Committee to convene after Ramadan for resumption of government, MILF peace talks

CAMP DARAPANAN, Sultan Kudarat, Philippines  – The central committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front will convene after the Ramadan to decide on the reactivation of its peace panel as a prelude to the resumption of the stalled government-MILF peace talks.

Mohammad Ameen, chief secretariat of the MILF’s central committee, said they now have a “short list” of prospective negotiators that are to compose their peace panel.

Ameen declined to comment when asked if the group would still be led by Muhaquer Iqbal, chairman of the front’s information committee, a sensitive position he has been occupying since the early ’90s when Egyptian-trained Islamic preacher Hashim Salamat was at the helm of the MILF.

Iqbal, an ethnic Maguin­danaon, had authored more than a dozen books and studies on the Moro uprising in the South, including the two editions of the Nation Under Endless Tyranny, which chronicled the beginnings of the Southern Islamic communities and their resistance against the Spanish and the American occupation, and, subsequently, the Japanese invasion of Mindanao during World War II.

The MILF deactivated its peace panel after the May 10 synchronized local and national elections following its last meeting with its government counterpart under the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before the electoral exercise.  

Ameen said the deactivation was just temporary, meant to give their central leadership “enough space” to study how their peace panel fared during the previous years and to evaluate the qualification of MILF members who are also qualified to become negotiators.

“The MILF chairman does not decide on his own on matters like this. Members of the central committee decide collectively, as a collegial body, in keeping with Islamic tradition on consensus-building on issues and concerns besetting the organization,” Ameen said.

Peace talks between the government and the MILF started officially on Jan. 7, 1997, but gained headway only in 2003 through the faci­litation of Malaysia.

A multi-national peacekeeping contingent, the International Monitoring Team (IMT), which is composed of soldiers and policemen from Malaysia, Brunei, and Libya, and non-uniformed socio-economic specialists from Japan, have since been monitoring the GRP-MILF ceasefire.

The chairman of the Liberal Party in Maguindanao, Mayor Tucao Mastura of Sultan Kudarat town, said the new GRP peace panel and its MILF counterpart should meet right after the Ramadan to discuss the extension of the peacekeeping tenure in the South of the IMT.