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COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Sarah Makamad thinks she is 59 years old, but she isn’t sure. When and where she was born, it wasn’t automatic for people to register births with the government. She sells vegetables at a rickety roadside stall in Camp Darapanan, the expansive headquarters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Maguindanao del Norte.
A hefty bunch of her green leafies goes for P30 — much cheaper than in supermarkets.
“Gano’n din.” It’s the same, she said, when asked what changed since the MILF took over the regional government — when her homeland became the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in February 2019.
She meant that life, for her, is the same as ever.
Certain parts of the camp show ostensible change. Improvement. What used to be a wooden bungalow for gatherings is now a monumental concrete hall with bleachers on either side and a dais on the opposite end from the foyer. A rostrum stands stage center, bearing the MILF seal.
Soldiers still guard every other corner of the camp. Their arm patches still say “Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces” — BIAF, the MILF’s army that proved credible enough to force the Philippine government into negotiations for an autonomous territory, at least a more substantial one than its predecessor, the now-defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Unlike before, the BIAF soldiers now don’t worry about being photographed. They even take selfies with visitors — broad smiles on their unconcealed faces. They’re not rebels anymore. No longer outlaws.
“Ang kagandahan noon ay relaxed na sila. Hindi kagaya noon na tago nang tago,” Garex Shariff, the camp’s operations commander, told a group of visiting reporters in late January. (The beauty of it is the soldiers are now relaxed, unlike before, when they used to always hide.)
RELAXED. A soldier of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) in Camp Darapanan poses for a photo. JC Gotinga/Rappler‘Personal observation’
Of their lives at ease, Shariff and the two other camp officials in the interview could speak with confidence. MILF families now walk free. Their children go to regular schools; many have received public scholarships. Mundane worries occupy the men’s minds now that they’ve stopped fighting the government, and they consider that a blessing.
But a number of the peace deal’s promises have yet to be fulfilled, Shariff said in a careful tone. “This is just my personal observation,” he emphasized, disclaiming authority to speak on the matter.
In the absence, so far, of radical upliftment in his community’s condition, Shariff’s opinion could hardly be controversial.
For example, some 10,000 BIAF soldiers have yet to be decommissioned, when the plan had been to disarm all 40,000 of them by 2022. That COVID-19 got in the way is an alibi often heard from officials fielding questions about the delay, but even the pandemic is starting to fade from recent memory.
“Sa decommissioning, ang nakikita naming problema ay kulang talaga,” Shariff said of the delivery of benefits promised to former fighters in exchange for their weapons. (With decommissioning, the problem we see is, it’s really insufficient.)
The government promised every decommissioned BIAF soldier a socio-economic aid package: P100,000 in cash and livelihood assistance for the former fighters, and P500,000 to P1,000,000 worth of aid in housing, schooling, and healthcare for their families.
“If we talk about assistance, well, they rarely receive any, beyond what they first got when they were decommissioned,” Shariff said in Filipino.
The dismantling of the MILF war machinery is the deal’s biggest item for the government. To soldiers who’ve lived most of their lives at war, a farewell to arms may feel akin to emasculation. The deal’s brokers must ensure proper compensation.
“The government still needs to manage how to help the decommissioned,” said Shariff.
As the new autonomous government — the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) led by the MILF — wiggles itself into place, ripples of bureaucratic chaos crop up in places.
For instance, in the early days of the transition, there were “focal persons” whom decommissioned fighters reported to for their benefits, Shariff said. Now, government agencies, such as the BARMM’s social welfare ministry, course the assistance through local government units, typically the barangays.
Administrators from barangays, it turns out, are much less familiar with the decommissioned soldiers and their whereabouts than the original point persons, Shariff said.
“Sometimes, the decommissioned have moved houses or switched SIM cards. In that case, [the barangay administrators] couldn’t contact or find them.”
INFRASTRUCTURE. A new bridge spans the stream in Tukanalipao, Mamasapano, Maguindanao del Sur. JC Gotinga/RapplerA decade since the Mamasapano tragedy
The Bangsamoro is incredibly verdant. Even in Cotabato City, the seat of the autonomous government, one is never very far from lush thickets. The urban enclave is bordered by the sea to the west, broad rivers in the north and south, and marshland to the east. From the eighth floor of its famous Al Nor Hotel — one of the city’s tallest structures — the mountains, waters, and jungles appear so immediate, it feels as though the city had just been carved out of the wilds.
Much of the rest of the territory is rural — so rural that paved roads are an innovation, such as in Barangay Tukanalipao in Mamasapano, Maguindanao del Sur. This was where, on January 25, 2015, a misencounter between troops of the Philippine National Police’s Special Action Force and the BIAF, alongside fighters from an MILF splinter group, killed a total of 66 people, including the SAF 44.
The road that now connects Tukanalipao to the national road was the first thing Omryan Ali Amilil, 37, mentioned when visiting journalists asked him what changed in his village in the decade since the tragedy. Amilil pointed to the road and to the concrete bridge that now spans the picturesque stream that figured heavily in news footage of the incident’s aftermath.
On the tragedy’s 10th anniversary, Amilil guided the journalists through the cornfield where the battle happened, to lay a wreath of flowers in honor of the victims. Reporters’ cameras were on him, and he trained his Canon DSLR on them. For the locals, a visit from a group of Luzon-based reporters was newsworthy.
“Simula pa noong pagkabata namin, parang nakalimutan na kami ng gobyerno, ba. Kumbaga, walang development sa aming lugar,” Amilil said. (Ever since our childhood, it’s as if the government had forgotten about us. In other words, there was no development in our area.)
The tragedy drew attention to Tukanalipao’s languid state. Since then, the government has built two schools, housing projects, and mosques. The new three-kilometer concrete road has invigorated agriculture, Amilil said, because farmers now have a way to market.
With all that change, Tukanalipao, it could be said, has gone from negative to zero. Locals are grateful for the improvement in their condition, but their deprivation also means it takes little to impress them.
A graying local man, who goes by the name Khons, said the new bridge has been a huge help to villagers. He noted how they only used to have a wooden bridge that often gave way to bad weather. Asked whether he thinks justice has been served for the victims who included a number of his civilian neighbors, without hesitation, he said, “Yes”.
Amilil’s driver’s license states his address as “Tukanalipao, Mamasapano, Maguindanao” — his village has no street names or house numbers. For generations and until now, the Moro people have remained, relative to the rest of the Philippines, in the wild.
IN THE WILD. Omryan Ali Amilil’s driver’s license lists his address simply as ‘Tukanalipao, Mamasapano, Maguindanao.’ JC Gotinga/RapplerThe Bangsamoro narrative
That it took bloodshed for advancement to come to Tukanalipao starkly iterates the Bangsamoro narrative. The view that mainstream Philippine society had long excluded and neglected the Moro people was what spurred their rebellion.
Destitution is certainly not endemic to this part of the country. But the Moros’ possession of a culture and history distinct from the rest of the nation became their argument for self-determination — to strike out on their own and not wait around for distant, imperial Manila.
The MILF came to be after its predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), settled for autonomy in 1976, abandoning its campaign for secession. The MILF continued fighting the government for a separate state as MNLF leaders governed the ARMM, the country’s first autonomous Muslim region. Then, in 1996, the MILF, too, started on-and-off negotiations with the government that would, 22 years later, lead to the establishment of the BARMM.
At least 100,000 people were killed in the decades of fighting between Moro rebels and government forces, based on official estimates. Other armed groups splintered from the MNLF, the MILF, and their offshoots, and resorted to more extreme tactics: bombings, kidnappings, sieges, plain banditry.
The 2015 Mamasapano tragedy dampened trust in the MILF and stalled the peace process. The ghastly siege of Marawi City by the ISIS-inspired Maute Group in 2017 inadvertently got it back on track — the national government sensed the urgency of establishing peace, and counted on the deal with the MILF as a wholesale solution to violence in the region.
The BARMM is supposed to embody the Moro people’s aspirations more substantially than the ARMM did. Unlike the ARMM, the BARMM receives 5% of the national revenue as a yearly block grant, keeps the lion’s share of earnings from its local resources, and generally wields more power than other regional governments. The BARMM has its own flag, its own parliament, and has Islamic law incorporated into its justice system.
It may be symbolic, but the BARMM also codifies the Bangsamoro into official existence — an acknowledgment in black and white of the Moro people as a distinct race and culture.
WEAVING. A young woman weaves a shawl at a shop in Cotabato City. Photo: JC Gotinga/RapplerFrom rebels to statesmen to politicians
That the MILF would be the Bangsamoro’s inaugural governors seemed natural. “We paid this in blood, sweat, and tears,” Mohagher Iqbal, chief of the MILF Peace Implementing Panel and now the BARMM’s education minister, told reporters in Cotabato City on January 24.
He was answering a question about how the Cordilleran people, who currently have a special administrative region, could replicate the Moros’ success in securing autonomy.
Iqbal, the minister, is different from Iqbal, the peace negotiator. The minister has a more self-assured stride and commanding speech; the negotiator used to almost whisper through interviews. The minister also cracked many jokes during the meeting with reporters, which he could hardly do as a rebel at war with the government.
But Iqbal, with the rest of the MILF leadership, including BARMM Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, faces some tough questions now that the BTA is three years past its original expiry date.
Their appointment as transitional leaders was good from 2019 to 2022, when there should have been an election for new parliament leaders. Because of delays in processes largely attributable to the pandemic, the government extended the transition period to June 30, 2025. There ought to be a parliamentary election along with the rest of the country’s polls in May this year, but last October, the Bangsamoro Parliament asked Congress for another three-year extension.
Congress denied that request. On February 4, the bicameral conference committee set the BARMM’s first parliamentary election for October 13, 2025. The BTA’s mandate by presidential appointment is extended by four-and-a-half months, not three years.
And so the MILF, through its political party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), will yet again fight for control of the Bangsamoro, this time through an election. The former rebels who have become statesmen must further evolve into politicians.
Competing with the MILF are some of the region’s longtime political dynasties, who have coalesced into the “BGC,” the BARMM Grand Coalition.
Although the MILF had hoped for at least a two-year extension to their appointment to ensure a “smooth democratic transition,” Iqbal said they are aware that their credibility dwindles as elections keep getting pushed back.
“‘Yan ang sinasabi ng Presidente paulit-ulit — ‘Mag-election na tayo para may legitimacy kayo,’” he said. (That’s what the President has been saying over and over — “Hold elections already so you have legitimacy.”)
POLITICIANS. A large poster advertises the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UPJP) in Cotabato City. JC Gotinga/RapplerExit agreement
Discounting what might be a natural urge to stay in power, the MILF needs to remain as the BARMM’s governors if they are to see through the full execution of the peace agreement.
At some point, the BARMM government and the national government are to sign an exit agreement, to signify that the peace agreement’s promises are fulfilled, and the BARMM has fully transitioned into normalcy. The agreement requires that an elected BARMM government, not the appointed BTA, be the one to sign this exit agreement.
But as Shariff, the MILF camp commander, and even Iqbal admitted, many items on the agreement have yet to be delivered. Besides the decommissioning of remaining BIAF soldiers and the delivery of their socio-economic packages, Iqbal said the disbandment of private armed groups — usually political clans’ mercenaries — and the incorporation of MILF members into the national police and military remain hanging.
Who better to insist on the agreement’s stipulations than the ones who negotiated the agreement?
“Kahit sinong nandiyan, puwedeng pag-usapan [‘yung exit agreement], pero mas maigi na kami ang nandidiyan,” Iqbal said, referring to the MILF. (Whoever sits in power can discuss the exit agreement, but it’s better if we’re the ones there.)
Not that they would insist on 100% delivery of the agreement, Iqbal said, which is impossible and would hold the BARMM hostage if they did. The MILF would be happy with a “substantial” fulfillment of the deal’s items.
“Pero papaano kami mapupunta diyan? Siyempre, eleksiyon ‘yan. Tatrabahuin namin. Mananalo kami eh, ‘di ba? Kasi mas maganda kung nandoon kami sa power,” he said. (But how will we get there? Of course, that’s an election. We’ll work it out. We’ll win, right? Because it’s better if we’re in power.)
Election campaign posters are now all over Cotabato City and elsewhere in the Bangsamoro. The UBJP’s tarpaulin posters feature MILF Chairman Ebrahim, Iqbal, and other nominees. Since it’s a parliamentary system, voters will elect parties, not persons. If the UBJP wins the majority of seats, then Ebrahim gets a shot at staying on as chief minister.
Just as ubiquitous are posters of the BGC. Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan would have been a strong contender for chief minister, but the Supreme Court recently ruled to exclude his province from the BARMM. Other surnames in this alliance include Adiong, Hataman, and Mangudadatu.
“We’re just ready,” Iqbal said. “We are prepared to win or to lose, because it’s an election. If we lose, what can we do?”
FORMER EVACUEE. Sarah Makamad sells vegetables by the roadside in Camp Darapanan. Photo: JC Gotinga/RapplerQuieter now
Sarah Makamad, the vegetable seller from Camp Darapanan, couldn’t tell the years but remembered always needing to evacuate during the older Marcos’ regime, which was from 1965 to 1986.
“Nung namatay si Marcos (senior), nasa bakwit pa kami,” she said. “Bakwit” has become the local shorthand for “evacuee”. (When Marcos Sr. died, we were still in evacuation.)
That was in 1988; many more years of war lay ahead. Life for Makamad was a traumatic succession of uprooting, settling, then uprooting again, to stay out of the crossfire. None of her children finished school; they all got married young, and she approved of it.
“Mas mabuti ang mag-asawa kaysa mag-aral,” she said, chuckling. Better to get married than to study. In the war-torn economy of her younger years, what was there to study for?
Makamad and her family are still poor. Although she didn’t have a lot of praise for this new autonomy, she acknowledged that, at least, they can now stay put. She couldn’t recall the last time she evacuated — it’s been a while since the last skirmish in Darapanan.
“Mas tahimik na ngayon (It’s quieter now),” she said.
Asked whether the MILF, as the BARMM’s governors, has uplifted people’s lives, Iqbal replied, “From 57% poverty incidence to just 23%.”
The record bears him out: a Unicef study put poverty incidence in the region at 61.3% in 2018, a year before the BARMM’s establishment. That same year, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) rated poverty in the BARMM at 52%. In 2023, the PSA’s figure was down to 23.5%.
Iqbal mentioned new road networks, public infrastructure, and school campuses being inaugurated.
“It’s common knowledge, according to international research, that a devastated region would require at least 10 years to rehabilitate and develop,” he said.
“Six years pa lang kami. COVID took away two years. Despite that, nakikita na talaga ‘yung pagbabago dito.” (We’ve only been in power for six years. COVID took away two years. Despite that, the changes here are evident.)
GRANDEUR. The Grand Mosque in Cotabato City. JC Gotinga/RapplerTrue mujahideen
But the question is, are the Moro people, in whose name the MILF, the MNLF, and other armed groups waged war against the government, satisfied with the results of the peace process?
“My personal observation is that there are some who are dissatisfied with the assistance they’ve received,” Garex Shariff, the operations commander at Camp Darapanan, said in Filipino, referring to decommissioned BIAF soldiers.
Thinking that decommissioning meant abandoning their struggle — their jihad — many BIAF soldiers didn’t want to lay down arms, Shariff said. But when the MILF leaders made them understand that it was part of the peace process, they relented.
“Dahil sa kautusan ng Allah na kailangan sumunod tayo sa leader, ay nanu-neutralize ‘yung sentimyento ng bawat mujahideen na nadecommission.” (Because of Allah’s commandment that we must obey our leader, the sentiments of every decommissioned mujahideen are neutralized.)
Mujahideen. Fighters of the Islamic cause. Holy warriors.
What’s important to them, said Shariff, is that “moral governance” now prevails. “Moral governance” means every official action is informed by the fear of Allah. This, he said, is the Moro struggle’s highest aspiration.
“Satisfied or not, his obedience to Allah remains,” Shariff said in Filipino. And for BIAF soldiers, active or decommissioned, this transcendental God’s earthly proxies are the leaders of the MILF.
“That is the mark of true mujahideen — obedience to their leader’s decisions.” – Rappler.com
This reporting was made possible by MindaNews, the Mindanao Institute of Journalism, and Media Impact Philippines.
