Maguindanao drug transshipment site now drug-free

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — The major shabu transshipment point in southern Maguindanao was declared free from illegal drugs on Monday after two years of community efforts to weed local syndicates out.

Juvenal Azurin, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, announced on Monday in Buluan town, the provincial capital, that Barangay Kabuling in Pandag is now free from drug traffickers, a requisite for the municipality to become a “drug free” area.

“By and large, Pandag town is now `drug free’ and credit for that feat should go to the local communities and their local government unit, the police and the military,” Azurin said during a dialogue with top municipal officials Monday.

It took Pandag’s LGU, the police, the PDEA-ARMM and the Army’s 33rd Infantry Battalion about two years to neutralize drug peddlers in Barangay Kabuling, where there is a large government-recognized enclave of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Drug traffickers keeping arsenals of high-powered firearms were even reported to have clandestinely operated makeshift Shabu production facilities in isolated areas in Barangay Kabuling.

Mayor Zihan Mamalinta-Mangudadatu said Monday she is thankful to community elders and local commanders of the MILF for helping them clear Barangay Kabuling from drug traffickers.

The government and the MILF are bound by a 1997 interim ceasefire pact, the Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, to cooperate in addressing peace and security issues in far-flung areas as confidence-building measure meant to ensure the cordiality of the peace process between both sides.

Azurin declared Pandag, on PDEA’s behalf, a “drug free” town during a conference on Monday of the municipal oversight committee which Mamalinta-Mangudadatu presided over.

The commander of the Army’s 33rd IB, Lt. Harold Cabunoc, is member of the inter-agency committee, which helps the Pandag LGU oversee local peace and development programs.

The 33rd IB and the police have neutralized in the past 16 months more than a dozen drug traffickers in Barangay Kabuling in operations supported by the local government unit.

One of the targets of the anti-narcotics operations during the period was “Commander Grasscutter,” a large-scale drug trafficker, who reportedly fled to another town for fear of his life.

Mamalinta-Mangudadatu, now in her second term as mayor of Pandag, and Azurin had separately called on newly-elected barangay officials in Kabuling to keep the area off from drug traffickers.

The mayor said she is grateful to her spouse, Khadafe Mangudadatu, a member of the ARMM’s 24-seat Regional Assembly, for leading their LGU’s anti-narcotics campaign.