Military projects complement peace initiatives in South

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — It could be for the military’s humanitarian projects in areas covered by the government’s ceasefire with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that Army and Marine units in Central Mindanao succeeded in restoring normalcy in former guerrilla enclaves in the region last year.

Spearheading these projects were the 2nd Marine Brigade and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

From January to October in 2002, the 2nd Marine Brigade and its component units, the 3rd and 6th Marine Battalion Landing Teams, attended to a total of 2,679 medical and dental patients, mostly dependents of hardcore MILF rebels, in former guerrilla bastions at the boundary of Pikit, North Cotabato and Pagalungan, Maguindanao.

Kalbugan Treat

In September last year, Marine medics and dentists, for the first time in the history of the Mindanao conflict, set foot on the once hostile Barangay Kal-bugan in Pagalungan, the gateway to the 200,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, and provided free health services to 750 Muslim villagers there.

Barangay Kalbugan is a known harboring area of MILF forces operating in the Liguasan Marsh, a vast delta said to be rich in wildlife, oil and natural gas and never before entered by government forces.

Marines operating in Pikit and Pagalungan, just to prove their sincerity in dealing with the local communities, have been providing free transport services, using their vehicles, to poor Muslims in the two towns.

Uniformed Marines can also be seen loading cargoes of villagers in pumpboats at docks on the banks of the Rio Grande de Mindanao which separates Pagalungan and Pikit.

Peace Unit’s Role

The 6th ID’s Sallam (Peace) Unit, composed of Muslim soldiers, some of them preachers, and operating under the direct supervision of Maj. Gen. Gene-roso Senga, the division’s chief, also played a key role this year in bringing villagers displaced by military-rebel skirmishes, back to their communities.

Men of the Sallam Unit, scattered in former guerrilla enclaves across Central Mindanao, have worked out the surrender of 1, 291 MILF fighters in the past 10 months.

Two months ago, Brig. Gen. Eduardo Lena, commander of the Army’s 54th Engineering Brigade, turned over more than a hundred core houses his unit had built for families of MILF rebels in the surroundings of the once impregnable Buliok complex at the Pikit-Pagalungan boundary.

The 54th EB, along with its operating units, are still constructing more than 500 core houses, bankrolled by Malacañang, for poor Muslim villagers in war-torn towns of Maguindanao.

Community Projects

Since July 2000, Lena and his men have been implementing more than a hundred community projects, including the construction of farm-to-market roads, at Camp Abubakar, the MILF’s former bastion at the boundary of Matanog, Buldon and Barira towns, all in Maguindanao.

Two 54th EB men have been killed and 23 others have been wounded in Moro rebel attacks right in their project sites in the past three years.

Although hurt by these incidents, Lena said these have not dampened their zeal into transforming the communities they now serve into progressive peace zones.

In peace dialogues, officials of towns surrounding Camp Abu-bakar, where the MILF’s shadow government once existed, acknowledged how the projects of soldiers in their communities helped restore normalcy and their constituents’ confidence in the government’s peace initiatives. — John Unson