World Bank: BBL can’t ensure peace, new threat groups emerging

By: Christine O. Avendaño - 10 years ago

Sen. Francis Escudero. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The government has to contend with other armed groups, including new threat groups, after achieving peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Sen. Francis Escudero said on Friday, citing a World Bank-funded study of the conflict in Mindanao.

The World Bank study titled “Rebellion, Political Violence and Shadow Crimes in the Bangsamoro: The Bangsamoro Conflict Monitoring System (BCMS) 2011-2013” was undertaken to provide data that would help in understanding the conflict in Mindanao.

It said information was “critical in dealing with the potential recurrence of conflict after the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro” between the government and the MILF.

International Alert UK Philippines and the World Bank put up the BCMS to “monitor and analyze conflict, particularly violent conflict with the Bangsamoro and adjoining areas.”

The BCMS collected conflict data from 2011 to 2013 from the Philippine National Police and five credible print media sources in five provinces.

(Escudero’s office provided the Inquirer a copy of the World Bank study.)

With other armed groups in the region, Escudero said the passage of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) would not be an assurance of lasting peace in Mindanao.

The World Bank study looked into and analyzed data on conflict in the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi where there were 2,578 violent incidents of violence from 2011 to 2013.

The five provinces make up the bulk of the proposed Bangsamoro autonomous region.

“The BBL will only provide peace between the government and the MILF,” Escudero said, reiterating his call to government peace negotiators to be “candid, honest and not raise false hopes that the BBL will bring peace to Mindanao.”

‘Irrelevant’

The MILF, however, sees the BBL as a tool that would make the other armed groups in Mindanao irrelevant.

“With the BBL, other armed groups will lose legitimacy because the issues related to the Moro conflict are being addressed,” Mohagher Iqbal, chief peace negotiator of the MILF, said at a recent round-table discussion in Davao City sponsored by the National Union of Journalists.

Iqbal acknowledged that the BBL “may not be a complete formula” for peace. But with the BBL, he said, “the situation will change significantly.”

The passage of the BBL by Congress is part of the peace agreement signed last year by the government and the MILF.

Escudero said the World Bank study showed that the BBL “will not really provide lasting peace with the armed groups in Mindanao.”

“But admittedly, it may lessen the groups fighting the government [with the achievement of peace with the MILF],” Escudero said.

For the government to settle the peace and order problem in Mindanao, it has to “engage all other groups as well and not just the MILF because all other groups that were excluded will still pose serious security threats to Mindanao and our country,” he added.

‘Rido’

Among the significant findings of the study was that there was more violence produced by clans, ethnic groups, political elites and private armed groups than by insurgents, paramilitary and government forces, and that the violence was caused by feuding clans and factional rivalry among rebel groups.

Iqbal said the BBL would provide an avenue for the settlement of clan feuds, or rido, which affect many Moro communities.

Ghazali Jaafar, MILF vice chair for political affairs, said the proposed Bangsamoro government would definitely deal with rido, which is mainly caused by conflict over land.

“Normally, land conflict is the source of rido, particularly because of the titling process,” Jaafar said in an interview with the Inquirer yesterday.

Jaafar blamed the problem on corruption. “If you have connections and the money then you will have your land title,” he said.

Litigation does not help, either, he said, “because some parties who are not satisfied with a judge’s decision could still be frustrated and just shoot or kill somebody.”

“The Bangsamoro government was designed to address the process of titling and to change the leadership into one that shuns corruption. We know how rido works and that is why we are confident [that we can solve] it,” Jaafar said.

The World Bank study also said that the end of the conflict between the government and the MILF will lessen political violence and improve the peace prospects in Mindanao.

But the study also noted that the government has to contend with “newly emerging sources of violence,” referring to these armed groups.

“It would be a mistake to assume that violent conflict in the Bangsamoro will end simply because formal peace processes have reached a positive outcome,” the study said.

According to the study, there were 2,758 cases of violent conflict in the five provinces previously named during 2011-2013 and that violence “fluctuated” across much of the region, except for Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, where violence has been declining since 2012.

But during the three-year period, Basilan had more violent incidents among the provinces, with an annual average of 78 incidents per year.

Causes of violence

There were three causes of violence: Conflicts arising from shadow economies (such as production and trade in illicit guns and drugs, kidnap for ransom, cattle rustling, smuggling, illegal gambling and pyramiding scams); politics (armed clashes with government forces, violence from electoral competition) and extrajudicial issues (robbery, rape and damage to property, among others).

The study noted that armed clashes between the government and the MILF significantly dropped in Maguindanao and Basilan, and this happened before and after the signing of a preliminary peace agreement between the government and the MILF in 2012.

“Nonetheless, the drop in violence associated with the MILF did not dent the popular perception that rebellion was the main cause of political violence, even though most of the violent conflicts associated with insurgents had to do with intra- and interinsurgent struggles,” the study said.

Interinsurgent violence, the study said, refers to violence “between two insurgents such as conflict between the MILF and the BIFF, while intrainsurgent violence pertains to violence within the insurgent group.’’

Still, the study said, political violence related to rebellion and insurgency inflicts the “largest human cost.’’

In the three-year period, the number of people killed, wounded and missing or kidnapped in rebellion-related cases were 258 in 2011 and 184 in 2013 while deaths caused by conflict between and among insurgents or rebel groups were 464 in 2011 and 443 in 2013.

“Without a doubt, ending the [government-MILF] conflict as a major source of rebellion-related violence retires a significant source of political violence with huge costs in terms of death, injury and displacement, and will impact positively on the prospects for peace and stability across the Bangsamoro,’’ the study said.

The study also said political and criminal violence was rising in new threat groups like the BIFF and criminal gangs in Mindanao.

BIFF attacks against government forces and local clans and communities increased from 19 incidents in 2011 to 37 incidents in 2013.

The Abu Sayyaf group still is a “potent threat’’ to peace and stability there, according to the study.

And another emerging threat of violence was crime syndicates in the Bangsamoro involved in kidnapping for ransom, extortion and sabotage, carjacking, robbery and illegal drug manufacturing and trade.

“An alarming increase in organized crime has been observed in the past three years. Their activities increased from 10 to 27 incidents from 2012 to 2013. They are spread out in the Bangsamoro provinces, especially in Maguindanao, Sulu and Basilan. They exacerbate the violence perpetrated by terrorist groups and other rebel factions,’’ the study said.

It also noted that religious affiliations did not figure much as underlying causes of violence unlike clan and tribal identities.

“This finding underscores the conclusions in previous studies showing that the Muslim-Christian divide is not a significant predictor of violent conflict in the Bangsamoro,” it said. With reports from Ryan Rosauro, Karlos Manlupig and Jeoffrey Maitem, Inquirer Mindanao