerable breakthrough in the October 13-14 BCF dialogue in Manila, where he was a participant too.

Sema, whose group has visibly been friendly with the MILF, and Mujahab Hashim of the MNLF’s Islamic Command Council, also affixed their signatures to the latest BCF communiqué, which Iqbal, Parcasio and El-Masry signed before the culmination of their Manila meeting.

“The meeting bolstered our efforts to build a `good venue’ where the MNLF, the MILF and the OIC can talk and see through how to harmonize one another’s peace initiative for the Bangsamoro people,” Sema said.

The MILF and the MNLF had also agreed, during the latest BCF activity, on  the activation of a secretariat, comprised of three members from each side, to facilitate coordination and administrative linkages needed to sustain continuing engagements.

Both sides also stated the need to convene the BCF, at least every three months, in their latest joint statement.