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Philippines
Author: Patricio Abinales
A peace treaty signed this year formally ended a long-drawn-out separatist rebellion by the Moro1 Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) in the islands of Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago, and Palawan island (see maps).
Groups including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
have been in armed conflict with the Philippine government since the 1970s.
They argued that Muslims were never part of the Philippine body politic, having forcibly been integrated
under American colonial rule. Since then, the argument goes, Manila has maintained its control through the
security forces, and by co-opting Muslim elites with offers of state positions. The government, they claimed,
then encouraged families from the overpopulated and Christian regions to move to the country's last large
island-frontier to civilise or replace the "backward Muslims" and other indigenous tribes of Mindanao.
Finally, the government left the Muslim areas of Mindanao underdeveloped, with many communities living
on the poverty line. The only visible exceptions were the local elites, who held power by tradition, and
maintained patronage ties with national politicians.
With no loyalty to a nation-state, kept economically poor by a central government whose knee-jerk reaction
to any sign of disturbance was to send in the security forces, and believing that a flood of Christian
immigrants was taking over their lands in provinces2 where they were once the majority, Muslim suspicion
turned into widespread fear that the Bangsamoro ("Moro nation") would disappear. These fears became
more evident by the mid- to late 1960s.
Catalysers of Revolt
During this period, a series of transformations catalysed the separatist rebellion. There were significant
increases in Christian settler populations adjoining the Muslim areas. As these new towns and villages grew,
so did their confidence in their political clout. Their leaders, once subordinate allies of the Muslim elites,
could now challenge their patrons in elections and win. Their victories began in their own territories, but
soon they began to support national candidates (President, Vice President, and Senators) who were not on
the list of Muslims politicians. By the 1960s, they had become the most dominant electorate in the island.
The second transformation originated in the schools in the Philippine capital, Manila, and in the Middle East.
By the mid-1960s, the number of Filipino Muslims who were going to institutions of higher learning had
increased, thanks in part to an increase in scholarships. In the Philippines, this was a time in which
universities were fast becoming centres of dissent against the widespread corruption, mismanagement, and
political violence of government and elites. Foreign affairs were also significant. Students protested against
the use of the Philippines as a launching pad for bombing sorties into North Vietnam, the rise in prostitution
1
"Moro" was a pejorative term used by Spaniards to refer to Muslims during the Philippines was under the rule of the Spanish
empire. Muslim student activists who eventually founded the MNLF appropriated the term in the late 1960s and gave it a more
militant meaning.
2
The basic regional divisions of the Philippines are called provinces.
1 | Philippines Situation Report
around American bases, and the perceived compromise of Philippine sovereignty. Filipinos—including
Muslims—were also impressed by the fighting ability of the Vietnamese against the superior Americans.
Those who received scholarships to the Middle East witnessed the surge of Egyptian and Libyan nationalism
after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Though this left a political outlook distinct from that of their counterparts in
the Philippines, the role of the United States in holding pan-Arab nationalism at bay had not escaped their
notice. Many of them would later be drawn to the idiosyncratic ideology of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Exposed to these waves of popular democracy and nationalism at home and abroad, many young Muslims
became increasingly attracted to the idea of separating the Ummah from the Philippines.
The third transformation came in two massacres of Muslims by government troops. On 18 March1968, the
government of President Ferdinand Marcos was accused of ordering the killing of a group of Muslim military
trainees who protested against the severity of their training for a secret mission to Borneo. When it was
exposed, the "Jabidah massacre" (Jabidah being the group's code name) gave Muslim leaders and the
students evidence of government malevolence toward their people.
Three years later, news filtered back to Manila about the killing of 70 Muslim men, women, and children in a
mosque in the village of Manili, North Cotabato province in western Mindanao. To this day no one knows
who was responsible for the brutality, but suspicions pointed in two directions: towards a fiercely antiMuslim vigilante group called the Ilagas ('rat' in Filipino), and towards units of the Philippine Constabulary, a
branch of the armed forces charged with internal security. Neither group was indicted for the crime.
However, the "Manili massacre" turned the simmering mistrust between Muslims and settler groups into
open animosity. The Manili incident also caught the attention of Gaddafi, who was convinced that genocide
was underway in the southern Philippines.
These factors and the increasing intrusions of the national government provided the motivation for different
Muslims political and religious leaders and their respective constituents to form an alliance with the students
and establish the MNLF. Malaysia and Libya promised to arm the MNLF and opened up training camps in
Borneo and Tripoli, respectively. President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, and
conflict came a year later when Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops tried to impose a weapons ban
in the Muslim province of Lanao del Sur. It did not take long before the skirmishes became a full-blown war
that profoundly changed the political landscape of Muslim Mindanao.
Islam’s relative marginality
Historians have repeatedly noted that terms like "Muslim" or "Christian" are used as ethnic identities rather
than religious markers throughout the conflict.3 This is largely tied to the history of Islam in the Philippines.
Introduced in the 14th century by Sunni Arab missionaries, Islamic beliefs and practices fused with preIslamic animistic cultures to create a distinctively southern Philippine version of the norms, values, customs
and practices of the Muslim community (popularly known as adat). One of the most notable features of this
was a mutation of the religion from the great leveler of social and economic divisions into a religious
3
The anthropologist Thomas McKenna, for example, noted that in his area of study – Cotabato City – religious differences were not
the sole bases of distinguishing Muslims from Christians. Instead these "ethno-religious groups" identify each other based on
""cultural markers" that include speaking English or Filipino, to "wearing completely Westernised dress, and in the case of men,
drinking alcohol." (See: Thomas McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern
Philippines, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1998, p 36.)
2 | Philippines Situation Report
endorser of a political structure that gave a local strongman—the datu or the sultan—the role of the secular
and religious leader of the community.4
The strongman's power, however, was measured not by his religiosity but by his military prowess and the
size of his following (including slaves). He would demand tribute and labour from his followers; in exchange
he provided them with aid in emergencies and adjudicate disputes. Islam was rarely a factor in conflict
settlements. And whereas the Quran and the hadith accentuated forgiveness, revenge (maratbat) was more
important in settling conflicts.
The ideology of the MNLF reflected this ambiguity. Its Chairman, Nur Misuari never wrote anything to
explain in detail its ideology and programme, but his student days might suggest the origins of his political
leanings. At the University of the Philippines, Misuari joined the Kabataang Makabayan (Nationalist Youth, or
KM) a front organisation of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and then founded his own group,
the Bagong Asya (New Asia), which, together with KM and other neo-Marxist groups, pushed for a militant
nationalism targeting the United States and its "puppet", the Philippine government. The declaration he
wrote to announce the MNLF jihad reflected what he learned from school: It warned that Islam was
systematically being destroyed by "Filipino colonialism" and predicted that if the rebellion succeeded,
Muslims would be able to chart "our own national destiny." The future "Bangsa Moro Republik [would be]
committed to the principle of establishing a democratic system of government, which shall never allow or
tolerate any form of exploitation and oppression of any human being by another or of one nation by
another"5. Only in the last point did the declaration commit itself "to the preservation and growth of Islamic
culture among our people."
This was not to say that the organisation simply set aside the shariah and the hadith. The movement
recognized their value, but mainly as moral and spiritual invocations expressed in general terms. While the
Quran was specific to Muslims, it was given the same standing in the group's ideology as "sovereignty",
"republic", and other secular political concepts. There was no evidence that MNLF leaders knew about the
teachings of the medieval Islamic philosophers Ibn Taymiyya and al-Mawardi, or of the more contemporary
reflections of Hassan al-Banna. Nor did they seem aware of the impact the 1979 Iranian Revolution had on
the revived role of Islam as the foundation of rebellions in the Muslim world thereafter. What inspired
Misuari more were the Communist revolutions of Russia in 1917, China in 1949, and Cuba in 1959.
Support for the MNLF also came from a variety of quarters. There were those who joined the organisation
because of the brutality of the army or its militias on their communities.6Others in the MNLF included
supporters of Muslim politicians, angered by the increasing power of the settler communities and a more
intrusive national government. The MNLF central committee comprised students inspired by modern
4
One possibility for the success of indigenization was that the flow of Arab missionaries into southern Philippines appeared to have
ground to a halt. Sultans and datus now had to take over religious responsibilities, this time using Islam to enhance their prestige.
5
Misuari, Nur. "The Manifesto of the Moro National Liberation Front [and] Establishment of the Bangsa Moro Republik," April 28,
1974, as reprinted in W.K. Che Man. Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand.
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. 189-90.
6
6. Thomas McKenna ,who conducted extensive field research in the Muslim zones, observed that when he asked his respondents
why they joined the war, the common answer was because of these localized acts of violence. Those with access to newspapers and
radio were also agitated to join the organization after receiving news about the massacres in Manili and Manila.
3 | Philippines Situation Report
nationalism, local strongmen and their clans, and leaders of different Muslim-language groups whose fidelity
was to their patrons and not to an ideology or a philosophy.7
Breakdown and the rise of Islamic politics
The MNLF fought the AFP on equal terms when the conflict finally broke out in 1975. However, by the end of
the year, the government had moved over half of the AFP to the Mindanao war zones, together with tanks,
planes and helicopters, many of which were American surplus war material that were made available at the
end of the Vietnam War.8As battlefield losses became serious, the MNLF suffered a string of defections.
Many politicians surrendered after the government offered them a chance to regain the local power they
had lost after the declaration of martial law and benefit from the spoils of serving the regime. Some of them
were used to form rival organizations that challenged the MNLF for leadership of the Muslim people.
Ethnic identity did not prove a unifying factor either. In 1977, the leaders of the MNLF's largest language
group—the Maguindanaos—accused Misuari of privileging his own group (the Tausogs) and, more
importantly, favouring a "Marxist-Maoist orientation" at the expense of Islam. They broke away from the
organisation and formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), declaring it as the revolutionary and
Islamic alternative to the MNLF. The MILF leaders vowed to "strictly [follow] the Islamic line and its
objectives in waging jihad ...to make supreme the word of Allah and to establish an Islamic
government."9 Jihad, accordingly, was obligatory for Muslims because they had been occupied and
oppressed by a foreign country—the Philippine government—and the goal of that struggle was to create a
state modeled on the 7th- century Rashidun Caliphate presided over by Muhammad and his successors in
Medina.
Like the MNLF, the MILF's ideological development can be traced back to the educational and political
backgrounds of the organisation's leaders, especially its chairman, Hashim Salamat.10 While Misuari's
political education was Filipino, Salamat learned his politics abroad, in a madrasa in Mecca, and then at
Egypt's al-Azhar University where he finished two degrees, in Islamic Studies and Philosophy. His extended
stay gave him a chance to travel to Muslim-dominated states including Malaysia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and
Pakistan. While Misuari had been radicalised by progressive nationalism and left-wing ideology, Salamat
drew ideological inspiration from Muslim thinkers Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna in Egypt, and Abul Ala
Mawdudi, founder of the Pakistani group Jamaat-e-Islami. Also influential were the writings of Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser, which gave him the inspiration to "liberate Mindanao from Manila, the
colonial government".11
Salamat returned to the Philippines in 1967, joined the MNLF in 1972 and was sent to Malaysia for military
training. When martial law was declared he went to Libya and than moved around the Middle East and
Pakistan. It was in these places where he met with other Maguindanaos—many of them veterans of the
Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion—to plan the creation of the MILF. They went back to
7
7. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and Oxford: University of California Press, 1998.
8
Abat, Fortunato. 1999. The Day We Nearly Lost Mindanao. Manila. FCA Incorporated.
9
"Leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Outlines His Vision of the Future from his Jungle Base", Crescent International 16–31
August 1994.
10
If Misuari had been referred to as "the Chairman", Salamat's titles were representative of his Islamic education: Amir al
Mujaheedin (Commander of the fighters), alim (learned man), and ustadz (teacher, professor).
11
Vitug, Marites and Gloria, Glenda. 2000. Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao. Quezon City. Ateneo Center for Social
Policy and Public Affairs and the Institute for Popular Democracy.
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Mindanao in batches—Salamat in 1987—and quietly set up training camps in areas under their influence to
form the MILF army.
The use of Islam as the ideological guidepost and the linguistic commonality of the Maguindanaos allowed
the MILF to maintain the organisational coherence that the MNLF had been unable to preserve. However,
the MNLF continued to hog the political limelight because of the recognition of the Organisation of Islamic
Conference (OIC)12 – something that the MILF has still not been able to achieve. But what it lacked in
international stature, it made up for with its success in building an army and political influence. By the first
decade of the 21st century, the MILF had quietly raised an 11,000-strong army and was applying Shariah law
in areas under its control.
Islam, Terrorism and Banditry
The MILF was not the only group that brought Islam to centre stage in the separatist struggle. Al-Harakat alIslamiya (The Islamic Movement), better known to the public as the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG), was headed by
Abdurazal Janjalani, an MNLF fighter who had volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and who, like Salamat, had
broken away from the organisation after a fierce disagreement with Misuari. The MNLF had sent Janjalani to
Saudi Arabia and Libya to learn Arabic and deepen his knowledge of Islam. His next destination was
Afghanistan. He came back to the Philippines in the late 1980s and taught in a madrasa in Basilan where he
delivered sermons calling for armed resistance against the government. In 1990, Janjalani brought together
some old MNLF comrades, fellow Afghan veterans, and children of MNLF fighters killed by the army to form
the ASG.
Like Salamat, Janjalani viewed jihad as the only way to attain real peace, justice, and righteousness, and the
Quran and sunnah (the way of life of the Prophet and his companions) as guiding authorities for a future
new society. Like Salamat, he also envisioned a future state and society that was patterned after
Muhammad's 7th-century rule, though he never went into the particulars of this alternative. But while
Salamat accepted the diversity in contemporary Islamic governance, Janjalani was critical of all Muslim
governments, which he regarded as having deviated from the real teachings of Islam.13 And while Salamat
recognized that Muslims must co-exist with non-Muslims, Janjalani declared that the ASG would not hesitate
to execute those who stood in the way of the struggle, including the non-Muslim communities adjoining the
Muslim zones.
The tactics of the ASG were also somewhat broader than the MILF. Fighting the Philippine army was no
different from engaging acts of terrorism such as plotting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in
New York, or that of Philippine Airline flight 434 in 1994, or banditry such as kidnappings for ransom and
raiding Christian communities. In the name of Islam the ASG also cooperated with groups of Middle Eastern
terrorists , including one associated with a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the senior Al Qaeda leader.
In 1998, Janjalani was killed in a shootout with the police, and his brother Khadaffy seized the leadership.
But the ASG's fortunes would soon decline: in November 2001, the United States government had declared
the Philippines and Southeast Asia the "Second Front in the War on Terror", and linked the ASG to al-Qaeda.
12
The association of 57 states committed "to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting
international peace and harmony among various people of the world. "http://www.oicoci.org/oicv2/page/?p_id=52&p_ref=26&lan=en (accessed 8 March 2014)
13
Janjalani did not spare Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Indonesia in his criticisms, unmindful of their importance as resource bases for any
Muslim political and military movement.
5 | Philippines Situation Report
American Special Forces began to arrive in the Philippines to help their Filipino counterparts' campaign
against the group. In 2002, the ASG attempted a comeback with the kidnapping of a group of European and
Filipino tourists in a nearby Malaysian resort, earning millions from the ransom money European
governments paid—to the great embarrassment of the Philippine government. But Khaddafy Janjalani was
killed a few years later; his body was dug up in December 2006. With his death, the Abu Sayyaf degenerated
into a bandit group without even the façade of being an Islamic movement. It continued its kidnapping
operations, targeting Filipinos, Muslims and other foreigners.14
The Limits of Rebellion
In 1987, the MNLF finally accepted a government peace offer and a new body—the Autonomous Region for
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)—was created to replace previous and ineffectual regional organisations for the
Muslims set up by the Philippine government. The ARMM's first three governors were MNLF leaders or close
supporters; Misuari himself was ARMM governor from 1996–2002. But the MNLF proved to be poor
administrators: they failed to stem the corruption that had plagued past regional bodies, and they
mismanaged the substantial financial support ARMM received from the national government. Further
undermining their appeal, they began to act like "traditional politicians", taking advantage of the privileges
that came to them. Misuari was accused of "living like an oil sheikh" by his own followers.15
As a result of Misuari's mismanagement, leadership of the MNLF began to shift towards the former
executive secretary of the ARMM and mayor of Cotabato City, Muslimin Sema. Sema kept a firm hold over
his local constituency, while maintaining a relationship with the central government. This was a trick that
Misuari was unable to learn. When his term ended, Misuari refused to step down, and ordered MNLF troops
still loyal to him to launch attacks in Jolo province and the city of Zamboanga in November 2001. These
failed, and Misuari fled to Malaysia only to be deported back to the Philippines where he was promptly
jailed. He was later ousted as MNLF chair through a "promotion" to "Chairman Emeritus." Misuari was
released in April 2008, and kept away from the political scene until September 9, 2013 when – realising how
marginal he had become in the negotiations over the future of Muslim Mindanao– he ordered his remaining
"loyalists" to march into Zamboanga City, execute civilians and take over a part of the city. Government
troops promply laid siege of what ironically was a district where majority of the population were Muslims.
The "rebels" were finally forced to flee two-and-a-half-weeks later. Misuari was nowhere to be found.
With the MNLF thus compromised, the revolutionary mantle had passed on to the MILF, which had refused
to accept the government offer of peace talks. It finally had the chance to test its fighting capacities when
the government launched an "all-out war" against the organisation in mid-2000. Government troops
captured the rebel group's main headquarters, Camp Abubakar, forcing the MILF to retreat and shift to
guerrilla warfare. Military encounters continued, but these were smaller in scale and failed to dent the
government offensive. But the Philippine government was unable to completely eliminate the MILF either.
The military impasse led to further negotiations, and in 2001, both sides agreed to a cease-fire and started
peace talks. A preliminary accord was reached in 2008, but one of its agenda items—the "ancestral domain
agreement" on how to tap the natural and mineral resources of Muslim lands—was opposed by local
politicians and declared "contrary to law and the Constitution" by the Philippine Supreme Court.
14
A good concise overview of the Abu Sayyaf is the website "Mapping Militant Groups," by Stanford
Universityhttp://www.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/152
15
Abinales, Patricio, Orthodoxy and History in the Muslim Mindanao Narrative, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press,
2010, p. 149.
6 | Philippines Situation Report
Though this was a major drawback, the MILF did not respond by going back to war, and instead expressed its
desire to continue the negotiations. In January 2003, just six months before he died of a heart attack,
Hashim Salamat even wrote a letter to George W. Bush asking the American president to mediate between
the two parties. Both developments were widely unexpected, but some factors can account for them.
Chief among them was the geography of the MILF's war. Armed encounters between the separatist group
and government forces had been confined to four provinces in central Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago.
These battles had rarely spilled over into the other twenty provinces and where they did, their effects were
insignificant. The MILF's imagined Islamic state may have included the entire island of Mindanao, but the
reality was that it could only claim a very small amount of territory, and even there control remained fragile.
The MILF leadership was aware of this tactical shortcoming, and with the anti-Muslim bias of Christian and
indigenous communities it had become quite clear to them that the struggle was going nowhere.16
The 2008 Supreme Court decision declaring the ancestral domain agreement unconstitutional also created
fissures within the organisation. For the first time ever, a big group of fighters broke away from the MILF in
protest over the compromises its leadership had made. The group called itself the Bangsamoro Islamic
Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and vowed to carry on the separatist struggle, making itself known by attacking
several coastal villages in northwestern Mindanao soon after the Supreme Court ruling. They were repulsed
by government troops but remained intact as a force. The breakaway of the BIFF considerably weakened the
MILF, taking with it some of the group's best fighters including a top commander, Umbra Kato. This was a
handicap that the MILF could not ignore.
These military and political constraints gave the MILF a very small degree of leverage against the
government. Salamat's letter to President Bush asking for assistance was one of them. The motive behind
this "compromise", however, had nothing to do with the MILF retreating on its Islamic ideology. It was very
much influenced by what Salamat and his comrades were witnessing around them. When the MNLF signed
the peace agreement in 1996, one of the stipulations of the treaty had been for the Philippine government
to seek international assistance for the rehabilitation of the war zones. The United States, through its Agency
for International Development (USAID), was one of the first to respond. One of USAID's main projects—a
livelihood program in which former MNLF rebels were assisted in setting up projects ranging from seaweed,
abalone and fish production, to rice and corn cultivation —proved to be the most successful of these efforts.
Within four years of its implementation in 1996, evidence of prosperity in MNLF villages had become
perceptible to outsiders, including the MILF. The latter remained cautious of the prospects of the peace
process, but it also had the strategic foresight to recognise that what the Americans had done in the MNLF
areas was a model worth replicating in the event a treaty was signed between the warring parties.17
The Road to Peace and the Twilight of Moro Separatism
In 2010, the MILF announced that it was dropping separatism as its goal and would instead pursue the
creation of a "sub-state" within the Philippines with considerable autonomy, including maintaining its own
army. It said it was ready to negotiate with whoever would replace the departing President Gloria Arryo, and
pledged not to leave the bargaining table until an agreement was signed. Following the election of President
Benigno Aquino III – who had promised to pursue peace in Mindanao – the two sides signed a "Framework
16
Rodil, Rudy, Kalinaw Mindanaw: The Story of the GRP-MNLF Peace Process, 1975–1996, Davao City, Alternate Forum for Research
in Mindanao, 2006, p. 43.
17
USAID-Philippines, 2005, "USAID/Phil Activities in Mindanao,"http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_d...(accessed 15 March 2014)
7 | Philippines Situation Report
Agreement on the Bangsamoro" (FAB) and began negotiating on a series of annexes that would constitute
the final peace agreement.18
By the end of the year, an agreement was reached over the ancestral domain and its natural resources; the
agricultural exploitation of ancestral lands; the management of lands falling under the proposed regional
authority including their reclassification and distribution; transportation and communications; a proposed
electoral system; and, the rights of non-Muslim indigenous communities. On January 25, 2014, after
resolving the last of these annexes, the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
formally signed "the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro" (CAB) ending the separatist war and
formally creating a new Muslim autonomous entity that was simply called "Bangsamoro".
The BIFF opposed the negotiations and the agreement and tried to undermine them by launching frequent
attacks on army outposts and coastal villages. These sorties made good fodder for the media and worried
outside observers of the Mindanao peace process, many of whom have very little knowledge of what is
really happening on the ground. In actual terms, however, the best that the BIFF can do is to harass the
implementation of the peace agreements. They will not derail the implementation of what is so far the best
and most credible attempt by both government and the MILF to finally bring peace to the war zones of
Muslim Mindanao.
18
The government and MILF also agreed to form a joint "Bangsamoro Transition Commission" in that would draft the "Bangsamoro
Basic Law" with the assistance of a coalition of civil society organizations
8 | Philippines Situation Report