Moro war is about injustice

By Fernando del Mundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

COTABATO CITY—Dr. Abas Candao says friends wonder why in spite of the over 10 years he had spent in Saudi Arabia he never learned to speak fluent Arabic. It’s because, says the anesthesiologist, “I put people to sleep.”

Today, the 60-year-old Candao is attempting to awaken a nation from a nightmare rooted in centuries-old resentments that erupted into a full-blown Moro separatist war four decades ago. "They say it’s just poverty and you solve poverty and there’s going to be peace,” says Candao, chair and CEO of the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), which is charged under a tottering peace accord with overseeing the post-conflict, multidonor rehabilitation of Mindanao. "I think a lot of international donors have already realized that this is wrong,” says the silver-haired physician. “The center of all these things is injustice. The people are being impoverished because of injustice. So we have to solve this. We cannot just let injustice happen before our eyes.”

Candao says this all began when Spain ceded the Philippines along with vast tracks of Moro ancestral lands to the United States for $20 million under the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War. There’s the “brutality” of a government campaign to fill the region with Christian settlers and an “unjust public land law,” he says.

From Spain to the United States and later the Philippines, the strategy of colonial rule persisted, Candao says, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone without a trace of rancor or bitterness. Candao spoke to the Philippine Daily Inquirer at his austere office in a house of corrugated roof and thatched bamboo just before breaking fast a week before the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. He looked tired in his black shirt with “Café Cappuccino” inscribed on it, white pants and white slippers.

3 strands in peace package

An offshoot of the 2002 agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the BDA is the project implementing body that will take charge of relief, rehabilitation and development. The 2002 accord was the second of three strands in a peace package. The first was the 1997 ceasefire. The third was a deal on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland that the Supreme Court stopped in August amid fears its creation would lead to dismemberment.

MILF commanders, enraged at the delay, attacked Christian settlements, provoking a military backlash that is now on its second month. More than half a million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result. Candao says the BDA was conceptualized in Saudi Arabia, where he worked from 1980 to 1990 in a Jeddah hospital, in meetings he had with late MILF chair Hashim Salamat, who used to call professionals to discuss the problems of Mindanao.
Salamat was one of the founders of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by Nur Misuari that challenged President Ferdinand Marcos after martial law was declared in 1972.
Salamat had then just returned from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Islamic world’s equivalent of Harvard, where he earned his doctorate in Islamic theology that would later make him an aleem, about the same rank as a Catholic archbishop.

He broke away from Misuari in 1978 and six years later established the MILF. The MILF puts much greater emphasis on Islam than the MNLF, and most of its leaders are Islamic scholars from traditional aristocratic and religious backgrounds. Salamat died in July 2003.

Roadmap to development

“Granting we get what we want, whether violently or through peaceful means, after that, what?” Candao says. “I think it is very important that we have some sort of a roadmap, a guide that would show us what to do.” In 2000-2001, Candao talked to a group of Moro professionals who later formed the core of what is now the BDA, which is working on a comprehensive development plan for Mindanao. “If we succeed in initiating a government, this government is going to make use of this comprehensive Bangsamoro development plan. Otherwise, we will suffer the same fate as the former group who signed an agreement (in September 1996) with the government without really knowing what to do after that,” Candao says. “They had a long period of inactivity because they didn’t know what to do. So I said we don’t want to suffer the same fate.”

He says the MNLF, mainly composed of Tausugs, is “very exclusive.” The MNLF insurgency led to the formation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in 1990. But its critics say the ARMM, as with traditional politicians and warlords, did little to improve the lot of the Moros.
Most impoverished region
Official statistics show that the ARMM, of which Misuari was a former governor, remains the most impoverished region in the Philippines. It is also regarded as corrupt. The “Hello Garci” controversy, in which President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was alleged to have stolen the 2004 presidential election—a charge she denies—took place in the ARMM.

Candao says the MILF will not repeat the mistakes of the past. “After a government is set up, it’s going to be able to work because it will know what to do. Having a plan will minimize graft and corruption. It will be able to maximize the use of funds. We will know what funds to use for where, how much. “It will also show sincerity on the part of the MILF leaders if they can show that they are planning for peace, for development. Otherwise, they will just be thinking about wars,” Candao says.

The World Bank-administered Mindanao Trust Fund was formed in 2005 to help the BDA in a two-phased development program that began with “capacity building”—a buzzword for training workers who will carry out the rebuilding of the South when peace finally comes. Projects are “community driven,” monitored and reviewed by donors and the respected auditing firm of SyCip, Gorres and Velayo.

Empowering people

“They (donors) find it an effective way of empowering people, teaching them how to do things by themselves, learning, managing, how to decide by themselves, how to work together,” Candao says. He says that about a year ago, he was able to convince the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—the world’s largest source of bilateral development assistance—to help the BDA.
“JICA wanted a socio-economic development plan, not a comprehensive national development plan, and I agreed,” he says.

“They saw no existing data at the barangay level, so that’s what they decided to come up (as) the basis of subsequent planning. They also did maps and review of existing data on municipal, provincial, regional level and a review of all existing plans and programs in the area.

Bangsamoro perspectives

“There have been existing plans before but their objectives and direction were different. This is from our point of view. The previous plans were done from the point of view of government,” he says. He says government plans have always been for the benefit of regions other than Mindanao—the growth corridors and even the formulation that it is a “breadbasket” of the rest of the country. Candao says the BDA is making plans “from the point of view of the Bangsamoro.” “How do we become economically, politically, culturally at par with the rest of the country and the rest of the world. And because of our peculiarity as Muslims, we would like to see to it that we are able to live as Muslims.

“We would like to see Halal systems subsisting in our areas. We would like to see Islamic banking. We would like to see Islamic business thrive in our area. These are all part of this plan,” says Candao, who wrote “Bangsamoro” in the space for “nation” in his resumé.

Where does the 12,000-strong MILF come in the comprehensive development plan?

“We have to think about them. They should be part of the plan,” he says. Asked what’s the plan for the MILF’s military wing, Candao replies: “None yet.” He says the MILF has the right to claim that the BDA is its development arm. “And so, that’s what we are. For as long as we are serving the people, no problem. We are their baby,” he says.

Loyalty to our people

“Our loyalty is to our people. We hope that what we set out to accomplish will be accomplished. We’re helping people to build a nation. “Our people have long suffered and the earlier we are able to help extricate our people from this quagmire, the better, of course. We are aiming to build enlightened communities, in other words, peace, progress for our people,” he says.
Candao laments President Arroyo’s decision to cancel the peace talks with the MILF, disband her negotiating panel and introduce a new precondition for the resumption of talks: disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation (DDR).

“DDR should be there at the tail end, not the first thing to talk about” he says. “You don’t start by saying you part with your guns first. No. We talk about why there are fighting. They say it’s because of injustice. Then correct that injustice. And then when you remove the cause of this fighting then that’s the time to say you don’t have any use for these guns.”

In spite of these developments, Candao is upbeat. “You cannot lose hope. We must not lose hope,” he says. Acceptance of the deal on the expanded Moro homeland is a way forward—a chance for the government to show goodwill.