Broken peace: 11 years after the GRP-MNLF peace agreement

THE 1996 peace agreement between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government was supposed to stop fighting in Muslim Mindanao. But the recent escalation of clashes between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and Sulu has drawn the MNLF to both sides, stressing the need for an earnest return to the negotiating table to renew efforts toward attaining peace.

Little known in the media is that five of the 10 Marines killed in the August 9 ambush in Sulu were MNLF integrees into the military. They were identified as Privates First Class Hassan, Ismael, Hamja, Hussin, and Abdurasid. A sixth MNLF integree, PFC Ambotong, who was wounded in the ambush, also died eventually.

Former Senator Santanina Rasul, who disclosed the information at the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy (PCID) media forum last week, warns of a precarious situation in the South, saying that the military risks further destabilizing relations with the MNLF by expanding its operations in pursuit of the Abu Sayyaf.

During the forum, her daughter, Amina Rasul, PCID’s lead convenor, presented the results of its two-year research and consultations after the peace agreement was signed. “Eleven years since the signing of the peace agreement and you have the situation getting murkier and murkier,” the younger Rasul says, wondering if the current state of affairs can accurately be referred to as “peace.”

View Rasul’s presentation, “Contending Viewpoints: Analyzing the 1996 MNLF-GRP Final Peace Agreement.”

But an increasing number of military engagements is not the only sign that the peace agreement is floundering. Rasul reports that unemployment has worsened and development indicators are as bad in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) now as they were before the 1996 agreement. By failing to give the region the power and resources to improve the lives of Muslims, the central government, she says, has failed to make the negotiated peace really benefit them.

Rasul also says that while the government claims to have met all its obligations under the peace agreement, the MNLF has raised many grievances against the government for reneging on its promises.

The way she sees it, Dr. Clarita Carlos of the University of the Philippines thinks the root of the disagreement over the implementation of the agreement is that the Philippine government works from the assumptive framework of a “nanny-state” while the MNLF evaluates the peace process through the lens of autonomy.

The PCID report explains that while the MNLF interpreted the Peace Agreement as guaranteeing that MNLF units would be incorporated into the AFP and the Philippine National Police (PNP) under MNLF leaders (Article II, Para. 20c), the implementation actually dispersed MNLF integrees to other units. The MNLF is further dissatisfied that the government has failed to create Special Regional Security Forces for the ARMM as required by the agreement, and has deployed many MNLF integrees under AFP command into the thick of fighting against MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) forces and even against MNLF units.

Adding fuel to the growing discontent with the peace agreement’s implementation, Rasul says, is that the ARMM now has less autonomy than what its inhabitants had envisioned for it. The MNLF says that while the government did fulfill the requirement to establish the Consultative Assembly, the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD), and the Special Zone of Peace and Development in Southern Philippines (SZOPAD), too few resources were allocated to them to accomplish meaningful changes, and they remained heavily dependent on the president.

Carlos agrees that the government failed to give the region significant autonomy as “elected officials from ARMM have to come to Manila with their begging bowls” to get money for their budgets. The peace agreement, she says, has not been effective because “autonomy is only meaningful when accompanied by the powers and funds to fulfill responsibilities.”

The PCID’s own findings are supported by the World Bank Joint Needs Assessment which claimed that “the ARMM has no more real of practical autonomy in deciding on the level of allocation of funds intended for its politically distinct mandate than other non-autonomous administrative agencies of national government.”

“ARMM is not receiving lots of government funding,” emphasizes Rasul. In fact, official development assistance is the region’s lifeline, without which development indicators would have even been lower.

Before martial law and armed hostilities began, the ARMM provinces were not the least developed in the Philippines. In 1970, only 15.5 percent of households in Sulu had access to piped water, but this was higher than Bataan and Pampanga. Some 6.7 percent of households had access to electricity, a higher proportion than in Leyte, Davao Oriental, Bukidnon, or Ilocos Sur. Now Sulu is in the bottom five in access to electricity and piped water. Fighting between the AFP and insurgents caused capital flight, brain drain, and the destruction of infrastructure. The ARMM has never recovered since.

The 1996 Peace Agreement was supposed to improve lives by encouraging development and creating jobs. However, many people in ARMM are worse off now than they were prior to the signing of the agreement. Currently, five of the 10 provinces with the lowest Human Development Index score are found in the Muslim Mindanao. All ARMM provinces have the lowly distinction of having experienced negative per capita income from 1997 to 2003. The unemployment rate has also increased steeply in the region even as there is a migration out of the region.

Source: 2005 Philippine Human Development Report

The escalating violence, especially since the kidnapping of Italian priest, Fr. Carlo Bossi, has made a bad situation worse. Some MNLF fighters are taking up arms again in retaliation against AFP intrusions into their territories, or just out of frustration that the mechanisms of the peace accord were not backed up with the resources needed to enable them to improve their plight.

Source: World Bank (1997, 2000); 2005 PHDR (2003)

The PCID study, however, goes farther than just cataloging the problems. “There has been a blame game going on for the last decade, and it serves no one’s interests,” says Rasul. The report thus makes constructive policy suggestions for how to get the peace process back on track. These include the following:

• civil society and Congress need to be included in the peace process, so that they will offer it their support

• implementors cannot be divorced from the negotiators of the agreement

• mechanisms are needed to make non-compliance costly

• capacity building and electoral reforms are necessary to provide ARMM with true autonomy

• implementation of institutional changes must be rationally undertaken by all agencies to prevent a lack of coordination

• the entire government philosophy be overhauled so the central government will divest control over ARMM’s affairs and allow local communities to chart their own destinies

The call for electoral reforms was echoed by Ismael Abubakar Jr., former Speaker of the ARMM Regional Legislative Assembly; and Anak Mindanao party-list Rep. Mujiv Hataman. Abubakar and Hataman are one in saying that Malacañang’s continued interference in ARMM elections have deprived voters in the region of the power to determine their government’s course. Elections, or “selections” as some in the MNLF prefer to call them, are also a manifestation of the ARMM’s lack of autonomy, they say.

As it is, the future of the peace process remains very uncertain. The government and the MNLF have not met together with the mediator, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), since 1996. The OIS had initiated talks six times since the signing of the peace agreement. Each time the MNLF agreed to participate but the government was hesitant and provided excuses for not participating. The most recent talks that were initiated never took place because Malacañang failed to give its own chief negotiator the credentials and authority to negotiate. Rasul suggests that where the government has grounds to accuse the MNLF of breaking the peace agreement, it should confront the MNLF with the OIS as mediator, rather than allowing distrust to grow further.

Atty. Nasser Marohomsalic, co-convenor of the PCID, says that by delaying talks the government is fueling distrust and disenchantment with the peace — one MNLF commander has already voiced his disenchantment publicly. Consequently, Marohomsalic forecasts that it may not be long until the MNLF and AFP resume full hostilities again.

To resuscitate the peace agreement, Rasul advises the government to undertake confidence-building measures which would include meeting some MNLF demands, among which are releasing Nur Misuari and giving him a fair trial, and holding tripartite talks as stipulated in the peace agreement.

Hataman says that to determine where the peace process should go from here, leaders on both sides need to hear how the masses and civil society evaluate the peace agreement. However, he recommends that any future “agreement should be between the executive and any revolutionary forces.” Congress, he says, should not be included because many elite interests represented in the legislature oppose the ARMM.

Rasul, however, disagrees, saying that Congress has only proved “unsympathetic” to the peace agreement because it was not involved in negotiating it.