The Moro Wars: ‘Vacuum war’ in Mindanao-Sulu-Borneo Zone?

by Datu Michael O. Mastura


Writing portentously could induce grandiloquent vocabulary of terms quarried from chain of events for predictable changes. But the rate of change—and for that matter change itself—could also become the very trigger issues for ‘vacuum war’ on the front lines of instability. The portent of change is a phenomenon of the Obama trail to Washington. How could Arroyo’s recent impressionistic visit to the Obama White House cast “the intervention dilemma” in humanitarian aid and “the utility of force” in armed conflict in Mindanao to keep pace with conceptual changes in geopolitics of cooperation for regional security just to push the
State responsibility to protect people?

For years a critical stage in the “war on Islamist extremists” has turned Mindanao borders and its adjacent Islands—Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Palawan—embracing the Sulu archipelago into the front lines of instability. But Malaysia has truly absorbed its learning curve from mid-1950s communist insurgency that the struggle is not military but political. Yet few doubt cross-border security cooperation helps to pinpoint only lawless southern Philippines as a regional training base for the jihadists, even if the reality is Indonesia serves to implant the Islamist strategic depth.

Yet it helps explain when instabilities materialize into “ungovernable territories” the State then weakens into a condition of lawlessness and violence. Moral distance is a violence-enabling factor in all kinds of warfare to justify one’s cause; indeed, after a transition from radicals to pragmatists, real MILF revolutionary appeal is one to claim the Bangsamoro people’s homeland for which they are willing to fight with arms. But of course the Moro march to modernity has already swept through. This informs how UP Professor Randy David writing his progressive opinion pieces saw as the other arc MILF travelled as a united Islamic front. Thoughtful Muslims believe that the DNA root cause of historic injustices underpinning their legitimate grievances has empowering impact on Bangsamoro collective memories. Today they are less inclined to prioritize national identity over their religious one; yet their way of life and cultural roots remain deep says a survey conducted by The Asia Foundation in 2008.

Washington officials misunderstand what Islamic movement leaders and intellectuals really don’t want forced on them is regional geopolitics influencing US policy by default. MILF spiritual leaders are not only calculating but are pragmatists who operate openly on the battlefront and exert rational influence over a civilian population. MILF fights for Bangsamoro nationalist cause and so fits the definition of a nonstate actor or guerrilla force, not a terrorist group. It is the Christian leaders who showed up in the Obama White House (as if the colonial days of the Commonwealth had not much changed over). Leaders of business in tandem with media owners and managers nurse a neo-colonial grudge and their opinion makers color Washington’s view of the border region. Pentagon’s decision to keep 600-troops for counterinsurgency missions in Mindanao stirred concerns but it is remarkable how few have spoken up. Progressives say it could spell US ‘permanent stay’ in violation of the VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement) and the Constitution because “it is open-ended” in extension.

More to the point, MILF leadership felt a sense of bafflement about the New York Times story that the CIA and SOF (Special Operations Forces) were “instruments in successes by the Filipino armed forces in killing and capturing leaders of the militant group Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.” There’s an inherent contradiction in the round of events that did nothing to endear Americans to the Muslims in Mindanao. Military campaign this Ramadhan is one fought by DND chief Gilbert Teodoro for the headlines of the newspapers instead of what he and the Americans could do to right history.

Are ordinary people up to believe it when Navy Lt. First Grade Nancy Gadian speak of the critical US role in combat operations against ASG and the MILF? Gadian’s accusation of corrupt misuse of the Balikatan funds in 2007 demands a response in relation to the issue of the moment. Joint military meetings “where US officers conducted briefings on combat intelligence information” about ASG and MILF punctuated her expose. To put it roughly she confirmed how US forces often plan and undertake various operations without the knowledge of their Philippine counterparts. So far as it goes, bigotry has entered Gibo Teodoro’s press statements on rooting out ASG because they “don’t anyway observe Ramadhan” and it shows his flawed understanding of this armed conflict. Why does Teodoro take a dismissive stance when he could have seized the moment to make a lasting mark on foreign policy or security and defense pragmatism that befits a serious presidential aspirant? Snobbery has no mass appeal. A plausible leader like Ramon Magsaysay has no historical analogous moment for his own learning lessons in how to stay relevant to media events and geopolitics.

In time the challenge to social harmonies—or call it the lack of social cohesion—is a context of vacated stability. If Arroyo’s game plan is to postulate only her ‘securocrats’ seem out of step in its failure to pull the swing toward “the politics of stability” after its fall out with China (In re: lobbying scandals and dubious deals).

What is the morality of politics to judge against one angling for the presidency with a client press? If you ever heard of “client journalism” as a kind of conspiracy, it has moral consequences for winning minds and hearts with spin-doctors away from the public eye. What is outside the reach of press manipulation? The “dirty” business is not about a major policy decision on deficit military spending to boost centralizing power. It is rather that misplaced confidence in manipulative populism to stimulate the political gains that secure alliance with media classes whose general line comes from the government without reporters going after and following the full story for electoral advantage.

When it comes to Moro wars/peace coverage the complicity between political journalists and their political taskmasters is to feed on press releases and staircase briefings. Journalists no longer focus on reporting raw events in real time in a detached way. Electronics TV media and website bloggers do it in a fastidious manner. You read the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Manila Times newspaper editorials that set out the element of the Moro menace while it is the PDI’s cartoons that heap anti-Muslim ingredients to paint the grotesque imagery. Political journalists of the Philippine Star (or any other broadsheets) suffer from the same attitudinal media bias as the kind which embedded reporters attached to fighting units in the field are prone to do. Political reporting for interview outlets, radio airwaves, or TV clips shared misleading assumptions of the politicians as a whole during the MOA-AD litigation when they started to see the controversy through the lenses of the oppositions they report. Early intro to the presidential bid of Senator Mar Roxas capitalized on “virtual dismemberment” as the heart of opposition to MOA-AD reeled off by spin-doctors of political journalism to take hold on public life. This backstage conspiracy backfired being removed from reality to whose prejudices Roxas et al was trying to appeal.

Now I think we know the latest paroxysm of the Moro wars is the op-ed stuff that plunges neo-con types for the possibility of a “vacuum war” scenario in the “MILF-controlled territory.” This issue commented on by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in opinion-editorials about the Philippines as a “failing nation” is not for me puzzling at all. It may be the unspoken thought among journalists, but it deserves to figure out in security write ups. Ramon Farolan summarized in his column space the main attributes that characterize a “failed state.” What lies beneath the synch dogged this retired naval chief turned diplomat columnist to write: “Reveille: ‘MILF territory’—are we a failed state?” (PDI, 08/24/2009)

Why the Philippines still fails to act as a national state is hardwired into the mindset of the Islamic movement that this Catholic country is unwilling to share power with the Muslims. We’ve looked for a new formula in MOA-AD because it is a fragile country. All this point to the unresolved discrepancy between the territorial boundaries under the Treaty of Paris—one defined in the Constitution—and the geographic mapping of the coordinates detailed in the Strait Baseline Law for purposes of complying with the UNCLOS. Like it or not this country’s borders are porous which puts in question the very territorial integrity of the Philippines. Conventional wisdom says a failed state is associated with terrorism, ethnic cleansing and atrocities given the humanitarian tragedies or tragic problems: poverty, disease, famine, displaced persons or refugees flowing across borders, and so on. In terms of geopolitical importance and human suffering, the conspiracy theories feed opinion pieces depending on your own political preference. Right wingers and centrist voices echo the failure of the national state as a potential source of big power competition leading to confrontation, crisis and war.

Until national leaders are better prepared to grasp the metamorphosis of the Moro wars, the competition over failed state can create “vacuum wars” to fix the stability outcome. Government’s failure to exercise its “responsibility to protect” resulting in one-year-toll of 600,000 civilian victims of atrocities is what supporters of RP2 can cite to argue for “non-indifference” to large-scale crimes demanding “re-territorialization” to protect people from inhumanity.

Thwarting the MOA-AD frustration that morphed into retaliatory attacks and treating Muslim civilian populations as “enemy reserve force” of MILF are sources of the instability coupled with impunity of AFP-body count mentality (thinking of the enemy as numbers). This clash of arms also brings a kind of collateral damage to human rights of non-combatants. This is the flip side of AFP’s collective punishment motivation. The moral advantage for the MILF is simple affirmation of Bangsamoro homeland with gaps filled by a worldview of its military “occupation.” MILF was not founded in a vacuum. What is portent is that the Moro Islamic movement views vital interests via the prism of history and so is a source of stoutly pride for many ordinary people to fight for it since they look at geography differently.

Government-MILF peace talks bear no signs of political fatigue but a ripeness phase for formation of a contact group (ICG) and a civilian protection mission (CPM) to restore mutual trust. Peace processes are essentially third party creations to draw the parties out of conflict, so only they can change the Malaysian facilitation by mutual consent. Speaking seriously of humanitarian intent this is what merits Senator Rodolfo Biazon’s full Senate investigation because “mutually hurting stalemate” invites justifiable intervention.

(Datu Michael O. Mastura is a lawyer, historian, a former representative of Maguindanao to Congress and now a senior member of the MILF peace panel.)