COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The absence of encounter this year between the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) enabled farmers in Central Mindanao to implement projects meant to convert the region into a livestock, rubber and oil palm hub.
Except for some isolated atrocities perpetrated by bandits belonging to the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the region was peaceful, with no military-MILF encounter, in the past 11 months.
The BIFF, which is led by extremists, among them the now paralytic Ustadz Ameril Umbra Kato, is not covered by the July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF.
It was this year when farmers in far-flung areas of North Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces benefited extensively from economic interventions initiated by their respective provincial governments.
The livelihood projects were implemented in support of the socio-economic agenda of the ongoing GPH-MILF peace overture.
“I wish the tranquility we now experience in our communities will continue so we can focus on activities that can generate income to sustain the schooling of our children,†Mutalib Tantung, a Muslim farmer in S.K. Pendatun town in Maguindanao, said in the local vernacular.
Tantung is one of the more than 50,000 farmers in Maguindanao who received free rubber tree and oil palm seedlings distributed by the provincial government under the “plant now, pay never†project of Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu. Maguindanao is one of the five provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
In North Cotabato, hundreds of farmers in flood and conflict-stricken areas benefited from the animal and seedling distribution program of Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza from January to early this month.
Some of the beneficiaries of the agricultural interventions initiated by the Maguindanao and North Cotabato provincial governments were members of the MILF and its rival, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
The MNLF signed a peace deal with government on Sept. 2, 1996.
Chief Superintendent Noel Delos Reyes, ARMM police director, said it was the community projects of the Maguindanao provincial government that softened the followers of MNLF founder Nur Misuari.
Many of the more than 4,000 scholars of the Maguindanao Program on Educational Assistance and Community Enhancement (MagPEACE), bankrolled by the office of Mangudadatu, are children of MILF and MNLF members, according to Lynette Estandarte, Maguindanao’s chief provincial budget officer.
Peace activists in Central Mindanao, among them Catholic priests and leaders of various Christian sects, are convinced the government and MILF panels can strike a final peace pact by 2014.