MILF ensures Islamic freedom fighters fulfill promise not to attack

COTABATO CITY – The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has deployed forces to monitor the compliance of the renegade Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM) to an agreement that it would cease from staging attacks.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF political affairs chief, said members of the MILF’s elite national guard were tapped for the task of also ensuring that the forces of Ameril Umra Kato will not break that pledge.

“We began deploying after they promised us that they will not make any moves that will destroy the unity of the people,” Jaafar said.

On Friday, Abu Misry Mama, BIFM spokesman, said they had forged an agreement with the MILF that they would cease from staging attacks against the military.

But Mama said the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, BIFM’s military wing, would continue to defend themselves against military offensives.

“But if we are attacked, naturally we will fight back,” he said during a radio interview here.

On August 5, BIFF forces went on a rampage in Maguindanao and briefly controlled a portion of the Maguindanao-General Santos highway.

At least 10 soldiers and five civilians were killed in the clashes that ensued. The military claimed to have killed about 80 BIFF forces during the clashes and the subsequent manhunt it launched.

Von Al Haq, MILF spokesman, said the BIFM, founded by Kato after he bolted out of the mainstream rebel group in 2010, made the pledge during a recent meeting with MILF officials and Muslim religious leaders in Maguindanao.

“We have an agreement and they are bound by it, that the BIFF will cease from launching offensives against the military for the welfare of Maguindanaons,” Al Haq said in a separate radio interview.

It was not immediately known what prompted the BIFM to forge the agreement with the MILF but it was preceded by massive deployments of MILF forces near Kato’s claimed territories in Maguindanao.

Jaafar said members of the MILF’s national guard were working under the rebel group’s Task Force Etihad. Etihad, an Arabic word, means “union of two organizations.”

“The forces we deployed are not territorial, unlike those in our base commands,” Jaafar said as he downplayed the possibility that clashes could erupt between MILF and BIFM forces, considering that some of them are involved in family feuds.

Jaafar said the MILF hoped that the BIFM would abide by the agreement so that tension created by its August 5 attacks would be dampened.