Thursday, October 02, 2008 Editorial: To live, perchance to co-exist
YOU know something is wrong when what should be the most festive celebration of the Muslims -- the Eid al'Fitr -- is a signal for military soldiers to load their guns and cannons and march off, with greater fervor, to war.
Such reality that we have been made to live with, and accept, is among those realities that we know is definitely not how it should be, but that we cannot quite put our finger on.
It's a reality that tells us to our face, government is doing something wrong. But only gives us hints of what.
And then we stumble on the most recent book of Kyoto University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies Prof. Patricio N. Abinales, "Mindanao, Nation and Region: The joys of dislocation" and get a historical glimpse of it all to better understand.
"The irony is that when government left Mindanao alone, the island's peoples were generally at peace with each other. When government aggressively intervened, the conflicts erupted," he wrote in the sub-section entitled "Leave us alone" (page 63).
He then refers us to history. The infamous battles of Bud Dajo (now made popular through a stage play) and Bud Bagsak, the oft-told revolt of Datu Ali of Kudarangan were but the results of "the American Army's campaign to subdue the Maguindanaos, Maranaos, Joloanos, and the Manobos of Davao."
Sixty years later, major conflict again broke out in Mindanao when then Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos launched a massive camapign against illegal firearms thus uniting even warring Muslim factions under the Moro National Liberation Front in the 1970s, he wrote.
And may we add, just over 20 years later, Mindanao was again in the headlines and Manila journalists were again flying in and out of battle zones when then Pres. Joseph E. Estrada declared an all-out war, a call echoed by Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Plus, we know why the civilians were massacred in Lanao and the villages were burned in Sarangani just over a month ago.
In between, the people in Mindanao lived in relative peace.
We've heard it said in television news soon after the town of Kolambugan in Lanao del Norte was raided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in August: the residents have lived in harmony with their neighbors, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, until the government started tinkering with ancestral domain like it was a piece of land with no people.
Government already showed it had an inkling of how it should be done when at the height of the killings and the mounting deaths of soldiers, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said that she has tapped the Bishop-Ulama Conference to lead a civil society initiative for peace.
But Arroyo refuses to settle with just that and continues her war stance; which prevails until now. This manifests apprehension to loosen up on one's power grip.
And because there is refusal to share the power to make peace with legitimate peace-weavers, there is no peace.
History has shown that for as long as central government refuses to allow Mindanao to forge its own peace, there will always be war. History gives us a map of when the wars have erupted, and in all those times, central government had a hand in it. In between, there was relative peace. Shouldn't it be obvious by this time what Mindanao needs?
