Why negotiate with terrorists?

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front came this close last May to being listed an international terrorist group. Malacañang backed down at the last minute when US President George W. Bush vowed $30 million in aid each year to Mindanao so long as war ends. Days later the Organization of the Islamic Conference, while rejecting armed Islamic movements, hinted that it’s allergic just the same to terrorist labellings. Then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir offered anew to broker a peaceful settlement of the 20-year conflict.

The reprieve gives the MILF one more chance at peace. Tactical allies like the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Abu Sayyaf weren’t as lucky. Declared last year as terrorist, the CPP found its bank assets frozen abroad and in Manila. Now it is nudging the government to restart stalled talks, with the lifting of the terrorist tag as its only condition. Similarly branded, the Abu Sayyaf is on the run in Basilan, and soon will be in Sulu once the Balikatan joint RP-US military exercise commences.

Still, what the MILF has been doing is patently terrorist. Its bands killed and maimed civilians in Maigo, Siocon and Carmen towns. Civilian facilities, too, like a reservoir and electricity towers in Koronadal, were hit. Suspects arrested for blasting air and seaports in Cotabato, General Santos and Davao cities admitted to being MILF recruits. Muklis Yunos confessed to heading an MILF special bombing operation in Manila of a bus, a light train, a park across the US embassy, an airport depot and a gas station on Rizal Day 2000. No less than MILF chief Hashim Salamat gave the go-signal for the attacks, he swore in an affidavit. Yunos is a confederate of Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozie, the al-Qaeda agent who tried to smuggle explosives from Manila for similar sabotage in Singapore. Suryadi Masud, a member of the al-Qaeda front Jemaah Islamiya, testified in a Jakarta court that he and a hundred foreigners trained in the MILF’s Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao before government troops overran it in the summer of 2000. He said JI leaders Abu Bakr Bashir and the elusive Hambali visited the camp as well.

So why negotiate with terrorists?

"Precisely because they’re terrorists, we must talk," presidential adviser on special concerns Norberto Gonzales is quick to reply. The AFP cannot wipe out all 12,000 MILF mujahedin. War has been going on for two decades. As the military captures or kills them, fresh recruits take their place. The US, leading a coalition against international terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11, went to war in Afghanistan. With high-tech military might, it did break Taliban rule, but it also scattered the al-Qaeda to other Muslim enclaves. To this day, the US cannot say if its carpet-bombing got Osama bin Laden, or if he’s the voice that continues to call for jihad.

Retired general Eduardo Ermita, presidential adviser on the peace process, agrees with Gonzales. Having met OIC leaders in Tehran in late May, he believes the MILF has no choice but negotiate peace for lack of aid from Muslim states. Libya and Malaysia now renounce Islamic violence, unlike in the ’70s when it gave arms the Moro National Liberation Front, from which the MILF split in the ’80s. Echoing President Gloria Arroyo, Ermita says the MILF must stop temporizing and go on with the talks, or else suffer oblivion.

Gonzales sees the rift between Salamat and MILF military head Ibrahim Murad as an opening for the talks. Murad, along with political affairs head Gadzali Jaafar, spokesman Eid Kabalu and most of the MILF central committee bosses, are said to prefer talks to rebuild ravaged Moro villages and turn around the Mindanao economy. Murad and Gonzales have signed three preliminary accords since 2001: for the return of war refugees to their homes, joint pursuit of criminals, and a limited truce. Gonzales says it was the MILF that broached the idea to US-AID officers of having Washington broker the talks along with Malaysia.

Salamat is said to be an extremist. Having led the break from the MNLF of which he was spiritual lord, he continues to dream of an Islamic state with other islands of Indonesia and Malaysia. Still, Gonzales wants Salamat and hard-core Islamists on the negotiation table. "If we don’t talk but have them declared as terrorist, they will flee to al-Qaeda’s open arms," he explains. "Then we’ll have worse fighting."

Ermita has practical reasons to pull Salamat in. He was in the 1996 government panel that saw talks with the MNLF speed up when chairman Nur Misuari led the other side. "That led to conclusion," he says.

Talks may indeed culminate in permanent truce with the MILF. But the question hangs: what of justice for victims of its atrocities?

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Hardly had the ink dried on its housing deal with the Ayala Group when over 1,000 applications swamped the AFP for the first 300 units to be built in Camp Riego de Dios, Cavite. That’s how direly in need of homes our 115,000 servicemen are, and all government workers for that matter. Ayala subsidiary Laguna Property Holdings Inc. will build 1,004 units on a 20-hectare corner of the camp, one of 14 nationwide. If 1,000 units were to be built in each, the AFP can house a tenth of its force. Defense Sec. Angelo Reyes has endorsed to President Arroyo more than 600 hectares for dwellings. Soon to start are projects in Cagayan de Oro and Tarlac.

Units at Riego de Dios Village, ranging from 48 to 120 sqm., will cost P258,000 to P676,000. LPHI will provide for amenities: water, sewerage, roads, lighting, public transport, sports and recreation facilities, church and school areas, parks and playgrounds, a commercial mall, a public market, and a clubhouse. Three ingredients make for affordable homes in a complete community: a developer with track record, 25-year Pag-IBIG loans for P2,334 to P6,143 a month and, most of all, free land.

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Catch Linawin Natin, Mondays, 11 p.m., on IBC-13. Tonight’s guests, Palace advisers Ed Ermita and Bert Gonzales, talk about Mindanao peace.

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