Maguindanao folk want MILF assurance before returning home

SHARIFF AGUAK, Maguindanao — Hundreds of evacuees here are reluctant to return to their villages without a written guarantee from two radical commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whose followers plundered their villages last month.

The evacuees, some of them from remote barangays in the adjoining towns of Mamasapano and Ampatuan, want the two MILF commanders, Ustadz Wahid Tundok and Ustadz Amiril Kato Ombra, to execute a written pledge not to again attack military positions and the houses of local officials.

The followers of the two commanders, long wanted for heinous crimes and said to be coddling members of the Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, were also responsible for stalling for almost a week the construction of a farm-to-market road in Datu Unsay town shortly before raiding villages in Ampatuan and Mamasapano.

Ruby Sahali, social welfare secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan is making moves to convince the 6,309 displaced families to return to their villages.

Ampatuan’s office and the ARMM’s Department of Social Welfare and Development have distributed some P3 million in relief supplies and grains to the evacuees since Jan. 26.

Last Friday, Ampatuan released P1 million from his Special Purpose Fund to augment the DSWD-ARMM’s stocks of relief supplies, which could be depleted by Wednesday if the evacuees still refuse to return home.

Sahali said apart from food, the evacuees also need medicines for common ailments.

A 50-year-old farmer, Guiaman Abdulmaguid, said that without a written assurance from the two MILF commanders, there could never be peace in their communities.

"They can easily come back and harass our communities again," Abdulmaguid said in the Maguindanaon dialect.

Salem Abubakar, whose family is seeking refuge in a roadside evacuation site here, said Tundok and Ombra, who both studied Islamic theology in the Middle East, are known to disrespect the Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities and the Malaysian-led international monitoring team.