War and Peace in the Philippines

There is nothing harder than a peace process after decades of intractable civil war. Even when the two sides decide that there’s nothing more to be gained from continued fighting and that the only way out is a negotiated political solution, there are vested interests, hardliners who see negotiation as tantamount to surrender, advocates for widows and children, security forces that fear the loss of budgets and billets, and legislators or rival politicians who feel that any form of autonomy is the first step toward secession.

Even after all of those spoilers, hardliners, and skeptics have been mollified, neutralized, or co-opted, the peace process must actually be implemented. This is one of the most misunderstood components of any peace process. After the fanfare of the peace process signing ceremony, the agreement has to be carried out; core components have to be reconciled within the constitution and national legal framework. It is at that stage, where the rebels are really at a disadvantage, that the agreement becomes diluted. Weapons and soldiers have to be decommissioned and demobilized in a region that is already struggling with weak governance, the lack of rule of law, and little faith in nascent government institutions. Even if civil wars do not occur in the poorest parts of the country, the legacy of protracted conflict ensures that the conflict region is saddled with the lowest human development indicators.

So much can go wrong that when a peace process goes well, one has to take notice.

The implementation of the peace agreement between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government of the Republic of the Philippines has passed its first year anniversary. Spoilers abound on all sides, and the Philippine government has a track record of backsliding on implementation. And yet, the newly established Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) has survived its first year. It has not been without challenges, but there have been no major reversals, either. There is a long way to go, but for a war-torn region, this is a very positive development. For the governments of Southeast Asia, which have long viewed Mindanao as a font for their own terrorist concerns, a lasting peace in Mindanao will do much to improve the lack of governance and chronic insecurity that served as a magnet for extremists.

A Long Time in Coming

The Moro people began their armed struggle for an independent homeland in the early 1970s. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was the initial vanguard, with clandestine assistance from Libya and the then-governor of Malaysia’s Sabah state, which to this day the Philippines still lays claim to. The MNLF fought the Philippine government to a standstill, in part prompting President Ferdinand Marcos to declare martial law in 1972.

Marcos dispatched his wife, Imelda, to Tripoli to charm Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. It apparently worked, as the MNLF agreed to a Libyan-brokered autonomy deal. But Marcos never had any intention to implement the 1976 Tripoli Accord. The MNLF resumed fighting but with much less fervor, and by 1984 a large faction had broken away, founding the MILF.

The MILF moved their headquarters to Pakistan, where they saw themselves as part of the larger global jihadist awakening, prompted by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The MILF were critical of the MNLF’s close ties to the atheist Communist Party of the Philippines.

Marcos was ousted in the People Power, or EDSA, Revolution in 1986. President Corazon Aquino resumed negotiations with the MNLF, but was never able to get adequate support from her own military. Talks failed and the war continued.

In 1996, President Ferdinand V. Ramos successfully concluded an agreement with the MNLF. That agreement, however, failed to bring lasting peace due to lagging implementation on the Philippine side, and incompetence and corruption on the MNLF side.

Large numbers of MNLF combatants defected to the MILF, which continued to fight in central Mindanao. Despite the autonomy agreement with the MNLF, the continued war against the MILF kept the region in a state of war and under de facto military occupation.

By 1999, the MILF controlled vast swaths of central Mindanao with a cursory infrastructure network and established their own government under Islamic law precepts. The MILF’s growth, including the public executions of drug smugglers at a time when the Philippines had abolished capital punishment, was seen as a fundamental threat to Philippine sovereignty. In 1999, President Joseph Estrada ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to capture the MILF’s proto-state, dispersing them into a number of disparate base commands.

The U.S.-led war on terror put the MILF into international crosshairs. In 1996, the MILF reached an agreement with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the regional offshoot of al-Qaeda, to establish training camps, something that the MILF long denied, but later acknowledged.

The MILF increasingly turned to terrorism as a tactic. Between 1999 and 2003, the MILF lost every major encounter against the Philippine government, so they began resorting to terrorist attacks, including the 2003 bombing of the Davao airport, done in conjunction with JI. This prompted further U.S. scrutiny and the deployment of small teams of special forces into central Mindanao, in addition to Sulu where they were focused on Abu Sayyaf.

The MILF had been put on notice. With these setbacks, they sued for peace.

Peace talks resumed in 2003, but it was clear that the government did not enter into them in good faith. On the eve of talks, the AFP overran another MILF base camp. It was a tactical victory, but with strategic consequences. The reopening of the Cotabato-Davao highway in 2003 led to the flow of people, cellular towers, commerce, and more government services, which broke the MILF’s control of the population.

As peace talks gained strength, the Malaysian government dispatched a small team of monitors, which made violating the ceasefire much more costly. Brunei, Libya, and Japan supported the International Monitoring Team in due course. The number of armed encounters, according to data shared with The Diplomat by the Coordinating Committee for the Cessation of Hostilities, plummeted from over 550 in 2003 to under 25 in 2004.

As a show of goodwill, by the middle of 2004, the MILF had done much to cut their ties to JI, forcing out two of the 2002 Bali bombers from their territory.

The peace process gained strength in 2006 when its broad contours were negotiated, with special consideration as to how that peace would be reconciled with the 1996 accord between the government and the MNLF. In 2007, a draft peace agreement was concluded, but immediately rejected by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s cabinet and the AFP. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled the draft agreement unconstitutional.

Several MILF commanders resumed offensive actions against Christian civilians in retaliation, but they were unable to sustain their attacks. The prolonged peace process had weakened their military efficacy and supply lines. While one field commander broke away and later formed the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the MILF leadership was able to hold most of the organization together and wait out the rest of Arroyo’s term, hoping for an opportune moment to resume talks.

Seizing the Opportunity

By late 2011, the new president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, secretly met with the MILF Chairman Ebrahim Murad in Tokyo. Talks accelerated in 2012, culminating in the “Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro” (FAB) in October 2012. In December 2013, the two sides concluded four annexes that laid out in detail an interim government system, revenue sharing, the post-autonomy governance structure, and the phased process of disarmament. With those annexes completed, the two sides concluded the “Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro” (CAB) in April 2014.

Time was of the essence. Under the terms of the CAB, the existing Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao government would not stand for re-election in the May 2016 polls. There was a legitimate concern that a democratically elected body could not simply be disbanded. So the new interim governing structure had to be in place by then.

In mid-2014, both houses of the Philippine Congress were reviewing the peace agreement and debating the implementing legislation, the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). There was broad-based support for the agreement, in particular, in the Senate where its passage was almost guaranteed.

A “Tragic Mis-encounter”

Everything came apart in January 2015 when a small tactical counterterrorist operation proved to have strategic consequences. Under the terms of the ceasefire, the government and the MILF had set up a coordinating mechanism to allow for the Philippine government to conduct limited counterterrorist operations in MILF-controlled territory. A small team of police Special Action Forces failed to notify the MILF of one such operation, convinced that they would tip off the high-value terrorist targets that were living under their protection. The MILF fought back in self-defense, killing 44 police in what they described as a “tragic mis-encounter.” To complicate matters, members of the BIFF were also on hand fighting alongside the MILF; BIFF members were later filmed executing wounded police.

The Mamasapano incident completely derailed congressional deliberations on the implementing legislation, the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). In an election year, with many of the senators vying for the presidency and the vice presidency, there was considerable grandstanding.

In the end, there were few votes to be had among a general electorate largely mistrustful of the Muslims of Mindanao. The MILF was accused of perfidy. Senators began demanding the MILF fully disarm as a precondition for BOL deliberations to resume. Other legislators demanded that the MILF surrender their men involved in the Mamasapano incident to face charges for murder. Others advocated scrapping the deal altogether. The government’s own peace negotiators were accused of treason.

And yet the MILF deserve an inordinate amount of credit for their commitment to the peace process and their unilateral disarmament of 20 crew-serviced weapons and 55 automatic rifles in the first half of 2015. The MILF demobilized the first 145 men at a time when there was no support within Congress to implement the peace agreement.

Sadly, the stall in the peace process occurred exactly as the Islamic State was sweeping across Iraq and Syria, and local Philippine groups sought to jump on the bandwagon. In 2014 alone, at least four separate Philippine groups pledged allegiance to the caliphate. The MILF warned that any further delay would create space for the Islamic State to take root.

A Son of Mindanao

The May 2016 election of Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency presented both opportunities and pitfalls for the peace process. On the one hand, Duterte haled from Mindanao and had tremendous empathy toward the plight of the Moros. On the other hand, his top advisers were Christians from Mindanao who were traditionally antithetical toward the peace process. Moreover, Duterte’s primary goal was to establish a federal system in the Philippines through a constitutional amendment, something that would require a lot, if not all, of his political capital.

Duterte cavalierly called on the MILF to forego the BOL and wait for a constitutional amendment to create a federal system. The MILF rejected this out of hand, acknowledging the difficulty for any constitutional amendment being passed. Ultimately, the MILF leadership was able to impress upon Duterte that federalism would not address their core grievances, give them the requisite political or fiscal autonomy, or force them to disarm.

Duterte acquiesced and, in mid-2018, Congress passed a watered-down version of the 2014 implementing legislation, the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). Duterte signed the BBL (Republic Act No. 11054) into law on July 28, 2018. It was a victory of sorts for Duterte, even though it expended the political capital he needed to push through federalism, his legislative priority. By mid-2019, federalism was on hold.

In early 2019, a two-phase plebiscite was held in the original Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) territories and then in 63 adjacent barangays. Though there were voting irregularities in one particular region in Lanao del Norte that roiled the MILF, the vast majority of localities that were eligible to join the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) did so.

Standing up the BARMM

In February 2019, with little fanfare, the BARMM government assumed power. It simply absorbed the functions, and for a period of time, the personnel of the previous ARMM government.

Until democratic elections are held in 2022, the BARMM is administered by the 80-person Bangsamoro Transitional Authority (BTA). The Philippine government appointed 49 percent of the BTA, including representatives from the former ARMM government, the MNLF, and civil society. The MILF appointed the remainder. MILF chairman Ebrahim Murad became the BARMM executive.

The BARMM government is a parliamentary system of government, even though the Philippines is an American-styled presidential system. This was a strategic choice. Because the government had to reconcile their separate peace agreements with the MILF and the MNLF, they needed to create a structure in which the MNLF would feel that they had a seat at the table.

The rivalry between the two groups is legendary. The MNLF could never accept the fact that the MILF wrested more concessions from the government than they ever could. Moreover, they looked at the MILF as their junior partner. They long blamed the government for the failure of the 1996 peace accord, refusing to acknowledge their own incompetence, corruption, and infighting. The MNLF had long lobbied Philippine politicians to scuttle the MILF peace process. By this time, however, the MNLF had become a predominantly ethnic Tausug organization, while the MILF’s presence in the Tausug heartland of Zamboanga, Basilian, Sulu, and Tawi Tawi was nascent. So a parliamentary system, with regional representation, guaranteed the MNLF a seat at the table and ultimately secured their support for the BARMM government.

To further complicate matters, Duterte released the MNLF founder, Nur Misuari, from prison, where he had landed for quitting the peace process and leading a second revolt against the government in 2012, one that led to over 200 civilian casualties and the displacement of over 10,000 people. Duterte promised Misuari a separate peace process without ever explaining the terms of how it would be reconciled with the BARMM.

Duterte appears to be mollifying Misuari, buying himself time. While Misuari commands less support than he did in the past, he remains a potent symbol of Moro nationalism, and he has proven to be a spoiler to the peace process twice in the past.

Birthing Pains

The new BARMM government was immediately confronted with a host of challenges that it probably was not ready for. It has handled them fairly well.

The transition from a secretive and elitist militant group to a transparent and inclusive government is never an easy one, something MILF chairman Murad acknowledged. The MILF was aware of the paucity of their human capital and for the past few years has been trying to build up capacity. They engaged a host of international and domestic civil society organizations to train people in technical, fiscal, and legal matters.

In 2014 the MILF established a legal political party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) and began training a new generation of political cadres, politicians, and technocrats to develop party platforms and mobilize the public. This was absolutely critical and one of the things that the MNLF failed to do following their 1996 accord. Indeed, the MNLF, or factions thereof, are still showing little inclination to establish themselves as a political party ahead of the 2022 elections.

The MILF leadership, however, came under fire for controlling too much of the BTA’s executive authority. Likewise, they were criticized for a lack of transparency and public accountability, something they never needed to exercise before.

The BTA itself had mixed degrees of experience, from seasoned politicians and technocrats on the government side to battle-hardened rebels on the MILF’s side. And yet the former foes now have to develop a working relationship and legislate, a skill set that the majority do not have.

There were further complications. While laws establishing a flag, or standing up the Bangsamoro human rights commission, attorney general’s office, women’s commission, and youth commission, were all straightforward and fairly noncontroversial, the BARMM needs to quickly enact a number of complex laws that would reconcile their own administration with the Philippine national code. For example, the BARMM had to pass laws on the civil service, revenue, and elections. Two major pieces of legislation, the education bill and the local government unit bill, appear to be close to passage.

The reality is that they did so much of this on a shoestring budget. The BTA has significant degrees of financial and fiscal autonomy. Nonetheless, even with competent and efficient tax collection mechanisms, the region is very poor and rural. Although the BTA gets to keep 75 percent of subterranean natural resources under the terms of the peace agreement, which is very generous, there still has not been any significant foreign investment in natural resource extraction that would generate revenues for the BARMM. That will change in time, but for now it is a revenue stream that the BTA desperately lacks.

Under the terms of the accord, the national government will provide the BTA with an annual block grant, which in 2020 was 63.6 billion Philippine pesos ($1.2 billion). But the first disbursement did not occur until December 2019. The government disbursed 2020’s first tranche of 5.3 billion pesos in February, which allows the BARMM to meet payroll and provide basic social services.

There was limited progress in establishing a tiered Sharia court system, expected to be a priority in the BARMM’s second year.

A Daunting Security Situation

Despite the peace process, the security situation in the southern Philippines remains daunting. There are a host of militant groups that have both rejected the peace process and declared their allegiance to the Islamic State. Although most are small and on the fringe, all remain doggedly resilient. Although Duterte ended martial law in December 2019, the AFP is spread thin, and militants have been able to regroup after battlefield setbacks. Given the opportunity to cooperate with one another, these groups do so with devastating efficacy, as we saw in the 2017 siege of Marawi. The AFP has long benefited from the fact that these groups are not just rivals but largely geographically isolated from one another in a region that has very few roads. The MILF has called on its pro-Islamic State rivals to lay down their arms and join the peace process, but for now, those calls have largely been rebuffed. As such, the war continues.

The BIFF has launched consistent, though low-level, IED attacks in central Mindanao. Bound by kinship and living in close proximity to many MILF combatants, the BIFF seeks to provoke AFP counterattacks that would lead to civilian casualties and undermine confidence in the peace process. A major encounter in central Mindanao lasted several days in mid-March, leaving four soldiers and over a dozen militants dead.

IS Lanao, better known as the Maute Group, continue to revive following their defeat in Marawi, tapping into local grievances following the government’s failed efforts to rebuild the city. Now in the third year of reconstruction, there are still nearly 80,000 displaced people, and there is no chance of them returning in the near term. Reconstruction of the city was never going to be easy, especially considering that many structures had no title to the land, but it was exacerbated by Duterte’s embrace of Chinese firms who proved to be corrupt and unable to fulfill their obligations. Anti-government sentiment is high, grievances that the Mautes are quick to exploit.

The Abu Sayyaf group also undermines confidence in the peace process as the AFP battles them in Sulu and Basilan. For every success, there are setbacks. Abu Sayyaf has continued to engage in kidnapping for ransom operations and, since mid-2019, resumed maritime operations into Malaysian and Indonesian waters, threatening fishing and regional trade. They have stepped up attacks on Christians.

Abu Sayyaf remains a magnet for foreign terrorist fighters, even more so since the collapse of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The Philippines is the destination for regional militants engaging in hijrah. The southern Philippines remains the only place in Southeast Asia where pro-Islamic state militants have any opportunity of controlling territory from which they can train, plan attacks, and serve as the core to justify being declared a province of the caliphate, no matter how unlikely that is. That relationship with the Islamic State has led to a spate of suicide bombings in southern Mindanao since mid-2018, including a double bombing at a cathedral that killed 23 and wounded 95.

Meanwhile the communist New People’s Army continues to expand their reach in the Christian majority regions of Mindanao, spreading the overtaxed and under-resourced AFP thin. With Duterte’s abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States, the skeletal team of U.S. special forces will not be able to remain to provide critically important training, intelligence, and surveillance.

Mixed Scores in Disarmament, Demobilization, and Rehabilitation

The Philippines and Bangsamoro leadership continue to enjoy the goodwill and international support for the peace process. Development assistance continues to flow, the region’s nascent infrastructure is slowly being developed, and money – both local and foreign – is being invested. The international community continues to support the training and human capital of the BARMM region.

As outlined in the fourth annex of the FAB, the MILF has commenced their second phase of disarmament and demobilization. The disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation (DDR) program remains on schedule, and there is no evidence that the MILF is slow-rolling it.There remain, however, some legitimate concerns.

The original BOL had given internal policing responsibilities to the MILF. The post-Mamasapano version of the implementation legislation that Congress passed in 2018 (the BBL), stripped out those provisions, leaving internal security in the hands of the Philippine National Police and AFP, with support from the MILF, in what are known as Joint Peace and Security Teams. The first 255 MILF members have been trained and integrated.

While there have been no changes yet, it appears that Duterte is reconsidering the role of the MILF in internal security. He seems to understand that the MILF have both a better understanding of the actors within the BARMM as well as a political incentive to go after spoilers. Whether he has the political capital to push this issue is altogether another thing.

The two sides established the Joint Peace and Security Committee (JPSC) to oversee a range of security issues. In addition to policing, the JPSC is in charge of disarmament and demobilization and oversees the Joint Peace and Security Teams that are actually doing the demobilization and disarmament work. The first of 11 teams has been established in the former rebel stronghold of Camp Abu Bakar.

At Camp Abu Bakar the Turkish-led Independent Decommissioning Body (IDB) is overseeing the storage facilities that have put thousands of MILF weapons beyond use. In addition, the IDB has representatives from the governments of Norway and Brunei, as well as local representatives nominated by both the Philippine government and the MILF. The IDB seeks to build 11 more facilities in seven provinces across Mindanao to store the weaponry, so they do not cascade into the hands of other militants.

Nonetheless, there remain some suspicions. The MILF claims to have 12,000 combatants, which either is obviously inflated to get more resources and jobs upon demobilization or simply reflects the fact that anyone who has fought in the past 25 years for the MILF is still considered a combatant. To date, those who have been formally demobilized are not young men. Likewise, a majority of weapons that have been turned in are old bolt-action rifles. This has led to fears that the MILF is holding onto weapons, should the peace process break down, or that weapons will be sold on the black market to other militant groups.

The mistrust goes both ways: In February 2020, Philippine police arrested an MILF officer, Abuhalil Sabpa, for his role in the 2015 Mamasapano incident. While Philippine security forces may have legitimate interests in bringing Sabpa to justice, such actions will undermine trust in the peace process.

One thing that did improve the security situation was the high court’s December 2019 ruling finding the Ampatuan clan responsible for the November 2009 massacre of 57 political rivals and journalists. Three Ampatuan brothers received life sentences; 37 others were convicted. The Ampatuan clan had allied itself with the government against the MILF. In return for delivering votes at election time, the Ampatuans ran a large private army and tried to monopolize local politics. The clan has been dramatically weakened, which gave the government the confidence to try to disarm their and others’ private armies. These private armies have been as much of a source of the region’s instability and violence as the secessionist rebels. And while the FAB’s fourth annex stated that the MILF and the government would work together to disarm and disband private armies within the BARMM, until the court ruling, neither side really seemed to have the will to do so.

What’s in Store for Year Two?

Despite all of the weaknesses and problems, there were no major setbacks to either the peace process or getting the BARMM government up and running. Yet there are plenty of challenges for their second year, with four especially worth focusing on.

First, there are a lot more laws that the BARMM must draft and enact to create the legal framework for their own administration ahead of the 2022 election, including revenue, civil service, and electoral codes. The Local Government Unit and Education bills are expected to be passed in April. And for it to serve as effective legislature, the MILF, which controls the BTA’s executive power, may need to share power to get sufficient buy-in from other groups and interests.

Second, this coming year will be the first full year of block grants, meaning that the BARMM government really has no one to blame if it does not start to deliver economic growth and social services. The Moro narrative has always been that they could administer better than “imperial Manila.” Now’s the time to prove it. Nowhere is this more important than in Marawi.

Third, the security situation must be addressed. The Islamic State is still taking credit for attacks in the region. The second phase of DDR needs to be completed by the elections in 2022. There are 10 more Joint Security Teams to stand up, more weapons to decommission, and more former combatants to demobilize. The government is going to have to find a way to get more former MILF combatants involved in internal policing. A serious decline in the security situation will play into the hands of skeptics of the peace process who could work to reverse the autonomy gains. Finally, private armies need to be demobilized and disarmed.

Fourth, the MILF, the MNLF, and other parts of civil society really need to gear up for the elections set for May 2022. These groups have to engage in party building, mass mobilization, voter education, and so on. The UBJP seems focused, but it has its work cut out for it. And there will always be concerns that the UBJP will rely on the coercive power of the MILF to dominate politics. It remains to be seen if other parties are going to be formed, and what that electoral landscape will look like. Sadly, the BARMM may reflect Philippine politics writ large, with very weak political parties that are little more than vehicles for personalities.

The promise of peace is there, but governance will remain a challenge. Insecurity will continue to limit investment and development. The entire political and security landscape in the Philippines is fraught. The Philippines itself is moving closer to an election year, so there will be a lot of political grandstanding and politicking. Mindanao remains a critical vote bank. And, of course, we need to watch how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out in a region with very rudimentary public health services.

But despite all these challenges, this is still the best shot at a lasting peace for a population exhausted by war, insecurity, and poverty.