No perfect world

“What kind of an animal is an ATS?” snapped journalist Jerry Tundag. Many came to know about “areas of temporary stay” only after the Oct. 18 firefight in Basilan.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front troops from nearby Al-Barkha “gun downed 19 soldiers seeking to serve warrants on Dan Laksaw Asnawi and companions. Six soldiers were captured and executed. Their bodies were mutilated.

Asnawi led a 2007 clash where 10 Marines were later found beheaded. Killers using cell phones of the dead Marines taunted their families. Asnawi escaped from a Basilan jail in 2009. MILF has dragged it’s feet, so far, in having warrants served on Asnawi and group.

The Koran forbids desecration of the dead. Even if it didn’t, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law (RA 9851) prohibit wanton killing of detainees, Inquirer’s Raul C Pangalangan points out.

MILF spokesmen ducked the mutilation issue by blaming “miscommunication.” “By taking part in a cover up, it invites application of the principle of command responsibility,’ Pangalanan cautioned. Even if actual killers are not identified, commanding officers can be punished.

The Philippines ratified the ICC two months ago. So bring MILF before the ICC, UP professor Harry Roque earlier suggested. It still “leaves the Philippine government enough wiggle room to talk peace without forsaking justice.”

By happenstance, the Al-Barkah massacre occurred before the Philippines and 13 Asian countries meet in Kyoto to buttress existing mechanisms “to protect victims of armed conflicts … and promote strict observance of international humanitarian law.”

The roundtable will consider the Additional Protocols I and II to the Geneva Conventon, explained the convenors, namely, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are 171 states that are party to AP I and 166 to AP II, Ambassador Hideaki Ueda explained..

At Kuala Lumpur informal talks last Thursday, both government and MILF agreed that “investigations of the Al-Barkha incident, through cease-fire mechanisms, shall continue.” RP negotiator Marivic Leonen said MILF reaffirmed pledges to “interdict kidnap-for-ransom groups, criminal syndicates and lost commands.”

“Nakilala sa gawa ang totohanang dakila,” the old Pilipino proverb says. “Deeds show what a man is.” The Al-Barka massacre meanwhile stokes fury— and probing questions.

Government “flirts with the status of a “failed state” if MILF abuses “ATS,” Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago warned. Sen. Panfilo Lacson pins ATS to an agreement, signed in Indonesia, between government and MILF under Fidel Ramos’ watch. Sen. Francis Escudero frets ATS could trigger a fiasco like the 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in 2008.

Does ATS whittle down the nation’s sovereignty? Let’s get the facts right first, Judge Soliman M. Santos Jr. suggests in a new paper: “Of ATS and Other Spaces.”

UP Press published Santos’ “Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process in 2002. He authored (2011) “In Defense of and Thinking Beyond the GRP-MILF’s” memorandum on ancestral domain. He co-authored “Primed and Purposeful,” a study of armed groups and human security efforts in the Philippines.

Peace talks started in early 1997. The agreement in Indonesia during the Ramos administration (1992-98) dealt with the Moro National Liberation Front.

The May 6, 2002, Joint Communique, issued in Malaysia, saw GRP and MILF agree “on coordinated and joint isolation and interdiction” of criminals. This included so-called lost commands operating in Mindanao, as may be found in “MILF areas/communities.” Implementing guidelines were issued December.

There is no definition of “ATS” in any peace document, Santos notes. It developed as an ad hoc arrangement on the ground. MILF forces and families backed away where AFP cracked down” on criminals. “You will never get that kind of cooperation from the New People’s Army [NPA] with its guerrilla fronts.”

Both arrangement and operation are time-bound. They were to be coordinated by the Committees on Cessation of Hostilities and Ad Hoc Joint Action Group ATS would be “dissolved” after AFP operations. MILF forces and families could then return.

That last ATS was for barangay Guinanta after the 2007 beheadings of Marines, Santos says. Barka is several kilometers away. (Farther inland is barangay Cambug, where the massacre happened.)

“None has since been established or is existing …It is misleading to characterize ATS as “safe haven” for the MILF as if to make it perpetually immune from attack by the AFP.

“In a perfect world, why should AFP soldiers be constrained from entering MILF areas? Fact is, AFP and the MILF are technically still in a state of war, albeit with a general cease-fire. A peace process is ongoing (precisely to resolve the war in a nonmilitary way).

“The crucial need is for a cease-fire agreement pending a real and lasting peace. The peace process on the Moro front, with both the MNLF and MILF, has at least had the benefit of a general cease-fire that held for the most part.”

In contrast, that has been absent between AFP and NPA in the peace process on the Communist front. MILF forces and families are real people. Government considers them part of the Filipino people. Are people not more important than the abstract concept of diminution of national sovereignty?