Colombian envoy tours once hostile, former MILF stronghold

COTABATO CITY — Business blocs struggling to make Maguindanao del Norte attractive to foreign investors were elated over the tour of a Columbian envoy to the former main bastion in the province of an erstwhile Moro rebel group now involved in governance and politics.

Officials of the Bangsamoro region and constituent-business groups announced on Monday that the visit on Thursday of Colombian Ambassador to the Philippines Marcela Ordoñez to the now state controlled Camp Iranun, the former Camp Abubakar of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, can prove to investors abroad that it is now safe to put up agricultural projects in hinterlands around.

Camp Iranun, established in 1981 as Camp Abubakar by MILF's founder, the Islamic theologian Salamat Hashim, covers a strategic upland in Barangay Tugaig in Barira, adjacent to Maguindanao del Norte’s Buldon, Matanog and Parang towns and Kapatagan in Lanao del Sur that a number of Filipino investors and a group of Malaysian traders and government officials visited recently for exploratory engagements with local executives and ethnic Iranun landowners.

The lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said on Monday that they appreciate the visit of Ordoñez to Camp Iranun, for them an engagement that can help hype the investment potentials of the Iranun-dominated areas in Maguindanao del Norte province.

“What is so good about the history of that camp is that a leader of the MILF rebels who once occupied it and fought the government for more than two decades, Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, is now an appointed chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,” Torres said.

Ordoñez and her entourage visited Camp Iranun for a dialogue with officials of the Philippine Navy’s 1st Marine Brigade, or 1st MBde, on mutual cooperation on the integration into mainstream society of former Moro combatants belonging to groups covered by Malacañang’s Mindanao peace process aiming to put diplomatic closure to decades of secessionist strife in southern provinces via political and socio-economic interventions.

The Philippine Marine Corps, the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the Colombian Embassy are set to cooperate in implementing a project dubbed “Strengthening Institutional Capacities in Reincorporation and Normalization for Former Combatants in the Philippines Based on the Colombian Experience,” in support of the Mindanao peace process.

The government of Columbia in South America is popular for how it succeeded in resolving peacefully the bloody rebellion for decades by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia via a peace process now being emulated in many countries troubled with secessionist uprisings.

The visit of Ordoñez to Camp Iranun, hosted by officials of the 1st MBde led by its deputy commander, Col. Zaldy Dioneda, partly delved on talks about the gains of the Philippine government’s peace overtures with Moro sectors and on how the Philippine Marine Corps is supporting various BARMM projects complementing the initiative.

“We are thankful to Colombian Ambassador Marcela Ordoñez for visiting Cotabato City and the brigade headquarters of the Marines for an activity good for the Mindanao peace process,” BARMM’s regional spokesperson, Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, said on Monday.

Sinarimbo, whose office has projects complementing the peacebuilding programs of the BARMM regional police, and the chairman of the Bangsamoro Regional Board of Investments, Mohammad Pasigan, had separately expressed optimism on the positive impact to Maguindanao del Norte’s business climate of the visit of Ordoñez to the province