Evacuees hesitant on returning to their homes after military offensive

SHARIF AGUAK, Maguindanao - Tension has waned in some towns where the military and Moro bandits are locked in a face-off for a week now, but evacuees are reluctant to return to their homes they hastily abandoned for fear of getting trapped in a crossfire.

The provincial board declared on Wednesday, on the behest of Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, 12 of Maguindanao's 36 towns under state of calamity to hasten the delivery of relief and rehabilitation services to thousands of internally-displaced folks now confined in squalid evacuation centers.

Lynette Estandarte, chief budget officer of Maguindanao, on Friday said a big number of the evacuees the office of Mangudadatu provided with relief and rehabilitation services from late February to March 5 were elderly folks and school children that now needs psycho-social interventions.

Estandarte said about 90 percent of the evacuees from Maguindanao towns affected by the ongoing strife between the military and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) rely on farming as main source of income.

“They were forced to leave their farms unattended for fear of an outbreak of hostilities between the BIFF and pursuing military forces,” Estandarte said.

Estandarte and his companions in the provincial government’s disaster mitigation and emergency group had delivered 11 tons of food rations to evacuees in relief sites in nine towns during relief missions in the past seven days.

The group served 4,072 evacuees in Saidona and Shariff Aguak towns and 1,503 more in Mamasapano in a series of relief operations from Tuesday until late Wednesday.

Combined Army and Marine units have been running after BIFF gunmen in the affected towns for more than a week now.

Maguindanao’s inter-agency emergency contingent, comprised of health and social workers, had also provided evacuees with medicines and other non-food relief supplies to mitigate their appalling situation in evacuation sites.

In a statement Thursday, Mangudadatu said he is thankful to the provincial police and units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division for helping facilitate the dispersal of relief supplies at designated evacuation centers.

“Tension in some areas has started to deescalate, but the evacuees are reluctant to return home for security reasons,” Estandarte said.

Soldiers had just taken over two BIFF lairs, one in Dasikil District in Mamasapano and the other in Barangay Kitango in Datu Saudi, which villagers helped locate to flush out bandits forcibly collecting “zakat” (alms) from them.

The evacuees are apprehensive that BIFF gunmen could return to their communities once soldiers leave to return to their camps in nearby towns.

The BIFF has been interfering with the justice system being implemented by barangay units in far-flung areas based on the Local Government Code.

The group, led by radical jihadists, is also imposing a harsh Taliban-style community order in areas where it operates.

Estandarte said the provincial government is optimistic the government’s law enforcement operation against the BIFF would soon wind up to enable evacuees to return to their strife-torn villages and start life anew.

Mangudadatu and members of the provincial board, chaired by Maguindanao Vice Gov. Lester Sinsuat, earlier urged, via separate communiques, the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to immediately resume with the GPH-MILF peace overture, shaken by the January 25 deadly police-rebel encounter in three barangays in Mamasapano.

The incident, which left 44 police commandos, 18 MILF members and five civilians dead, had challenged the now 18-year peace process and precipitated the military’s anti-BIFF campaign in Maguindanao, which started February 28.

“There can never be a better option to this decades-old `Moro issue’ hounding Mindanao than a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the problem,” Mangudadatu said.