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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Santos: Uncertain future in Mindanao
By Lino Santos
THE demise of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Hashim Salamat last month but announced only the other day will usher in a new era in the region. The era might have to do with the prospect for peace in the region.
Except for Nur Misuari, who is now in jail, Hashim Salamat was the only surviving founder of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that rewrote the history of the region.
Some sources say that the leadership in the MNLF was a toss between Salamat and Misuari until something swayed the founding members to tide in favor of the now occupant of a cell at Sta. Rosa Laguna.
Nobody can predict what could have happened in Mindanao, had factionalism not set in and broke the ranks in the MNLF. Some say that the inherent mistrusts between the tribes, Tausog, Samal, Maranao and Maguindanaos spelled the eventual disintegration of the MNLF.
Thus while the Tripoli Agreement was signed with the consensus of all key MNLF leaders at that time, Salamat included, later events spelled the breakup of the front.
Salamat's successor Hadji Murad is also one of the few remaining MNLF old-timers who is still in the hills. A month (January) after the December signing of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement a documentation team of the then Department of Public Information was guided into the mountain fastness in Lanao to an encampment where the MNLF showed its strength in the province. The most prominent personality captured on betamax tape in that January 1977 DPI documentary was Hadji Murad. He was then at the head of the MNLF force numbering by the thousands in Lanao captured on TV reels at that time.
While several MNLF original stalwarts eventually surrendered and "returned to the folds of the law" Salamat and Murad held fast to their idea of an Islamic State in Mindanao. In the process, they founded the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that prospered on the basis of inherent needs of the people in the regions.
The government took the MILF for granted until its leaders realized the mistake too late.
Thousands of lives, on both sides, have been lost, millions of properties lost because our people cannot see eye to eye as far as the situation in the south is concerned. And so the wound has pestered.
Salamat died of "acute ulcer and heart ailments" on July 13 but news of the death was held back to allow a smooth transition and avoid possible demoralization of the 12,500-strong group, MILF political affairs Chief Gadzali Jaafar said.
"Chairman Salamat was buried on the same day," Jaafar has said.
What is ironic is that the MNLF policy-making central committee had decided to ferry Hashim to Manila for treatment, even risking possible arrest by the authorities but "before we could act, the chairman died."
It was distrust spawned by over three decades of bloodshed that prevented the MILF from taking steps to prolong the life of their chairman - now a legend in the region.
We are sure that if those in the MILF had only told the government about the precarious condition of their chairman, the government would have taken all steps to ensure that the chairman would have the best of care and would still be alive today.
Unfortunately, some in the MILF leadership did not think that the government would help. They did not ask and it is too late now to think of what could have been.
No one can predict a post Salamat era today or tomorrow.
We will be able to read the future of Mindanao in what will happen in the ranks of the MILF in the coming days.
(August 7, 2003 issue)
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