Arrival of US soldiers sends 2 notorious reb leaders fleeing

CARMEN, North Cotabato — The arrival here three days ago of an initial batch of 20 US servicemen to train a small contingent of Filipino soldiers on counter-terrorism has sent two notorious leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front — Commanders Keneg and Pakil Ayunan — virtually running for their lives.

Local officials and Muslim religious leaders confirmed that Keneg and Ayunan, each facing more than a dozen warrants of arrest for multiple murder, cattle-rustling, extortion and kidnapping, have fled, along with their followers, to the boundary of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Bukidnon.

"But other MILF commanders who do not have criminal cases and are actively helping in the low-level peace efforts of the municipal government of Carmen, the local police and the military, remain in their communities, continuing their farming. Life for them remains normal," said a source in the municipal peace and order council.

Keneg and Ayunan, according to local residents, could have fled because of talk that the American and Filipino soldiers taking part in the joint exercise slated on July 26 to Aug. 16 would, as a "test mission," serve them their arrest warrants.

Ayunan and his men were tagged in the 2000 massacre of 16 Visayan residents of Barangay Cadiis in retaliation for the military takeover of more than a dozen MILF enclaves here and in the nearby towns of Pikit and Pagalungan in Maguindanao.

Ayunan, who carries a P1-million prize on his head, reportedly has links with Tahir Alonto, the elusive leader of the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang which emerged in 2001 and has since been operating with impunity in Central Mindanao.

Col. Franklin del Prado, civil-military operations chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in Maguindanao, said he has received information from key Muslim religious leaders in North Cotabato that Keneg had sent letters to different media outfits and the joint ceasefire committees of the government and the MILF to seek a stop to the holding of the month-long Philippine-US military exercise in this municipality.

Del Prado’s deputy, Maj. Onting Alon, who is a Muslim and has relatives here, many of them residing in remote areas vulnerable to rebel harassment, said "sensible" MILF commanders, most of them now peacefully tilling their farms in far-flung villages here, did not join Keneg in his efforts to stop the joint military training.

Keneg started out as a cattle-rustler and extortionist in Pikit and Pagalungan towns. He fled to Carmen town some three years ago when Pikit Mayor Motin Malingco issued a shoot-to-kill order for him.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol said Ayunan and Keneg top the list of wanted persons in the province.

Since 1998, the provincial peace and order council has arrested more than a hundred fugitives, more than a dozen of them rebel leaders charged with various crimes.