COTABATO CITY — The military, police, the United States Institute of Peace and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Basilan have strengthened ties to keep the tranquility now felt in the island province.
All of the 11 towns and the Lamitan City in Basilan, scenes of bloody clashes between Moro secessionist groups and government forces in decades past, had all been cleared from presence of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group via joint peacebuilding programs of local government units, the police and the military’s Western Mindanao Command.
Radio reports in Cotabato City on Sunday, September 22, stated that officials of the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade, the Basilan Provincial Police Office and representatives of the joint Government-MILF Coordinating Committee agreed to continue cooperating on programs complementing the Mindanao peace process during a dialogue in Barangay Matatag in Lamitan City on Friday, September 20.
Haroro Ingram, the Philippine country director of the United States Institute of Peace, or USIP, was present in the peace and security conference, where cooperation among key players in keeping the peace now in Basilan was discussed by participants, among them the commander of the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade, Brig Gen. Alvin Luzon, and Basilan provincial police director, Police Colonel Cerrazid Umabong.
Local officials were quoted in Sunday’s radio reports in Cotabato as saying that the visit to Basilan on Friday of Haroro and in recent months by representatives of different foreign humanitarian entities and peace advocacy organizations, is essential to their efforts of enticing investors from other regions and from abroad to venture into viable agricultural projects in the province.
Friday’s peace and security conference in Lamitan City reportedly delved partly on the need to maintain cohesion in peacebuilding activities of all sectors in Basilan, including the Government-MILF Coordinating Committee, the 101st Infantry Brigade, the provincial police and its component municipal police stations.
The 101st Infantry Brigade, units in Basilan of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and local officials were credited then for the peace and calm now spreading around the four corners of the province.