MILF: Rebs won’t get posts in new ARMM

COTABATO CITY—The guerrilla group negotiating a peaceful end to decades of Moro rebellion in Mindanao has no interest in having positions in a new autonomous government that could be formed if peace negotiations led to an agreement, according to the guerrilla leaders.

Ghadzali Jaafar, political affairs chief of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said no MILF leader wants to occupy any position in the autonomous government that ongoing peace talks seek to form in place of the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Jaafar said the MILF is fighting for the good of the Moro people and not positions for leaders of the guerrilla group, which broke off from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and had been left out of the 1996 peace agreement between MNLF and the administration of former President Fidel V. Ramos.

The 1996 pact led to the forming of the current ARMM, which President Aquino had described as a failed experiment in autonomy.

“The MILF leadership has no plan to seek a political position. Our priority concern now is to come up with a signed agreement beneficial to the Bangsamoro people,” Jaafar said.

Jaafar said the decision over who should occupy positions in the new autonomous government is up to the Moro people.

Muhammad Ameen, chair of the MILF secretariat, said in a statement addressed to rival Moro groups that the common good of the Moro people should be the priority of guerrilla leaders.

“Let us work together for the collective interests of our people and treat organizational and personal benefits as mere poor second or third priority,” Ameen said.

“Let us also separate ourselves from those whose motives are purely fired by vengeance and hatred, because we have a clear political agenda that does not only protect our rights but also of others,” he said.

Ameen said among the problems confronting Moros is the resurgence of violence blamed on the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement, the group founded by renegade MILF leader Ameril Umra Kato.

“They are now starting to kill civilians and loot their land,” Ameen said. “These are menus for terrorism,” he said.

Sheikh Muhammad Muntassir, chair of a religious committee of the MILF, said Kato and his group should draw lessons from the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslim countries that were invaded by the United States in the war on terror.

“Better for them to learn from the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq where the extremists did not last long. Where are the extremists in Iraq? They are long gone,” Muntassir said.

American forces have handed over power to a civilian government after elections in Iraq but terror attacks continued largely because of the unending feud between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

In Afghanistan, US forces continue to fail to put democracy in place largely because of the enduring influence of the Taliban, a group of extremists that used to govern Afghanistan.

Citing the history of Islam, Muntassir said victory is achieved not by war alone, but with the help of other factors, including diplomacy.

“There is no short cut to achieving victory. It is always hard and long,” he said. Charlie Señase, Inquirer Mindanao