DATU PIANG, MAGUINDANAO—Aid agencies are mobilizing emergency assistance to meet a potential “double whammy” in Central Mindanao—widening monsoon flooding and a possible full-scale war at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Fighting between government forces and so-called “lawless” elements of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has triggered what is now described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the area in five years.

Local aid workers say the government has so far been unable to provide the required assistance to war-affected populations, but appears to shy away from supporting appeals for foreign aid that will politicize and “internationalize” the problem, making it lose face.

Donors are reportedly waiting for the signal from the Arroyo administration to move in.

Ironically, the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), formed under a previous accord to oversee rehabilitation once peace comes to Mindanao, is now shifting to “disaster management.”

“I think the needs are going up,” said Stephen L. Anderson, country representative of the World Food Program (WFP), who visited last week people huddled in makeshift camps in ramshackle towns at the edge of the rain-swollen Rio Grande de Mindanao, an hour’s drive from Cotabato City.

The UN food agency based in Rome has been assisting more than 400,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) since a deal on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland—secretly hammered out in Kuala Lumpur under Malaysian auspices to resolve a decades-old civil strife—unraveled and enraged MILF commanders rampaged a month ago.

“Now it’s going to be above 500,000,” Anderson said, referring to the number of IDPs urgently needing assistance.

“There had been an optimism that Ramadan would be a kind of cooling off period and allow the peace process to get back on track, but at this point in time, I don’t see that happening and the people I’ve spoken to here are not very optimistic,” he said.

Anderson said he saw distressed people still arriving during his visit on Wednesday in Datu Piang.

Appalling camp conditions

In one site alone, over 1,000 families—roughly 5,000 people composed mainly of women and children—had turned plastic sheets provided by the Geneva-headquartered International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) into tents in the town square and surrounding streets in appalling conditions.

Makeshift shelters stood even in the slime and mud that got flooded every time it rained. There were no sanitation facilities or potable water in the area, called an “evacuation center” by relief workers.

Malnutrition was evident among many children. Pregnant mothers gave birth in the open field.

As a former reporter and humanitarian worker, I have been to camps for those uprooted by wars and disasters from East Asia to West Africa. The evacuation centers here in Datu Piang are comparable to some of the worst I have seen. Even the camps for the Rwandan Hutu refugees in the virtual moonscape of Goma in then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, had latrines and trash receptacles.

It is monsoon season. Wide areas of IDP-hosting municipalities in the periphery of the lush Liguasan Marsh, reputed to be an MILF stronghold where the military is hunting down recalcitrant rebel commanders, were inundated in the current monsoon drenching and by runoff from deforested mountains and destroyed watersheds.

“If you have this combination of floods and then the security situation remains and even potentially worsening, it could be an extremely serious humanitarian situation on our hands,” Anderson said.

He said he had talked to donors for funding of the WFP’s emergency operation in Central Mindanao that had taken a large chunk of the WFP’s annual $25-million assistance programs in the Philippines, including “food for education” and “food for work.”

“We’ve had some positive indications, but nothing concrete,” he said, adding that Luxembourg had contributed $200,000 and Saudi Arabia had dispatched boxes of dates.

“All of that is appreciated, but when you’re talking larger scale, sustaining this kind of intervention becomes more costly,” he said.

Gov’t resources thin

“The government is providing significant resources, but clearly as we could see in Datu Piang, they’re very thin,” Anderson said.

The WFP provides each family 25 kilos of rice that is good for one month.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development normally hands out a food package, including three kilos of rice, five packs of noodles, and three cans of sardines, for three days per family. Aid workers said the DSWD package was insufficient most of the time.

Midway through the month-long observance of Ramadan, Anderson stressed that the UN food agency required substantial lead time in order to purchase emergency supplies, deliver and preposition these to disaster zones so that local coordinating organizations on the ground could distribute them to beneficiaries.

The WFP official said other agencies under the United Nations, ICRC and some of the world’s major relief organizations were struggling to put together a program which he hoped donors would support to meet any contingency from the monsoon and the military offensive.

Dr. Danda Juanday, executive director of the BDA, described as a “double whammy” the likely humanitarian disaster facing Mindanao. People are not only fleeing fighting but also flooding, he said.

He said that with the collapse of the peace talks everybody was now talking about war. “It is inevitable,” he said.

Preparing for worst

Juanday said the BDA had requested the World Bank for assistance to prepare for the anticipated massive displacement with the likely resumption of hostilities at the end of Ramadan. “We’re preparing for the worst. We cannot be caught flat-footed,” he said.

Pointing to a convoy of about a dozen truckloads of soldiers in full combat gear barreling down the highway heading outside of Cotabato City, Juanday said: “This is giving the people a wrong signal.”

The BDA was created under the government-MILF peace accords to take a major role in the post-conflict rehabilitation of Mindanao. It is now essentially engaged in “capacity building,” or organizing a grassroots cadre of workers that will carry out full-scale development once peace is established.

The agency has received high marks from various multilateral and bilateral donors, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United States and the European Union, in its initial small-scale initiatives and for its strong emphasis on values formation of honesty and transparency in the midst of a series of massive corruption scandals that has hounded the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This is evident from the support it is getting from them.

Priorities have changed

“Before the negotiations collapsed, we were talking about developing communities,” Juanday said. “Now, we are preparing for disaster management.”

BDA officials also decry an apparent media campaign in Manila to discredit the agency as nothing more than a source of funds for the MILF.

“That’s a lie,” said Dr. Abbas Candao, the BDA chair, who, like Juanday, is a physician. He pointed out that donations went directly to bank accounts established for individual projects, which were monitored by international observers and checked by the respected auditors Sycip, Gorres and Velayo.

Juanday also lamented an ostensible move by the government to play down rather than “internationalize” the current humanitarian situation in Mindanao in spite of the obvious inability of the government to assist uprooted people. He said the government did not want to lose face in the eyes of the people and the world.

Anderson said that in the past, whenever there was a skirmish and people fled their homes, the WFP distributed a one-month ration to the displaced.

“The situation quickly normalized and they immediately went home. While there was some damage to their livelihood, it was not at this level. This seems to be worse for sure than 2003,” Anderson said. He referred to the government offensive against the MILF headquarters in the Buliok complex in Pagalungan, Maguindanao.

“It could get better but it also could get worse. We’re trying to look at different contingency plans, different scenarios of what may happen,” Anderson said.

More to lose in wider conflict

“We were thinking that it was not going to get worse than 500,000 people for a three-month period when they would be displaced. That was our own internal guesstimate, just for planning. And it’s very hard to speculate on this. We still hope that the peace process would reengage and that the leaders and the authorities would realize that there’s more to lose by allowing the situation, the conflict to widen,” Anderson said.

“Nobody has a template. We don’t have a magic crystal ball,” he said.

“International aid agencies are currently simply responding to a crisis, how to best help the displaced in a short time and hoping that the situation would start to improve.”

“But now, we’re moving into the stage where people are needing assistance over one month. People who have been displaced a month ago are still in this condition. The situation has become more complex and so we have to plan.”

Anderson said donors had been asking him what the government’s plans were for the displaced.

“And it’s true. The government is responsible. And the government has taken the position that this should be dealt with nationally and these agencies are invited to support, and their support is appreciated, but they’re not going to make an international appeal,” he said.

“Government has expressed very strong appreciation at various levels for our support and they’ve asked for this support to continue,” he said.

Anderson denied claims by Muslim peace groups and some Catholic priests that the military had mounted a “food blockade” to prevent the flow of urgently needed supplies to areas where the uprooted had congregated—mostly schools, municipal grounds, church compounds, mosques and day care centers.

He said there was one incident about two weeks ago where armed men stopped a truck and took away 28 sacks of rice, but it had not yet been established who were responsible.

Overall, Anderson said he was satisfied with the cooperation that his agency and its local partners were getting from the military and local authorities. Aid workers have so far been allowed free movement and access to people requiring urgent assistance. But more than access, they need the resources to save lives.