IF there is anything to learn from President Aquino, it is that instead of avoiding the mistakes of his predecessors in handling the delicate Mindanao problem, he even compounded them when in August 2011 he flew to Japan with six Cabinet members to meet Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Chairman Ibrahim Murad and his key leaders in a hotel, just off the Narita Airport.
Two months after the Japan meeting, 19 Special Action Force (SAF) commandos were treacherously slaughtered by MILF/Abu Sayyaf elements in Al Barka, Basilan.
Curiously, the SAF soldiers suffered the same fate as that of a squad of Marines whose bodies were mutilated and beheaded after they were cornered in an ambush in the same place.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines, after the massacre, issued a one-week ultimatum to the MILF to surrender the criminals or suffer the consequences.
The highly publicized ultimatum and movements of troops, including elements of the Presidential Security Group, was supposed to be a punitive action against the MILF in case of non-compliance.
A week had passed and there was no offensive. Instead, the President had asked for additional three days delay in the offensive while waiting for some kind of reports from ceasefire monitors on the ground.
The deadline ended and the only movements on the ground were those of Philippine National Police (PNP) officers trying to serve a warrant of arrest for a wanted terrorist in a nearby deserted village, off Al Barka.
The following year, President Aquino strangely agreed to a “Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro” with the MILF and then in March 2014, to a “Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro,” which in essence created a substate under the MILF’s rule. His administration in that agreement’s “Annex on Normalization” had even recognized six MILF camps, including Camp Abubakar.
The column in the Inquirer on August 18, 2011 of former Ambassador to Greece Rigoberto Tiglao on the Japan meeting of the President with the MILF leaders is quite instructive:
“MILF: NOY gave us hope, this paper’s banner headline (Inquirer) said referring to President Aquino’s August 5 meeting in a Narita airport travelers’ hotel with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim.
“Mr. Aquino indeed gave the insurgents a lot of hope—to make the MILF the core of a sovereign state. The meeting, in effect, put the MILF on the same category as the Philippine Republic—sovereign entities.
“The MILF’s statement on the meeting even refers to Mr. Aquino only as “President Aquino,” and nowhere in the statement is he referred to as President of the Republic of the Philippines. The Japanese Foreign Ministry could not but follow the MILF’s framing, saying in its congratulatory note: “Japan strongly expects that both parties will
continue sincere talks.
“Our government has become just another “party” in this conflict, no longer a state protecting its sovereignty.
“One is dumbfounded at how our 113-year-old Republic was downgraded in this episode to the level of an insurgent group that has at most 5,000 mostly part-time guerrillas that can operate only in a small territory in Central Mindanao, and which has been responsible for the deaths of at least 10,000 Filipino soldiers and civilians.
“Probably thinking that a meeting with the MILF head would be an accomplishment he could boast of in his July 25 State of the Nation Address, Mr. Aquino, the MILF statement disclosed, asked for the meeting in June. “Anywhere in the Philippines,” he told the MILF.
“Surprised by the invitation, but realizing it was for the Sona and, therefore, Mr. Aquino was on a tight deadline, the MILF sensed a tremendous political opportunity. It dilly-dallied, and then demanded that the government course the invitation through the Malaysian official “facilitator” for the peace talks. Then it told Aquino: Either a meeting outside the country or no meeting. Choose among Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or the United Kingdom as venue. It is amazing how an insurgent group sets the place and the time at its convenience for a meeting with the President.
“The MILF demanded a “series of consultations” to agree where the meeting would be. The days spent for this and for a very surprised Japanese government to make the necessary preparations derailed the calculation for the “historic meeting” to make it to the Sona in July.
“The MILF gloated over its political victory in having the meeting in Japan, declaring in its statement: “The meeting between the two leaders in a third-party country host is a significant political milestone in the MILF’s quest for Bangsamoro right to self-determination.”
“The MILF was so delirious with joy that Mr. Aquino committed such a blunder, it even went on to further humble the President by saying: “On the part of the MILF chairman, his acceptance of the invitation illustrates a high level of statesmanship.” An unelected rebel chieftain proved himself a statesman by agreeing to meet the representative of 94 million Filipinos?
“It has always been the fervent hope of any insurgent group for its leader to meet with the head of the state it is fighting, since such a meeting moves it closer in the public mind and in global perception to the status of a sovereign, with its members becoming what are called “state actors.
“Aquino’s mother Cory had more sense in that she met in 1986 with the MNLF chief Nur Misuari in Sulu—in our country, in sharp contrast to our President slipping through the backdoor to a foreign land to comply with the MILF’s demand.
“Cory’s meeting was also a gesture of solidarity with and gratitude to the MNLF, which after all, dealt blows to the dictatorship, rather than, as the MILF described the Aquino-Murad encounter, a “historic meeting between two leaders.”
“Marcos had more sense in that the highest-ranking officer he sent to negotiate, and even sign the peace treaty with the MNLF was a defense department undersecretary.
“In Narita, the MILF faced a President and six Cabinet secretaries. (What in the world were Secretaries Florencio Abad and Cesar Purisima doing there? If not for the publicity, to offer money to the MILF?)
“Cory had more sense in making sure that no photograph of her meeting with Misuari was circulated. Now every MILF fighter would be proudly carrying a photo of Murad and Aquino smiling, to taunt our soldiers.
“The road to hell, it seems, is not only paved with good intentions, but littered with the mess of publicity-seeking incompetents.”
In retrospect, the slaughter of 44 PNP SAF members in Mamasapano, Maguindanao was an incident waiting to happen.