Citing war experience, Mindanao pushes peace deal anew

COTABATO, Philippines — Local executives and various peace advocacy organizations support the stand of President Benigno Aquino III not to let the January 25 hostilities in Maguindanao derail the Mindanao peace process.

Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, chairman of the inter-agency ARMM peace and order council, said the rank-and-file employees of his office are for a diplomatic resolution of the incident.

At least 44 members of the police's elite Special Action Force (SAF) and 14 guerillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front perished in the encounter at the border of villages Tukanalipao and Mangapang, both in Mamasapano town in the second district of Maguindanao.

Hataman said sectors and organizations calling for an all out war against Moro rebels in Central Mindanao are mostly from outside of the region, from Metro Manila, Luzon and Visayas.

"Most of them, it not all, haven't even seen how bad war is—how it can tear apart communities, how it can tear apart families and sow dissension and hatred in the hearts of people traumatized by its brunt," Hataman said.

Hataman and the incumbent governor of Maguindanao, Esmael Mangudadatu had both told reporters they support Malacañang's position of not letting the Mamasapano incident stifle the government-MILF peace efforts.

Mangudadatu on Saturday also reiterated his call for the MILF and the government to peacefully resolve the Mamasapano incident, which sparked uproar from many sectors.

"I have experienced, while I was a child, how it is to be in a war zone. It was a scary, very sad experience," Mangudadatu said.

The appeal for the government and the MILF to immediately resolve the incident through bilateral security protocols was first aired Wednesday during an emergency meeting of the Mangudadatu-led provincial peace and order council in Maguindanao's capital town, Buluan.

"We cannot let the peace process get ruined by that very sad development," Mangudadatu said. "We have to preserve all the dividends of the GPH-MILF diplomatic dealings that were achieved in the past 18 years."

Mangudadatu said he had instructed the league of mayors in the province to immediately start continuing diplomatic engagements with commanders of the MILF in all of Maguindanao's 36 towns.

He hopes the move will help prevent any escalation of animosity between government security forces and rebels, as a possible result of the January 25 Mamasapano SAF-MILF encounter.

"If there is strong coordination in addressing domestic peace and security concerns between our mayors and their constituent-barangay captains all together and these rebel commanders on the other side, undue encounters between rebels and government forces due to coordination problems can be minimized," Mangudadatu said.

More than 44 deaths

The chairman of the MILF's ceasefire committee, Rashid Ladiasan, had also confirmed that 10 guerillas were wounded in the gunfight.

The policemen were moving out of the area after having reportedly neutralized before dawn on Sunday Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan when MILF forces and members of the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters engaged them in running firefights that lasted for about 10 hours.

Four innocent villagers, a five-year-old child named Sarah Panangulon, Omar Dagadas, Murshid Hashim and Badrudin Langalan, were killed in the crossfire.

Four others, Sajid Pasawilan, Tok Panangulon, Samra Panangulon and Saad Minandal were hit by stray bullets as the firefight ensued.

Minandal, who was wounded in the chest, is now confined at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City, in very critical condition.

The incident also caused the dislocation of more than a thousand peasant families, still reluctant to return to their villages, scared of a repeat of the encounter.

The MILF leadership said the encounter was caused by the intrusion of the SAF contingent  without prior coordination into a government-recognized guerilla stronghold, supposedly covered by a ceasefire accord.

Hataman said sectors enraged by the incident should give the MILF, the government's Board of Inquiry (BOI) and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT) enough time to separately investigate on the incident to determine the real circumstances that led to the hostilities.

"In the meantime, let us not stop supporting the peace process because of the incident. Let's preserve the joint peace initiative of the MILF and the government because it is better to resolve the decades-old 'Mindanao issue' in a diplomatic, politically-acceptable manner, not through the barrels of guns," Hataman said .

The chief of the IMT, Major Gen. Yaakub Samad, on Friday told reporters the BOI will start its inquiry on the deadly encounter on February 7.