The Peacemakers: Christians turn Moro rebels’ kids into peaceniks

Empathy

Muslims are associated with insurgent Moro forces, she said, even if they are not.

“There is a need to develop empathy. This means you have to immerse yourself in the environment of others. There is a need to give space, to hear the yearnings of the Bangsamoro,” she said. “Let us not think that the Bangsamoro people are fond of their guns. That is the root of the problem.”

In Cotabato and elsewhere in Central Mindanao, the apprehension now is the possible collapse of the peace process that the Aquino administration launched after he took office to resolve the simmering Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) insurgency in the Mindanao-Sulu region.

The slaughter of 44 police commandos on Jan. 25 in Mamasapano outside Cotabato City is threatening to derail the passage of a law calling for the establishment of a Bangsamoro substate.

First victims

An Army campaign against a renegade faction of the MILF involved in the massacre has displaced tens of thousands of residents in a dozen municipalities in Maguindanao province and shut down 20 schools that had been turned into evacuation centers.

“People who talk about all-out war do not know what they are talking about. The children are going to be the first victims,” said Nasser A. Usman, the 58-year-old barangay captain at Mother Poblacion, who is not a relative of the teacher.

Usman was a high school student when he joined the Moro rebels after the declaration of martial law in 1972. “We were all young Muslims attracted by calls for jihad.”

He spent the ensuing years with criminal gangs involved in kidnappings, robbery and assassinations, until he took at heart his father’s counsel. He then did honest work—as pedicab driver, boatman, duck farmer, messenger and later chief security officer before getting elected barangay councilman in 2002.

Since 2006, he has been barangay chief of Mother Poblacion, taking care of security in the tough neighborhood. He drives a Honda sedan, has a gun tucked in his belt and moves around with bodyguards.

“We need to look for ways to avoid war,” said Usman, eyeing the schoolchildren putting on a show for embarrassed visitors from Manila—Inquirer photographer Raffy Lerma and his sidekick.

A great place to live

The children, many of them girls wearing head scarves, were enthusiastically singing a song composed by their teachers in memory of an Irish missionary assassinated while on assignment in Mindanao:

It’s time to rise and be proud

And make this land

Great once again

Let the past be buried

In our hearts

And face the future with great strength

Muslims and Christians

Work hand in hand

Making this land

A great place to live

In justice, equality, security and harmony

As means of peace in Mindanao

RELATED STORIES

Moro doctors try to heal suffering

For this mayor, pink is the color of peace