Near-encounter between troops, MILF prevented in North Cotabato

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Direct communication lines between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the military prevented a showdown Wednesday between soldiers and guerillas tasked to neutralize drug trafficker Mokz Masgal in Midsayap, North Cotabato.

The MILF guerillas, the same group that killed foreign-trained bomb-maker Abdul Basit Usman last year, eventually broke through the marshy areas in Midsayap from Maguindanao after a three-hour delay caused by coordination issues between their leader, Ustadz Wahid Tundok, and Army Infantry Division (ID) and mechanized units positioned along their routes.

The MILF’s bid to arrest Masgal has the imprimatur of the 6th ID and the joint ceasefire committee, but poor telecommunication linkages hampered the dissemination to rebel commanders and their Army counterparts on the ground of the details on how the selected guerillas are to fuse ranks with the Army’s 602nd Brigade waiting for them in Midsayap.

Through backchannel procedure, Tundok, a cleric who studied Islamic theology abroad, and the new commander of the 6th Infantry Division, Major Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., promptly restrained the soldiers assigned near the proposed bivouac areas of the guerillas, enabling them to link up with Col. Nolly Samarita of the 602nd Brigade.

The joint Army-MILF anti-narcotics operation last Wednesday resulted in the arrest of the hatchet man of Masgal, Kamarudin, who is his son by his second wife, and nine relatives also engaged in peddling of illegal drugs.

Local officials said Kamarudin helped Masgal, also known as “Commander Madrox,” supervise followers distributing methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in North Cotabato’s neighboring Midsayap, Aleosan and Pikit towns.

A combined team of policemen, personnel of 6th ID’s 62nd Reconnaissance Company and agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency raided Masgal’s hideout last August to arrest him but he and his men resisted.

They killed two soldiers and a policeman and wounded seven others in a firefight that preceded their daring escape to the nearby Liguasan Delta.

While there is this July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF, sudden encounters between units of 6th ID and MILF forces can erupt anytime if they come face to face without prior arrangements by the joint ceasefire committee.

Galvez and Tundok resolved the coordination issue promptly after a three-minute talk via mobile phones.

They took the cudgel of immediately notifying their respective subordinate-commanders of the exact areas the MILF guerillas from Maguindanao, many of them armed with shoulder-fire rocket launchers, are to cross on their way to Midsayap, where they are to help soldiers hunt for Masgal there.

“It is good to have efficient communication lines with people in the MILF’s ceasefire committee and with the commanders of their major units. That is something that can effectively prevent undue encounters that can ruin the gains of the peace engagements between the government and the MILF,” Galvez told The STAR noontime Wednesday.

Galvez, in fact, missed on Wednesday morning an initial phone call from Tundok, who first tried to reach out while the general was talking to representatives of the Australian-funded Basic Education Assistance for Muslim Mindanao Program at 6th ID’s headquarters in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.

The coordination between 6th ID’s component-units in the second district of Maguindanao and Tundok’s subordinate-commanders was facilitated by the Moro civil-military relations staff of Galvez, Lt. Col. Markton Abo, who is an ethnic Maguindanaon and is the division’s current liaison conduit to the local Muslim, Christian and Lumad communities.

Sources from the MILF’s central committee, who requested anonymity for lack of authority to speak on the issue, said their figurehead, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, and the chief of their Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, Sammy Al-Mansour, were elated with the turn of events on Wednesday, something so positive for both of them.

Galvez understands well the intricacies and ramifications of the security protocols between Malacañang and the MILF, having served as chairman of the government’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) prior to his assumption last September 12 as commander of 6th ID.

It was during his tenure as chairman of the government’s CCCH that guerilla forces under Tundok, chief of the MILF’s 118 Base Command, killed Usman, a cohort of the slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, most known as Marwan, in an encounter in Guindulungan, Maguindanao on May 3, 2015.

Usman was said to have undergone training in fabrication of improvised explosive devices using mortar projectiles and anti-tank rockets in Peshawar, Pakistan and in Kandahar, Afganistan during the early 1990s.

Usman first got wounded when elite Special Action Force (SAF) operatives of the Philippine National Police raided Barangay Inog-og in Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Jan. 25, 2015 to arrest him and Marwan.

The injured Usman managed to escape along with more than a dozen recruits he was training then in handling of IEDs and fabrication of roadside bombs using materials that can easily be obtained from rebel arsenals.

Marwan was killed in the January 25 dawn raid, which turned haywire when the SAF commandos figured in running firefights with MILF forces and a second group, the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, while retreating from Barangay Inog-og.

A total of 44 SAF commandos, 17 MILF members and five innocent civilians perished in the ensuing encounters, which shook the nation to its core and challenged Malacañang’s Southern Mindanao peace process.

The hostilities, blamed on the PNP’s disregard of the security protocols between the government and the MILF, almost caused the collapse of the now 19-year peace overture between the rebel group and Malacañang.