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ISSUE ANALYSIS No. 13
Peace is not just the absence
of war. It is the outcome of settling an armed conflict by addressing its
fundamental roots toward a just and lasting peace. Unless the causes are
addressed, any peace that is forged is just a means of preserving an
unjust status quo leading to bigger tensions.
In the old days, peace terms
were prescribed by victorious states and armies in a war or armed
conflict; the terms usually included disarming the vanquished and
dismembering territories. The impositions in the treaties that ended the
two major world wars of the 20th century yielded no lasting peace: World
War I led to World War II, and the latter was followed by the so-called
"cold war" and thereafter by the permanent and borderless "war on
terrorism."
In the Philippines, the
ongoing peace talks between the Arroyo government and the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) fits into a peace process paradigm developed by
capitalist countries led by the United States. Sometimes referred to as
globalization-driven, the peace process somewhat similar to the UN's
"peace building," "conflict resolution" or "dispute settlement" -
purportedly aims to address the core issues of the Bangsamoro problem,
namely, the Moro people's ancestral domain claim and self-rule.
The trouble is, not all "peace
processes" are success stories as advocates and current political
literature on this paradigm admit. In fact, the backlash generated by a
controversial Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD), which
is a product of this peace process, and the resumption of hostilities are
imperiling the peace talks between the GRP and MILF.
Two major peace talks
The centuries-long Bangsamoro
struggle for self-determination in terms of having a separate and
independent state has gone through two major peace negotiations with the
government. The first, held with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF),
traversed through 20 years ending in the 1996 final peace accord that has
been criticized as inadequate in building autonomy and development for the
ARMM. The second, with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), started
in 1997 with an agreement on the cessation of hostilities followed by the
Tripoli agreement of 2001(1) . Unfolding in this second process are
seemingly irreconcilable interests representing not only the MILF and GRP
but also the local elite, investors, and foreign governments.
In the GRP-MNLF peace talks, a
confluence of events on the part of the Marcos regime the economic
crisis and the need to tap Middle East countries for oil and market for
cheap Filipino labor, and, on the MILF military setbacks and the gradual
loss of armed support from Libya and other OIC countries drove both
parties to enter into a negotiated political settlement. In the early
phase, however, a faction of the MNLF that disagreed with the peace talks,
led by Salamat Hashim, formed the MILF in 1977. The MILF has been the main
revolutionary Moro group with its armed component, Bangsamoro Islamic
Armed Forces (BIAF), consistently fighting for secession.
The MILF suffered a major
setback when 50 of its military camps were destroyed by the AFP in the
total war unleashed by then President Joseph Estrada in 2000 and again,
when the Buliok complex which replaced Camp Abubakar as the rebels'
central headquarters, came under heavy military offensive - in violation
of a truce - in February 2003. Government offensives forced the MILF's
positional warfare units to disperse into smaller, clan-led guerrilla
forces.
Although intelligence reports
say that the BIAF is still 15,000-strong with 11,000 firearms, the MILF's
fighting spirit appeared to have reached what some security analysts call
a "hurting stalemate" which can go either to extremism by its dispersed
units or to a prolonged armed engagement without any prospects of winning.
Aside from economic losses and other reasons, the Arroyo government
pursued the peace talks in a bid to silence the guns of the MILF which
had been put into effect in the 1997 ceasefire agreement in order to
concentrate on its strategic offensives against the New People's Army in a
vain attempt to put it into irrelevance by 2010.
Ripe time
By 2003, the time was ripe for
giving momentum to the "peace process." The MILF faced the threat of
having its inclusion in the U.S. government's list of foreign terrorist
organizations (FTOs) renewed and, hence, foreign support from Muslim
countries being reduced. An exchange of communications between MILF Chair
Salamat Hashim (2) and U.S. President George Bush followed in early 2003,
paving the way for U.S. participation in the peace talks. Further
legitimizing U.S. participation was an official request by Arroyo for U.S.
assistance in the peace talks.
Since Malaysia was the
official facilitator of the talks being held in Kuala Lumpur, U.S. role
was through the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a quasi-state agency
created by an act of Congress. Washington promised an initial $30 million
aid package to the MILF subject, however, to the latter's signing a final
peace agreement. The USIP's Philippine Facilitation Project, which allowed
U.S. state department authorities a direct access to the MILF including
its military camps, lasted from 2003-2007. Since then, U.S. liaison with
the MILF has been continued by the state department and its embassy in
Manila.
The MoA-AD, the signing of
which was aborted by a Supreme Court (SC) temporary restraining order,
articulates a compromise deal with the MILF in which its historical
ancestral domain claim is recognized by the government in principle but
makes its actualization conditional. The implementation of this claim,
along with the ownership of natural resources and the exercise of
jurisdictional authority, will need to pass through the gauntlet of more
contentious negotiations leading up to the Comprehensive Compact,
plebiscite, and a constitutional amendment that will establish a federal
system. More importantly, the agreement binds the MILF to honor private
landholdings, corporate plantations, foreign investments particularly in
energy resources, as well as the presence of foreign forces in Bangsamoro.
II. The Peace Process and U.S.
Role
The critique that the U.S. had
a hand in crafting the MoA appears to be not without basis. The agreement
the whole peace talks for that matter is a by-product of a new peace
formula whose underlying goal is to enhance the U.S.' comprehensive
security strategy in Mindanao and the whole Southeast Asian region. Among
other instruments, the superpower's security imperatives, i.e., economic,
geo-political, and military objectives, are promoted through the now
spurious "war on terrorism" defining the region as the second front. This
post-9/11 declaration, backed by Arroyo, became the entry point for an
indefinite forward deployment of U.S. forces and basing facilities
particularly in southern Philippines.
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With the USIP and other policy
thinkers in Washington, however, this strategy has been reformulated to
adopt what is described as the "political economy of security." Basically,
this new formula postulates that U.S. security imperatives are better
advanced by transforming the Bangsamoro into a governable zone and a
stable extension of global capitalism supported by international funds and
investments in a post-conflict scenario. Mindanao, particularly the
Bangsamoro homeland, holds the key to U.S. security goals in Southeast
Asia and the MILF is seen as a major player for undercutting the influence
of anti-American extremism particularly among the region's Muslim
populations. The non-resolution of the Moro problem now will have
far-reaching implications to U.S. security imperatives in the region in
the future.
What this means is that, using
the classic "carrot and stick" policy, U.S. special forces will continue
to pin down the Abu Sayyaf Group and other alleged terrorist networks
through surgical military strikes and expanded intelligence, but the
politico-diplomatic approach will moderate the MILF by tying it down to a
protracted peace process and cutting its ties to the ASG and extremist
politics. As far as the U.S. is concerned, the push for the MILF's
abandonment of secessionism matched by the Arroyo regime's dropping of its
constitutional rigidity with the support of Malaysia and other countries
is a positive step for moving the peace process forward.
MILF disarmament
But this formula will only
succeed if, among other conditions, the MILF is finally disarmed and
transformed into a mass-based political party thereby enhancing in the
language of the peace process - its legitimate political authority. It
also depends on the cooperation and, more important, the political will of
the Arroyo government even as, in the eyes of the USIP and other U.S.
policy strategists, it is weak and incapable of delivering peace and
development in the Moro communities (3). In the post-conflict scenario, it
is almost inevitable for the U.S. with its military presence in Mindanao
to head an international mission to guarantee the security of a new
Bangsamoro.
The cooperation of the Arroyo
regime and the MILF in this new peace formula is assured by
internationalizing the peace process the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Supportive of the "peace and development" policy for Mindanao, a coalition
of donor countries led by the U.S., Japan as well as the World Bank is
committed to fund the Bangsamoro's economic reconstruction. Aside from
infusing 60 percent of its economic assistance to the Philippines in
Mindanao, the USAID has committed a multi-year Mindanao Peace and
Development Agreement worth $190 million and increased its economic
support fund (ESF) to $25.9 million. Japan, besides joining the
International Monitoring Team (IMT), has committed $400 million in
Mindanao. Japan, which is also the U.S.' chief security partner in East
Asia, is working closely with the MILF's development arm, Bangsamoro
Development Agency. Similar commitments have come from Canada, Australia,
Malaysia, Libya, and the OIC.
Cold war
Peace process as a paradigm
finds its birth in the 1970s when it was coined by U.S. policy strategists
to reduce tensions between Israel a U.S. ally Egypt, and Syria
following the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The first peace process involving
Israel and Egypt was choreographed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger,
considered dean of the realist diplomacy, as part of their dιtente
strategy for winning the cold war in the Middle East. While there had been
agreements forged, the process itself hyped as the "roadmap to peace" -
has been incremental for 40 years. Meantime, while tensions have
aggravated in the Middle East today, the net effect of this peace process,
among others, has included the rise of Israel as a nuclear power occupying
a major swathe of the Palestinian land claim, the taming of the Palestine
Liberation Organization by giving it a symbolic political authority, and a
pro-U.S. Egypt.
After the cold war, peace
process has been introduced in several flashpoints in the world including
Northern Ireland, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Aceh, East Timor, Bougainville,
Kosovo, Kenya, the Basque region in Spain, and now, in Mindanao. As a
politico-diplomatic track adopted in the global anti-terrorist war, peace
process is the entry point for the U.S. purportedly to bring stability and
governance in so-called "ungoverned" and "contested" territories such as
Mindanao followed by a post-conflict program of international aid and
security guarantee.
Global capitalism
The major political-economic
goal of the peace process is to extend and embed market-driven global
capitalism in these areas. A British scholar, Jan Selby, notes that the
peace process is more of "a stalling mechanism for the powerful" whose
central purpose "is to forestall radical or revolutionary political
change" as well as to "reconsolidate hegemony and/or legitimacy."
Meanwhile, this peace formula has given birth to a global "peace industry"
that involves multilateral agencies, think tanks, academic consultant
groups, corporate investors, media, and elite stakeholders.
In Mindanao, the USIP itself
anticipated that the MoA-AD would face strong legal and constitutional
resistance and predicted Arroyo's lack of capability in pushing the peace
process to the end. Indeed the draft agreement has lit a wildfire of
resistance from powerful non-Muslim politicians and landlords who have
threatened war against the MILF unless it is shelved. How to bring
stability and governance that would make the MILF the political authority
which is only possible if the Muslim sultans and non-Muslim oligarchs
disengage from dominant power politics is a daunting task.
This underscores the inherent
failure of the peace process the reason why, according to Selby the
whole exercise, which involves deliberate, well-calibrated long and
tedious phases, does not provide substantial basis for sustainable,
lasting peace. But if the net effect which appears to be an underlying
motive in the "peace process" - is to at least pacify a rebel army toward
its eventual capitulation or accepting an exit strategy from war, then
that itself can be claimed as an accomplishment by the peace architects.
The challenge to both parties,
particularly the MILF, is how to address the Bangsamoro people's historic
and just grievances by pursuing peace talks based on sincerity,
independence, and non-interference by external parties except a
transparent and facilitative role of a third party negotiator. The call
for full transparency in the talks should include full consultations with
Lumads and non-Muslim communities in the disputed territories.
As the MILF leadership itself
said when Hashim announced their 50-year jihad in 2000, if peace cannot be
achieved now under Arroyo it will do so with her successor and thereafter. |
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