EDITORIAL - Are MILF leaders in control?

With a development package worth $114 million in the pipeline, something may finally come out of the peace initiative that the government has been pursuing for years with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Formal talks are set to resume, the peace panels announced Sunday after preliminary talks in Kuala Lumpur brokered by the Malaysian government. The success of the talks, however, will depend on the degree of control MILF leaders exert on their members.

Either that control is tenuous, or MILF leaders simply want to negotiate peace from a position of strength. While MILF leaders consistently say they are committed to peace, their men remain belligerent. A day after peace negotiators announced that formal talks were set to resume, armed men believed to be MILF guerrillas raided yet another village in Mindanao, wounding at least a dozen civilians and using six residents as hostages and human shields. Prior to the attack, MILF rebels have been hijacking buses, robbing passengers and using them as human shields, sniping at government troops and raiding more villages, apparently in response to a recent government offensive that drove the rebels out of their camps.

The MILF attacks are a reminder to the government that even if the rebels are homeless and on the run, they can still create big trouble. Rebel attacks normally intensify in the run-up to peace talks. The Moro National Li-beration Front did it; communist rebels take the same tack in the on-and-off peace process. This is assuming that MILF leaders have control over their members. What is worrisome is if the peace process is welcomed only by a small faction of the MILF, and a new rebel faction will break away from the group as soon as a peace pact is forged and certain cadres feel left out of the spoils.