Asia | A peace agreement in Mindanao

A fragile peace

A long-running insurgency may at last be coming to an end

Feb 1st 2014|MANILA

THE Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is preparing to sign an agreement with the government that is meant to end decades of conflict in the south of the Philippines. Government leaders hope that the rebel group will begin disarming in May. The southern region of Mindanao is home to most of the predominantly Catholic country’s Muslim minority. The MILF is the most important in a range of armed groups that have been fighting for independence for the majority-Muslim areas. After 18 years of negotiations, often interrupted by heavy fighting, the government and the MILF concluded the last and most crucial part of a four-part peace agreement on January 25th.

The first three parts gave autonomy—not independence—to the mainly Muslim areas, in return for peace. The fourth sets out how the government and the MILF will jointly restore order in the autonomous entity, to be called Bangsamoro. It also lays out how the 12,000 or so MILF fighters will put down their weapons, once all the other groups have been disarmed. This is the nub of the agreement.

That the negotiators have got this far demonstrates the determination of both sides, weary from 46 years of a conflict that has killed tens of thousands. A few obstacles remain. Hostilities have not yet ceased. Two days after the agreement, the army assaulted a stronghold of a faction of the MILF, known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), that rejects the agreement. The army said it boffed 37 rebels, a claim they rejected.

Then there is the question of a constitution for Bangsamoro that must be drafted and enacted by the national Congress. Anyone who does not like the peace agreement may challenge it in the (predominantly Catholic) courts. But the main Philippine parties are spurred on by the hope that peace will allow Mindanao to unlock its considerable mineral and agricultural wealth. America stands ready to help financially in the hope that economic growth will prevent parts of Mindanao from harbouring Islamists.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle will be the rebels’ resistance to disarmament. Some of the reasons are cultural. In parts of Mindanao the concept of manhood is tied up with owning a gun. Some resistance to disarmament is political. Communist guerrillas still infest the island, and their leaders are reluctant to talk peace. Other factions of the MILF that are unhappy with the peace agreement may follow the BIFF’s lead. The MILF itself began as a faction that splintered from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which accepted autonomy for some largely Muslim areas in a peace agreement with the government in 1996. Now the MNLF is upset that the autonomous entity created by the 1996 agreement is to be supplanted by this new Bangsamoro. In September one of the MNLF’s factions protested with a show of force in the southern city of Zamboanga, in which 24o people were killed over three weeks. Abu Sayyaf is another armed Muslim group, which America linked to al-Qaeda after 2001. Some resistance to disarmament will also come from common criminals. Mindanao is awash with armed gangs of kidnappers and extortionists.

It is little wonder, then, that the MILF has agreed to lay down its weapons only once everybody else has. Peace between the MILF and the government is one thing; peace in Mindanao is another.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "A fragile peace"