COTABATO CITY, Philippines - While Monday’s visit of President Benigno Aquino III to the main base of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Maguindanao is not the first time the country's commander-in-chief is to set foot on an MILF enclave in the province, its nature and intent make it different from the rest.
Two presidents before Aquino, Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, visited Camp Abubakar, in July 9, 2000, and the periphery of the Buliok Complex in 2003, respectively, but not to reach out to the rebel group but to herald the fall of the two rebel bastions as a result of government conquest.
Estrada even drew flak for feasting on lechon (roasted pig) and drinking beer with soldiers inside a Madrasah, or Arabic learning institution, in what was then for MILF forces “hallowed grounds†of Camp Abubakar, to celebrate its fall.
Arroyo, for her part, repeatedly toured evacuation sites to distribute relief goods and console thousands of evacuees dislocated by fierce clashes during the government’s bloody takeover of the 3,000-hectare Buliok Complex in Pagalungan, Maguindanao in February 2003.
Arroyo, subsequently, also barnstormed several MILF territories in North Cotabato and Maguindanao after a spate of hostilities sparked by the aborted August 5, 2008 crafting by the government and MILF panels of the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain.
Aquino will meet MILF chieftain Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim Monday in Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat town in the second district of Maguindanao in his historic visit to the rebel stronghold.
Foreign and local dignitaries, among them US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, representatives of different embassies in Manila, and even Major Gen. Rey Ardo, while commander of the Philippine Army’s 6th Infantry Division, had also visited Camp Darapanan to meet with Murad and members of the MILF’s central committee.
Aquino and Murad are to jointly launch in Camp Darapanan a multi-faceted social welfare project to benefit Muslim communities.
The governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Mujiv Hataman, and Maguindanao’s chief executive, the re-electionist Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, both said they are excited about Aquino’s meeting with Murad .
“We're excited because this time a president will visit an MILF camp not to show force or create an impression that our government relies on superiority, but to bring a message of peace, a message of hope to the Moro people in Mindanao,†Hataman said in emailed statement.
The Aquino-Murad meeting in Camp Darapanan will come after Thursday’s historic launching of the ARMM’s health-education-social welfare-governance convergence delivery program in a "dangerous area," Barangay Cambug, in Basilan’s Al-Barka town, scene of the fiercest military-MILF clashes in recent years.
The ARMM project was jointly launched in Barangay Cambug by Hataman and Dan Laksaw Asnawi, chief of the MILF’s 114th Base Command.
It was in Al-Barka where government forces suffered heavy losses in encounters with Asnawi’s group between 2007 and 2012, in hostilities that hogged the headlines, detailing how several of the soldiers that fell in the battles ended up decapitated.
“President Aquino’s visit to an MILF stronghold on Monday is a dividend of the Mindanao peace process. We ought to support the peace process until we see a final GPH-MILF peace accord, until all of its provisions have already been implemented,†said Mangudadatu, chairman of the provincial peace and order council.
Mangudadatu said the Aquino-Murad meeting in Maguindanao boosts the efforts of the local business and religious communities and the provincial government to create a good image of Maguindanao.
“This meeting of President Aquino and Al-Haj Murad in Maguindanao will show to the international community that we have a government that is really serious in its effort to end the so-called `Mindanao conflict’ through a negotiated settlement,†said Ustadz Esmael Ebrahim, a commissioner in the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos.
An Oblate priest, Eliseo Mercado Jr., who is director of the foreign-assisted Institute for Autonomy and Governance, said the event will enhance, "by more than a hundred fold,†the cordiality of the government-MILF talks.
Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of 6th ID, said security preparations for the President’s visit to Camp Darapanan are now being jointly ironed out by the Presidential Security Group, the MILF, and the joint ceasefire committee.
The ceasefire committee, comprised of representatives of the government and the MILF, helps enforce the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, which binds the rebel group, the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police to cooperate in addressing peace and security issues in flashpoint areas in the South.
Hermoso said the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT) will also be tapped to help in securing the venue of the Aquino-Murad meeting.
The IMT, comprised of military and police officers from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya and Indonesia, and non-uniformed rehabilitation and conflict resolution experts from Norway, Japan and the European Union, has been helping enforce the GPH-MILF ceasefire since 2003.