EDITORIAL - Duplicity

Just when some quarters were willing to give peace a chance in connection with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, here comes an official of the separatist group, once again raising doubts about the MILF’s sincerity in the peace process. Ustadz Shariff Jullabi, regional chief of the MILF, claimed Wednesday that up to 50,000 separatists are undergoing training in secret camps to pursue their aim of setting up an independent Islamic state in the South. Jullabi said his group has also resumed fashioning its own weapons, claiming that seven out of 10 MILF guerrillas were now armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The membership figures look bloated and the part about the grenade launchers appears to be nothing but hot air — more of wishful thinking than reality. But Jullabi has made it clear that his group — or at least a faction of the MILF — hasn’t given up its separatist cause. The timing of his statement could not have come at a worse time for the Arroyo administration, which for the past weeks has been fending off criticisms about an interim agreement sprung on the nation.

Critics of the controversial agreement with the MILF, finalized in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, have noted that the interim pact accords the separatists an undeserved status of belligerency. The pact also gives the rebel group control over development funds earmarked for a substantial portion of Mindanao. Fears have also been raised that under the agreement, the separatists will get back all the camps they lost in the military offensive launched by the Estrada administration — an offensive for which the government may have to pay the MILF war reparations.

If that’s the price of victory, why bother fighting enemies of the state at all? Still, supporters of the peace process argued that the provisions in the interim pact were part of confidence-building measures that could lead to lasting peace, that a military solution has limited returns in fighting an insurgency. Now an MILF official has issued a statement that won’t even be denied by the group’s spokesman Eid Kabalu. Does the MILF’s left hand know what the right hand is doing? Or worse, is the group in fact pursuing a duplicitous policy in the peace process?

The nation has seen what happened to the peace initiative with the Moro National Liberation Front, from which the MILF had broken away. If the administration forges a formal peace agreement with Kabalu’s group, will another breakaway faction emerge, to be led by someone like Juballi? Everyone wants peace, but it has to be a genuine one, with both sides sincere in their effort. Before plunging headlong into the implementation of that interim agreement, the government must verify Juballi’s claim. The administration must determine if its peace initiative is simply being used by a group to advance its aim of dismembering the nation.