RP military mobilization deplored
RP military mobilization deplored
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (Reuter): A Moslem community leader has condemned government troop movements in the southern Philippines, saying Manila is wrong to prepare for war while supposedly negotiating peace with Moro rebels.
"I regret that while there is still negotiation, military people are trying to mobilize, trying to show force," said Hadji Nuno, a widely respected figure in this southern city.
"There must be no mobilization of the military...This is wrong," Nuno said in an interview.
Nuno, 83 and long an advocate of a peaceful solution to a decades-old Moslem campaign for autonomy, was commenting on Manila's deployment of thousands of extra troops on the main southern island of Mindanao.
The deployment, which Manila says is needed to counter a threat by Moro rebels and to secure key government development projects, is widely seen on the island as provocative.
Recent troop movements put 70,000 soldiers -- more than half the total armed forces' strength -- in the southern islands.
The results are particularly visible in the Cotabato region of Mindanao, a stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebel group.
The well-armed MILF, which took a group of South Korean engineers hostage last year in a dispute with the army, is very sensitive to army encroachment in an area it regards as its own.
A cease-fire in the south has held since 1986, apart from isolated clashes and attacks by groups branded as extremist by both the government and the main rebel movements, the MILF and the mainstream Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
The government has held a series of peace talks with the MNLF which have so far failed to produce an autonomy settlement.
MILF deputy chairman Hadji Murad said on Monday a new war in the south was inevitable if a just settlement was not reached.
"They have been negotiating for years, and nothing has happened," said Murad.
He says he commands more than 80,000 armed men but there was no way to confirm independently the MILF's claimed strength. The government puts it at less than 10,000.
Many in Mindanao have bitter memories of atrocities by both sides in the last war, which reached its height in the 1970s, and are alarmed at the current increase in tensions.
"We are tired of war...Everybody has lost important things in our lives, including relatives," said Ali Macabalang, a media affairs adviser to the regional government based in Cotabato.
Both Moslem and Christian residents say the impact of the last war is still felt, with many poor farmers now landless because of the fighting, afraid to return to ancestral homes.
"People are starving. They cannot go to their farms. They are either taxed or scared away," Macabalang said. Both rebels and soldiers preyed on the poor, he said.