2 Marine brigades guard Buliok

PIKIT, North Cotabato — Two Marine brigades now guard strategic areas at the Buliok complex at the boundary of Pikit, North Cotabato and Pagalungan, Maguindanao, to prevent Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels from sabotaging the government’s rehabilitation projects in the area.

The First and Second Marine Brigades, under Brig. Gen. Benedicto Corona and Col. Ben Dolorfino, respectively, are both performing peacekeeping functions at the Buliok complex under the operational control of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

Last Friday, MILF rebels burned 20 houses in a farming community in the Kabasalan area in Pikit town, not far away from the Buliok complex which combined Army and Marine forces liberated from MILF control last February.

Senga said soldiers are now running after the rebels behind the arson attack, mostly young recruits led by commanders identified with the MILF’s reclusive chieftain, Hashim Salamat.

Maj. Gen. Librado Ladia, Marine Corps commandant, said Muslim officers and combatants of their two brigades, whose component battalions are now scattered in the surroundings of the Buliok complex, have been tasked to carry out confidence-building measures with local communities to complement efforts in bringing evacuees back to their villages.

The Marines are known in Central Mindanao for their humanitarian projects in impoverished Muslim communities, peaceful maneuvers that helped convince more than a thousand MILF rebels, in the past three years, to surrender to the 6th ID and avail themselves of the government’s reconciliation programs.

Corona said members of the 6th, 7th and 8th Marine Battalions, all under the First Marine Brigade, have facilitated, with the help of local officials in Pagalungan and Pikit, the return, in recent weeks, of dozens of Muslim families to their villages within the periphery of the Buliok complex.

Corona said Marine combatants have also been patrolling farming villages daily to prevent MILF guerrillas from enforcing "taxes" on farmers.

More than a dozen Marines were wounded during their takeover of the well-fortified residential compound of Salamat at the Buliok complex last Feb. 14.