4 BARMM governors to Palace: Hasten MILF disbandment

BRAZEN ATTACK The bullet-riddled pickup of Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr. is left on the highway in Maguing town after the ambush on Feb. 17 that wounded the governor. Its driver and three police officers aboard were killed. Four Bangsamoro governors said the ambush showed the “brazenness” of lawless groups in the region. —PHOTO FROM LANAO DEL SUR PROVINCIAL POLICE

GENERAL SANTOS CITY—Four provincial governors of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) had appealed to President Marcos to forgo this year’s village elections throughout the region on account of security concerns.

The political exercise should only be held in the Bangsamoro when the forces of the erstwhile rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), many of whom still own firearms, are fully deactivated, said Governors Abdusakur Tan of Sulu, Bai Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu of Maguindanao del Sur, Hadjiman Hataman-Salliman of Basilan and Yshmael Sali of Tawi-Tawi in a letter to the President dated Feb. 20, a copy of which the Inquirer obtained on Friday.

“We are seriously concerned that law enforcement in the BARMM will continue to be handicapped leading to the barangay elections on October 30, 2023, unless effective decommissioning of MILF combatants and firearms is completed,” the governors said.

The letter was apparently triggered by the Feb. 17 ambush on a convoy of Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr. in Maguing town of the province. The attack hurt Adiong, his aide, and an Army security detail; and killed four security escorts, three of whom were police officers.

The governors expressed grave concern over the alarming rise of violence in the region, citing the “almost daily killings” in Maguindanao provinces, Cotabato City and the Special Geographic Area composed of 63 villages in North Cotabato that opted to join the BARMM.

“The brazenness by which criminal acts are perpetrated by armed lawless groups is apparent in the daring ambush in broad daylight of Gov. Adiong,” the governors said.

Not a coincidence

“It is not coincidental that a climate of lawlessness reigns in local government units where MILF base commands are located,” they added.

The attack on Adiong’s convoy occurred less than two kilometers from the 103rd base command of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), the MILF’s armed wing, which is set for decommissioning in keeping with its 2014 peace deal with the government.

The four governors faulted the peace process mechanisms for “severely restrain[ing]” state security forces from enforcing law and order in MILF areas.

One of these mechanisms is the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group through which government and BIAF troopers pursue alleged criminals lurking in MILF communities and for them to coordinate their initiatives to prevent undue provocation that could lead to skirmishes.

The four chief executives recalled that 39 Army Special Forces troopers conducting law enforcement operations were held overnight by MILF forces in Maguing on Feb. 7. The government peace implementing panel claimed the incident was due to “miscommunication.”

“The decommissioning process, which began in 2015, has failed to dismantle even a single MILF base command and camp. Until our law enforcement agencies take full control of law and order in the BARMM, the barangay elections in October will be marred by violence and lead to failure,” the governors assert.

They asked Marcos to hasten the decommissioning process which, until today, has yet to cover some 15,000 of the 40,000 MILF combatants. So far, only 4,625 weapons have been turned in so these are “put beyond use.”

Nonconclusive claim

BARMM Interior Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, who is also a member of the Joint Normalization Committee between the government and the MILF, clarified that there has been no conclusive studies directly correlating violence with the existence of an MILF base command or camp.

“Instead, there is conclusive evidence of a downtrend in violence since the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the establishment of the BARMM. If you compare the peace and order condition in the region now as against the years 1970s, 2000, 2003 or 2008, there’s a tremendous change,” Sinarimbo told the Inquirer on Friday.

He explained that the decommissioning of MILF forces is just one of the many aspects of the normalization aspect of the peace deal, pointing out that the process “in parallel and commensurate to the implementation of the other aspects of the agreement including the disbandment of private armed groups.”

“In the past elections, it was never the MILF that caused election-related violence. It has always been the goons of politicians,” he added.

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