OPINION

COMMENTARY

Balkanizing Mindanao

By ANTONIO T. CARPIO
Sunstar News Service

MANILA, May 23  -- The Senate has uncovered to its horror that the Estrada administration had signed early last year an agreement with the MILF acknowledging Camp Abubakar and Camp Busrah as MILF camps. The Estrada Administration had also agreed to the "inspection, verification and acknowledgment" of 11 other "major" MILF camps and 33 "other established" MILF camps throughout Mindanao.

Under the "Joint Acknowledgment" signed by the GRP and MILF
panels on February 10, 1999, these MILF camps are "to be covered by the cessation of hostilities for the duration of the GRP-MILF peace
talks." In short, AFP forces cannot enter these areas for as long
as the peace talks continue, even for the next 100 years.

The military camps claimed by the MILF cover vast stretches of land. The land area of Camp Abubakar alone is estimated at 10,000 hectares, bigger than the City of Manila. All the MILF camps are
strategically located, and many are nestled on high grounds overlooking Christian towns and cities. Through a document submitted to the GRP Panel, the MILF claims that Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao includes "portions of the Municipalities of Matanog,
Badra, Buldon and Parang all of Maguindanao Province, and portions
of the Municipalities of Kapatagan, Balabagan and Bulig all of Lanao del Sur."

The MILF describes Camp Busrah in Lanao Del Sur as covering 
"portions of Butig Masla, Lumbayanague, Lumbayanague Masla,
Lumbalan, Lumbabyabao and Binidayan, Poona Bayabao and Maguing Lanao Sur." An example of an "other established" MILF camp is the "101st Brigade Camp" covering the areas of "Kiblawan, Matanao, Magsaysay, Jose Abad Santos all of Davao del Sur and Davao City (Regional Camp)."

The Joint Acknowledgment and its implementing agreements have
balkanized Mindanao. Worse, the balkanization is bereft of substance because many of the areas claimed by the MILF are in Christian dominated provinces, towns and cities. The Joint Acknowledgment has only created a highly explosive geographical division of Mindanao along imaginary religious lines.

The Joint Acknowledgment is a legal document which admits the
physical, permanent and effective occupation by a rebel group of
vast portions of the Philippine territory. The Joint Acknowledgment is a clear recognition by the Philippine Government that for the duration of the peace talks, which has no time limit, its sovereignty over the vast areas covered by the MILF camps is suspended.

The Joint Acknowledgment encourages the MILF to invest itself with the legal attributes of a belligerent occupation force. This explains why the MILF has established in Camp Abubakar its own legal and judicial system, created its own government bureaucracy, imposed and collected its own taxes, institutionalized its own educational system, built its own munitions and arms factory, and instituted many other activities that characterize the usual functions of a sovereign state.

We have to admit it. The MILF has proved itself to be politically far craftier than either the NPA or the MNLF. The MILF has acquired all the legal attributes of a belligerent occupation force, and it achieved this through peace talks and not through war. Any Islamic state has now solid basis in international law to recognize the MILF as a belligerent occupation force.

The MILF has conquered vast camps throughout Mindanao through
sheer skill in the negotiating table, without firing a single shot
in anger. The MILF has conquered almost all its territory simply
by talking peace. In contrast, the MILF loses territory every time
it wages war with the Government.

The MILF Panel has completely outclassed the GRP Panel under
the Estrada Administration. No one in the Estrada Administration
was minding the negotiations with the rebels in the South, probably
because there were no billion peso deals involved. How could the
legal eagles in Malaca¤ang have allowed the GRP Panel to sign away
the nation's sovereignty over vast tracts of land?

Did the Malaca¤ang lawyers who signed the Joint Acknowledgment
affix their signatures only as witnesses? This was the lame excuse
given by Malaca¤ang's legal officer in explaining how he ended up
signing a compromise agreement that gave away to a single claimant
more than 16,000 hectares of public land in Fort Magsaysay.

Fortunately, sovereign states are extremely hesitant to grant belligerency status to rebel groups in other countries. In Asean,
where separatist movements thrive not only in the Philippines but
also in Indonesia and even Malaysia, granting belligerency status
to a rebel group in another Asean state is like signing one's own
death warrant.

In Sri Lanka, the separatists Tamil Tigers are poised to recapture their cultural capital Jaffna. With only 5,000 well-armed and fanatical fighters, the Tigers are about to evict from Jaffna some 40,000 Sri Lankan troops demoralized by out-dated armaments, corruption by military officers, and indecision by politicians. Thousands of Sri Lankan soldiers have deserted their units in Jaffna.

India, Sri Lanka's giant neighbor, shudders in fear at the
thought of a separate Tamil state because it could rekindle
separatist sentiments among Muslims in Kashmir as well as among the
Tamil minority in Southern India.

India, even with its large Tamil minority, does not want to grant the Tamil Tigers belligerency status.

There is the warning by former Defense Secretary Rene de Villa
that the United Nations might intervene in Mindanao should
Government soldiers commit massive human rights violations there. 
De Villa cited the UN's intervention in East Timor as a precedent.
De Villa's warning is totally misplaced. The Philippine Government knows better than to commit massive humans right violation in the South. With Asia's freest press and CNN watching over their shoulders, Government soldiers would be crazy to expose
themselves as wanton human rights violators. Besides, our AFP
generals are not as stupid as feared by De Villa.

The UN will not intervene against a democratically elected government that uses traditionally accepted means of force to protect its sovereign territorial integrity from separatist rebels. If there is anything that is sacred in the UN, it is the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its members. The leadership of a sovereign nation will have to be so wantonly brutal and barbaric on its own people to warrant intervention by the UN.

In Kosovo, the UN intervened because the Serbian government
resorted to wanton and brutal ethnic cleansing designed to evict
from Kosovo the entire Muslim population.

In East Timor, the UN had long condemned the brutal Indonesian
invasion of East Timor in 1975. East Timor was a newly independent state when Indonesia annexed it through armed aggression.

There is no parallelism between Mindanao and Kosovo or East
Timor. There is, however, a parallelism between the Estrada
Administration's Joint Acknowledgment and Neville Chamberlain's
peace negotiations with Hitler: both led to war. (SNS)

.
    News Items on this website are for private use and
must not be reposted without permission