Ex-MNLF warriors sustain peace via high-value marine finfish farming

PANGALIMA SUGALA, Tawi-Tawi – Damming Hadjirul barks orders to 50 men as they pull the fishnet from one of the nine compartments of a fish cage anchored hundreds of meters away from shore.

In response, the stocky men work in unison as they dump a healthy batch of grouper from the fishnets into styrofoam boxes filled with water; others then bring the filled boxes to a waiting boat for the trip to shore and negotiations with waiting buyers.

The swift precision of the fish cage operations can be likened to military operations with Hajirul as the commander.

And that’s not as remote an idea as it sounds since Hadjirul is the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) State Chairman for Tawi-Tawi, a position equivalent to the military’s brigadier general. But this time, he is supervising the harvest of hatchery-bred grouper in one of seven clusters engaged in growing high-value marine finfish. Each cluster has 50 members.

"This is what keeps us busy here," Hadjirul says, pointing to the fish cage and the seaweed farms nearby. "All of us are now living in the coastal areas and peacefully farming. This is our contribution to sustaining peace in the islands."

Hadjirul and his men in Tawi-Tawi have been farming seaweed since the MNLF and the government signed a peace agreement in September 1996. His men were among the more than 28,000 former Moro combatants assisted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to grow corn, rice and seaweed.

After farming seaweed for several years, the former rebels from Barangays Balimbing, Buan and Parangan were introduced to aquaculture farming through a project designed by the Targeted Commodity Expansion Program (TCEP), a component of USAID’s Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) program, which is implemented in partnership with the Mindanao Economic Development Council.

GEM is collaborating with the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s Support Project for the Indigenous Cultural Communities and MNLF in the Zone of Peace within Agrarian Reforms Communities (SPICCnZPRAC), which is providing production inputs for the project.