AMID WAR, a woman spreads the bounty of a rice harvest on a solar dryer, one of the internationally funded “community-driven” projects of the Barangay Magatos Organization for Peace and Development in Kabacan, North Cotabato. RAFFY LERMA
PEACE TALKS IMPASSE Multidonor effort to rebuild threatened By Fernando del Mundo Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 03:23:00 10/06/2008
(First of three parts)
KABACAN, NORTH COTABATO – The scene at harvest time in this tranquil farming community in a region torn by war is so much like a landscape from a bygone era come alive in an Amorsolo masterpiece.
Seemingly caught in a time warp, farmers wield scythes and machetes to cut rice stalks in the field and feed them to an ancient threshing machine that separates the grain and spews the chaff high into the gentle breeze.
About the only things that appear to be a modern intrusion to the rustic setting are a solar dryer – a patch of concrete slightly bigger than a basketball court used to dry palay (unhusked rice) – and a warehouse that alternates as an elementary school classroom.
Built with money from Australia, Canada, the European Community, Sweden, the United States and the World Bank, the P675,000 dryer was an undertaking of the Barangay Magatos Organization for Peace and Development (Mopad).
It is one of 53 "community-driven projects" funded by international donors under an initiative begun barely two years ago that is threatened by the collapse of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The projects range from a farm-to-market road worth P336,000 to a P1.2-million community training center, all totaling P37.9 million.
Program manager is the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), established in 2002 under a GRP-MILF agreement in which the agency is tasked with implementing humanitarian, rehabilitation and development projects in Mindanao.
In accordance with this arrangement, the Mindanao Trust Fund-Rehabilitation and Development Program (MTF-RDP) was created to receive funding from multilateral and bilateral donors. The fund is administered by the World Bank and its finance manager is the Philippine-based NGO Community and Family Services International.
But with the Supreme Court's scuttling on Aug. 5 of a deal on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland, the multidonor effort to prepare the region for an anticipated flow of development financing when peace finally comes faces uncertainty.
Typhoon, violence, flooding
MILF commanders, upset at the standoff in the 11-year effort to resolve nearly four decades of civil strife that has cost more than 120,000 lives, have gone on a rampage, sacking Christian settlements and prompting the military to mount a counteroffensive using artillery barrages and air strikes.
The resulting violence in the midst of monsoon flooding has displaced more than 500,000 people, many of them barely recovering from a devastating typhoon in June. Tens of thousands of them are in makeshift encampments in appalling conditions.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has squelched warnings by international aid groups of a potential humanitarian disaster, saying it is meeting needs.
But a cursory look at an encampment, for example, in the Datu Piang poblacion, will show that without the plastic sheets provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, thousands of displaced would have been exposed to the elements.
The DSWD food assistance of three kilos of rice, five packs of noodles, and three cans of sardines per family is inadequate, aid workers say. The World Food Program provides 25 kilos of rice per family for a month but says it will be unable to meet requirements if the conflict worsens and no donations come.
The Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC) said last week the government's response to the situation in Central Mindanao had been "undeniably slow, intermittent, limited and haphazard."
"Hundreds of thousands of IDPs (internally displaced people) have not received much needed relief and giving away three kilos of rice for each head of the family is definitely not enough compliance to say they had already been served," said the MPC, a peace advocacy group.
Aid workers and NGO representatives are worried that as the fighting intensified following the end last week of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and the number of displaced people continued to rise, not only humanitarian but development work will suffer.
Fighting is now on its second month, and the end is not yet in sight.
Waiting and watching
"A lot of bilateral donors, they're kind of watching and waiting. In some cases, they've suspended work temporarily because they need to protect their staff. They don't want them in harm's way," says one diplomat. "I think they've been shaken."
Even the BDA is now preparing to attend to the potential humanitarian disaster. It has requested assistance from the World Bank to address basic necessities in the squalid camps for the displaced.
"Before, talk is about developing communities, now it's disaster management," says BDA executive director Danda Juanday.
Relief and rehabilitation is the second element of the peace arrangements. The first strand was a cease-fire concluded in July 1997. This resulted in the deployment of an international monitoring team and mechanisms to resolve truce violations.
The third part of the peace package was the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain secretly hammered out in Malaysia in July. Had the deal been signed, it would have resulted in a new round of negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement. Once concluded, the accord could lead to a massive infusion of development aid to Mindanao.
The community-driven projects currently being undertaken, although small-scale, are regarded as critical in the post-conflict rehabilitation of Mindanao, as exemplified in the Magatos project.
Unhusked rice used to be dried in the sun on the roadsides. This caused losses of at least 10 percent of the harvest. In terms of annual national production, that's roughly equivalent to the 1.7 million tons purchased in the world market that made this country the world's top rice importer this year.
When the people of Magatos were asked what they needed most, the unanimous choice was the dryer, which was completed in August after six months. It's unlike the P3 million in dryers found in Luzon that work like ovens but no less welcome.
Capacity-building program
The next item on the wish list of the Magatos folk is potable water, which now comes mainly from wells and streams infested with diseases that account for high mortality and morbidity rates in Mindanao.
The Magatos project is part of the BDA's "capacity-building program," preparing a cadre of workers that will carry out the rehabilitation of war-torn regions.
The agency staffed by Muslim professionals has recruited some 4,000 "development catalysts" across Mindanao who organize peace and development groups, like Mopad.
The groups hold consultations with their constituencies and decide which is best for the community. A project is then put together with help from local government units (LGUs) and technicians.
LGUs provide a token counterpart fund. Beneficiaries, including mainly Muslims but also Christians and indigenous groups such as the Maguindanaoans, the Maranaos, the Tausugs, usually provide the labor.
Grass-roots approach
This illustrates the concept of inclusiveness and demonstrates the grass-roots approach to development. Projects are decided from down up by the people, instead of by leaders, the general practice that often leads to corruption, a major factor that has kept Mindanao impoverished.
The exercise is orchestrated by the BDA whose mission is to determine, lead and manage projects jointly with the government in some 3,000 conflict-affected barangays (villages) in 150 municipalities in Mindanao.
The objective is to demonstrate that the Moros have the capability to spur and sustain economic viability in an atmosphere of peace.
Camaludin Pidtamanan, 41, a security guard who is one of the BDA's development catalysts, says Mopad has 25 members representing the six sub-villages (sitios) of Magatos.
Before undertaking the solar dryer project, the group underwent training on community investment plans, project preparation, financial management and procurement.
"There were courses on values formation, honesty and transparency," he says. "We learned about patience and trust, fear of God."
At Barangay Pigcalagan just outside Cotabato City, a P570,415 deep well water supply system has just been completed with World Bank funding.
Learning by doing
Saidona T. Sabdula, 42, says 600 households which used to fetch water in another village benefit from the project. They supervise distribution and contribute to the monthly electric bill of P200 for the operation of a pump, he says.
A casual employee in the Department of Public Works and Highways, Sabdula says a similar government project would cost P2 million.
Camaludin and Sabdula belong to a "critical mass" that Juanday says is being trained and should gain enough confidence to implement a model of development patterned after the Islamic way of doing things.
"It is learning by doing ... a stewardship of what God has given us," Juanday says.
"Material and spiritual development go hand in hand," he says. "God will never change the condition of the people until they change what is in themselves."
Malaysia is one model. Juanday says it has "the type of development that looks not only at the material but also the spiritual aspect of governance, that's why the spirituality."
"There's inclusiveness. Everybody should be part of development," he says, not only Muslims but also Christians and other indigenous groups.
If all of these aspirations are met, no doubt Mindanao will be the Promise Land it has always been touted to be.
Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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