Kyamko played key role in fall of Camp Abubakar

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Maj. Gen. Roy Kyamko, the new chief of the Armed Forces Southern Command (Southcom), played a big role in the capture of Camp Abubakar in 2000 and subsequently, the surrender of more than a thousand Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels when he headed the Army’s 6th Infantry Division here.

Last Saturday, President Arroyo designated Kyamko as the new Southcom chief vice Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya, who was named the new Armed Forces chief of staff. Kyamko will receive his third star, she added.

Officials in Shariff Aguak, a once hostile town in the second district of Maguindanao, have even named Camp Omar, the biggest guerrilla enclave in the area as "Barangay Kyamko" in recognition of the general’s role in liberating the well-fortified camp from MILF occupation one year ahead of the July 9, 2000 fall of Camp Abubakar.

Kyamko was the deputy commander of the 6th ID then under the helm of Lt. Gen. Gregorio Camiling Jr., now the Army chief, when the division, along with the Marine Corps and the former Composite Tactical Group 12 of the Air Force, took control of Camp Abubakar, the MILF’s former bastion in Buldon town.

Camp Abubakar is now guarded by the Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade, while units of the 54th Engineering Brigade are building various infrastructure for local farmers, mostly former MILF guerillas, there.

As 6th ID commander from late 2000 to June last year, Kyamko, who hails from Cebu, involved local officials in the military’s "pacification campaign."

One of the most tangible projects he had initiated jointly with the office of Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan, was the widening of the Awang-Esperanza stretch of the Cotabato-General Santos Highway to prevent MILF forces from using its grassy roadsides as springboards for their attacks.

Kyamko and Ampatuan, chairman of the provincial peace and order council, also jointly organized hundreds of former MILF guerrillas into community defense militias in hostile towns in the second district.

The rebel-turned-civilian volunteers are now helping the 6th ID secure strategic areas traversed by the Cotabato-General Santos Highway.

As 6th ID commander, Kyamko also fielded his men to conduct 734 medical and dental outreach missions in secluded parts of Central Mindanao, serving thousands of Muslim residents.

These humanitarian projects complemented the 6th ID’s peace initiatives, resulting in the surrender of hundreds more MILF fighters recently.

The 6th ID’s peace initiatives became more pronounced when Maj. Gen. Generoso Senga, a civil-military operations expert, assumed as its commander after Kyamko was designated as Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) chief last year.

Senga has since been actively utilizing the 6th ID’s Sallam (peace) unit, composed of Muslim soldiers, some of them Islamic preachers, in forging ahead with the division’s humanitarian thrusts, aimed at promoting religious and cultural solidarity among Central Mindanao’s Muslim, Christian and lumad communities.

Senga himself boasts of a significant feat as 6th ID chief — that of liberating from joint control by the MILF and the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang of the Buliok Complex and the equally hostile Kabasalan area at the boundary of Pikit, North Cotabato and Pagalungan, Ma—guindanao after a week-long air, artillery and ground offensive last February.