Greening of MILF camp needed no negotiation

GOVERNMENT officials and leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front launch a greening program in Camp Abubakar. Photo by ARMM BUREAU OF PUBLIC INFORMATION

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao—It was one endeavor that needed no negotiation. Government officials and leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) launched a program to plant trees in Camp Abubakar, once the main lair of the MILF.

Abubakar used to be the main training camp of MILF rebels when the group severed ties with its mother unit, the Moro National Liberation Front, in 1978.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF vice chair for political affairs, regarded Camp Abubakar as a sacred ground of martyrs after government forces took control of it in an all-out war launched by former President Joseph Estrada, a pardoned plunder convict, in 2000.

The military invasion of the rebel camp transformed its name from Abubakar to Camp Iranun, which is now the Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade base command.

He recounted the former rebel sanctuary in Barangay Togaig, Barira town, as a cold, serene place, with soil so fertile that seeds that fell on the ground soon grew into plants.

Although born and raised in Cotabato City, Jaafar learned to appreciate nature during his long stay at the MILF camp.

Jaafar, a broadcast journalist of the defunct dxMV of the University of Mindanao Broadcasting Network prior to the declaration of martial law in 1972, said the wanton cutting of trees by loggers denuded vast areas of the camp, drastically changing its landscape and climate.

“The climate became humid,” Jaafar said.

He blamed the wide-scale denudation to a government that allowed the destruction of the island’s natural resources by vested interest groups at the expense of local inhabitants who suffer the brunt of flooding, landslides and other natural calamities.

“This is one of the reasons why many joined the Moro rebellion because the once known and cherished Moro homeland was explored and left to ruins by outsiders,” Jaafar said, as he lauded the multimillion-peso greening project of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources at the camp.

Kahal Kedtag, environment secretary for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), said President Aquino in 2011 issued Executive Order No. 29 imposing a log ban in the country, aware of the lapses and abuses of his predecessor on environmental issues.

Kedtag said an estimated 200,000 hectares of land in the ARMM needed more than 800,000 seedlings for its reforestation.