Authored by Sylvia ConcepciònLarry DigalRufa GuiamRomulo de la RosaMara Stankovitch, “Breaking the links between economicsand conflict in Mindanao” , Presented at the ‘Waging Peace’ conference, ManilaDecember 2003. Downloaded from
Breaking the links between economics and conflict in Mindanao
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Quote “1.2.8 The Estrada government: all-out war. At first, the policy of peace talks continued, but in 2000, following the takeover of a town hall in Lanao del Norte by the MILF in March, Estrada announced an all-out war. In April, the armed forces launched a military offensive against the MILF’s camps, including their main headquarters, Camp Abubakar. Many of the camps were in fact communities run by the MILF, and they housed a considerable number of civilians and civilian buildings: mosques, madrasahs and homes. They were treated as military targets and subjected to indiscriminate bombardment. The government declared victory over the MILF. The MILF responded by declaring a jihad against the government. The war was popular with the Christian population in the country at large. A series of violent incidents in Western Mindanao earlier in the year – including a mass kidnapping by the AbuSayyaf, who went on to kill some of their hostages – had provoked a public outcry and in its public statements the government bundled the MILF and its numerous supporters together with the small, explicitly anti-Christian Abu Sayyaf. But although opinion polls showed a majority in the Philippines as a whole backed the war effort, civil society in Mindanao was vocal in its opposition. Various reasons have been advanced for the new hard line against the MILF. Probably, different motives appealed to the different groups represented in Estrada’s cabinet. The chair of the government peace panel, Edgardo Batenga, said later that the military action was intended to correct a ‘blunder’ in the negotiations, when the government agreed to acknowledge seven of the46 camps the MILF claimed to have around Mindanao. The notion of acknowledging MILF-controlled territory was particularly unpopular with the military. President Estrada may also have seen a war against the Moros as a way to restore his own waning popularity. A former film actor famous for playing no-nonsense, tough guy roles, he had been elected by a landslide. But two years later, his administration had few achievements to its credit and rumours of corruption were emerging. The seven camps acknowledged by the government represented an area of 451,700 hectares of potential agricultural land, and included the oil and natural gas deposits of the Liguasan Marsh. In August 2000, a month after the fall of Camp Abubakar, Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio Morales told reporters in Davao City that the government was considering development of Morolands, including those ravaged by the war, into cash crop plantations through joint ventures with foreign companies.This prompted speculation that the war had been launched to clear the way for plantations and for exploration of the marsh. It also raised fears among evacuees that they would be prevented from returning to their farms. Although the government captured the main MILF camps against little resistance, the Bangsa Moro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF – the MILF’s army) emerged relatively intact and reverted to guerrilla warfare. However, losing the camps represented a significant blow to the MILF’s status, and is likely to have weakened the control of the leadership over its forces in the field. Meanwhile, a group of former MNLF fighters, claiming allegiance to the Abu Sayyaf, kidnapped a group of foreign tourists in the Malaysian resort of Sipadan, brought them to Sulu,and demanded huge sums in ransom. The saga of the hostage negotiations and subsequent kidnapping of reporters dominated international news coverage of the Philippines, eclipsing the larger-scale conflict in Central Mindanao. Once all the hostages but one (the only Filipino among them) were released, the armed forces launched a massive campaign against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu, cutting the island off from the outside world and launching indiscriminate attacks in rural areas. Estrada also alienated the MNLF by creating a Mindanao Coordinating Council to manage infrastructure projects in the ARMM, thus usurping the role of the institutions set up under the FPA.1.2.9
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Quote “Much of the direct cost of the war in 2000 was borne by displaced people. Previously, little precise data was available on the effects of war on the civilian population. In the early years of the conflict, the toll in deaths and injuries, and the scale of human rights violations and loss of livelihood, could only be estimated. The presence of local and international relief agencies in the affected areas in 2000 meant the immediate social and micro-economic impact of war was more closely monitored. According to a social assessment of conflict-affected areas carried out for the World Bank, fighting in Central and Western Mindanao and the ARMM displaced 932,000 people. (The figure includes those displaced in Sulu and Basilan as a result of Abu Sayyaf action and the government’s military response.)52Oxfam estimates that 85% of those affected by the conflict were Muslims, 17% Christiansand 7% were Lumad. In Basilan, displaced people tended to be Christians fleeing the Abu Sayyaf,but once government forces went after the Abu Sayyaf and Christians started to arm themselves, the pattern reversed. Most of the people who fled to evacuation centres in Central Mindanao were women and children. Some adult men in Muslim communities were MILF combatants. Others feared that government forces would suspect them of being MILF combatants, or feared conscription by the MILF, and went into hiding. Most of the evacuees were from farming families living in remote rural areas where input markets are monopolised by a few traders who are also the main source of credit for rice and corn production. Indebtedness is high. The immediate economic impact of the war was an income shock: incomes were lost when unharvested crops were abandoned, and when planting seasons passed by with workers unable to work their farms. In 58% of the displaced families interviewed for a survey by Oxfam in November 2000, the children had stopped going to school; 22% of families had borrowed money on interest, while 50%per cent had sold their productive assets and 21% had sold their farmland, house and land rights to buy food.53One direct consequence of the income shock was that loans advanced by traders could not be paid, and this may have affected the flow of credit. Before the war, two-thirds of the families inthe Muslim-dominated areas had used credit, but after the conflict, only one-half did. The average amount borrowed by internally displaced persons before the conflict was P2,394. This fell toP1,571 after the conflict.
Quote “Farmers also lost their assets – farm animals and implements – when they fled. Carabaos were killed by stray bullets, died of starvation, or were slaughtered for food by the armed groups. The few farmers who brought their carabaos when they fled eventually had to sell them to buy food for their families. In some cases, men exchanged productive assets for weapons with which to protect their families and property. The price of one firearm is equivalent to several months of a poor family’s income. In times of peace, misfortunes such as sickness or loss of income rarely happen to all members of a community at the same time. But the conflict affected everyone, so mutual support systems could not operate. The number of people who earned incomes from farming increased after the conflicts, but average household income decreased. With households in desperate straits, women, children and elderly people were mobilised to earn an income. By November 2001, 90% of the displaced had returned to their homes or resettled elsewhere: many communities played host to displaced persons, and in Maguindanao datu-landowners as a class employed many displaced people as farm workers. Muslims found it harder to return home than did Christians once the fighting was over, partly because evacuation centres were further away from Muslim communities.Muslim communities in or near the MILF camps are particularly reluctant to return, given the continuing presence of the military and the high risk that conflict will resume. Those who do return will have to struggle with a lack of rural infrastructure. The government has sought to rebuild homes, but bridges, roads, madrasahs, state schools, water systems and health centres were also destroyed. People who have resettled in new communities are likely to find themselves on marginal land, possibly indebted to members of the host community. In some mixed communities, return to one’s place of origin may be difficult because of the fear and mistrust aroused by the conflict. Some neighbourhoods have become segregated, as Muslims moved to predominantly Muslim areas, and Christians to predominantly Christian ones to avoid attack. The tensions released by the war may be released again when neighbours meet again for the first time. Christian communities attacked by the MILF blame their Muslim neighbours ‘for not having warned them’. Some communities have armed themselves, and some Christian communities have asked government-backed paramilitary groups to help them defend themselves. In other mixed communities, however, Muslims and Christians have endeavoured to work together to overcome the tensions and the physical damage done by the conflict.
Quote “543.4 The long-term effects of conflict. In the long term, one effect of war has been to exacerbate some of the factors that led to conflict in the first place. It seems there is a vicious circle where poverty, government neglect and dispossession lead to civil and political conflict, which in turn increases poverty, makes it harder to provide government services, and leads to further dispossession as people are displaced from their land. Meanwhile, other forms of violence – competition between warlord politicians, localised resource conflicts, blood feuds and criminal activities – go unchecked and the warring parties collude with their perpetrators. XXXX” closed-quote.
