A signal from the South

A signal from the South

President of the Philippines Fidel Ramos has said that the
Moslem guerrilla group under the leadership of Abu Sayyaf is
responsible for the rampage in the southern town of Ipil on
Tuesday in which the police chief and the military commander were
killed, and banks were looted and the town's commercial center
was burned.

If Ramos's statement is true, the lunch-time raid is not just
banditry as other authorities in Manila had tried to portray it,
but an effort by Abu Sayyaf's organization, the most feared
guerrilla group, to draw the world's attention to the fact that
it is still capable of doing something brutal to derail the peace
efforts between the Ramos administration and the Moro National
Liberation Front, the largest and oldest rebel group.

The delegations of the Philippine government and the Front
have agreed to meet again in Jakarta in June to follow up on
their peace talks here last September. Last year the two parties,
who met under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference with Indonesia as both mediator and host, managed to
eliminate many hurdles, but left the problem of the formation of
a provisional government for the autonomous territory of the
Filipino Moslems, known as Moro, for further meetings. Abu Sayyaf
had not only refused to join the peace process, but appeared to
want the peace train halted altogether.

We believe the ruthless attack on Ipil, the town of 150,000
people, was not only meant to derail the peace train, but also to
urge the world to check to see whether the authorities in Manila
have done adequate enough to improve the lot of the five million
Moslems who live on Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan islands. Reports
coming from the country have said "no".

Reports also say that although the economic development has
been quite successful in the south, Moslems have shared very
little of the national pie.

Ramos is, of course, not alone in the blame. The Moros have
been suffering since the administration of president Ferdinand
Marcos. Under his successor, Corazon Aquino, the Moros were not
much happier because they complained that the what had been given
to them by Marcos was taken back by Aquino.

Now President Ramos, who claims that he understands the
Moslems better and has a lot of friends in the South, should be
doing more to redress the imbalance and injustice in this
particular part of the Philippines, rather than just taking part
in the peace process.

With the ugly reality still there -- for God knows how much
longer -- the guerrillas might not stop at Ipil. Especially when
the army seems shamefully impotent, without the capability of
anticipating such a brutal guerrilla assault.