'Gadhafi backed Mindanao uprising'

COTABATO CITY ,Philippines  – Moammar Gadhafi no longer holds power in Libya, but how he fanned the flames of the Muslim uprising in Mindanao in the 1970s with money and arms and, more recently, how he supported the Mindanao peace process through his charitable activities can be considered a rosy chapter in the 600-year Moro history.

It was also Gadhafi, touted as the most generous benefactor of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), then solely led by Nur Misuari, who initiated the formal meeting between government and rebel negotiators in December 1976 in Tripoli, which resulted to the crafting of the 1976 government-MNLF Tripoli Agreement.

The Tripoli Agreement became the major reference, along with the Philippine Constitution, in the crafting of the Sept. 2, 1996 final peace pact between the government and the MNLF.

“He (Gadhafi) was the staunchest supporter of the Mindanao rebellion in the 1970s. He supported our organization with money, arms and helped us build connections with big international Muslim organizations and member-states of the Organization of Islamic Conference,” recalls Cotabato City Vice Mayor Muslimin Sema, chair of the most dominant faction of the MNLF.

The chief negotiator of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Muhaquer Iqbal, wrote in his book, The Nation Under Endless Tyranny, that Gadhafi was, in fact, the first foreign state leader that declared verbal support for the Moro cause in the 1970s, following a series of mass killings of innocent Muslims by the pro-government Ilaga militia in North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Norte and Sultan Kudarat.

Veteran MNLF fighters, who are now in their late 70s, said Gadhafi’s “operators” managed to facilitate 21 landings of about 10,000 firearms, comprised of 7.62 Heckler, Koch G-1 and Belgian FAL assault rifles, and slightly used AK-47 Kalashnikovs from the Libyan government armory.

The arms were delivered to the coastal towns of Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Sur, in the island provinces of Basilan and Sulu, and in the Zamboanga Peninsula between 1973 to 1978.

Maguindanao first district Rep. Simeon Datumanong who, as a young lawyer and then chairman of the now defunct Lupong Tagapagpaganap ng Pook 12, helped craft the government-MNLF 1976 Tripoli Agreement, said Gadhafi was so outspoken in his statements that favored the Moro rebellion in the 70s.

Datumanong and then Philippine Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Lininding Pangandaman, who was elected governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 1993, both said that there was a mixed feeling of amity, tension, and uncertainty in the crafting of the 1976 government-MNLF preliminary accord in Tripoli with Gadhafi, who was “pro-Moro,” being the strongman of the host country.

“Our Christian companions in the government were just as anxious and wanted to go home for Christmas because it was already Dec. 22 (1976). There were extensive bargains and exchanges of demands. Finally we got a call from then President Marcos to sign the agreement as long as there is a phrase there saying that its implementation must be subject to (Philippine) constitutional restrain. The agreement was signed next day and we were able to leave thereafter,” Datumanong said.

After the signing of the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF truce, the Libyan strongman continued supporting impoverished Moro communities through socio-economic projects of the Gadhafi International Federation of Charitable Activities (GIFCA), which is chaired by his engineer-son, Seif Al-Islam.

Gadhafi’s son had twice toured Mindanao and even had a closed-door meeting on April 23, 1999 with the MILF’s chieftain then, Egyptian-trained Salamat Hashim, and discussed with him community projects for poor Moro communities GIFCA can fund.

The Libyan government had also donated more than 100,000 copies of the Quran to Islamic schools in the ARMM and to private individuals from 1998 to 2005, through Libyan Ambassadors Rajjab Azarouq and Salem Adem who, one after another, were Gadhafi’s emissaries to the MNLF and the MILF.

Among his so-called peace projects in Central Mindanao was the construction four years ago of a multi-million orphanage in Cotabato City’s Kalanganan area.

Gadhafi also sent representatives to the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team, which helps enforce the 1997 government-MILF ceasefire agreement.

Its members continued performing their peacekeeping missions in the South even if there was political unrest in their country.

“Dictators come and go. There are harsh sides in them, but there are also good sides in them. We ought to pray for a peaceful transition in Libya’s national leadership because it’s time for Gadhafi to be replaced for loss of support from his very own people and we ought to (pray for) him too for whatever good he has done to the Moro people,” said a Maranaw preacher, Omar Kader, who studied Islamic theology at the World Islamic Call Society in Libya.