Filipino Youth for Peace

By Juan T. Gatbonton, The Sunday Times

In both the Philippines and Indonesia, central governments are trying forcibly to damp down Muslim separatist movements. But I for one doubt whether the military solution will work in either country. While the approach is always attractive–especially to the generals–force by itself only generates more sympathy for the rebels among the minority communities.

In Mindanao, soldiers are bombing and shelling forested areas where Muslim “terrorists” are believed to be hiding. Their raids on civilian centers killed some 210 people during January-May. In Aceh province, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, the Indonesian armed forces are carrying out their biggest operation in a quarter-century-to scatter the 3,000 guerrillas of GAM, the “Aceh Liberation Movement,” and to break up their administrative infrastructure that contests Jakarta’s control over four-fifths of the province of four million people.

In both countries, negotiations to settle the separatist rebellions–which have raged for close to a generation–have so far failed to produce durable peace. President Megawati Sukarnoputri ordered the offensive after the collapse of last-ditch talks in Tokyo between GAM and her government. Her tough posture which she may have assumed with an eye on Indonesia’s first direct presidential elections in 2004–is apparently backed by popular opinion. Even in the Philippines, terrorist attacks have turned sympathy away from the rebels.

How separatist movements came about

The Acehnese were practicing a fanatic and mystical kind of Sufism long before the rest of the Indonesian archipelago was converted to Islam. In the early nineteenth century, spurred by puritanical wahhabi influences from Arabia, they fought a series of wars against the Dutch. GAM indeed denies the Acehnese people ever surrendered their sovereignty to the Dutch colonial administration or to its Indonesian successor.

In the sixteenth-century Philippines too, the “Moro” sultanates of Mindanao-Sulu were better able to resist the Spaniards than the stateless kinship societies of Visayas and Luzon. Under American rule, the intrusion of “Christian” migrants into Moro ancestral lands set off local conflicts, which generalized into ethnic rebellion after the strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos proclaimed martial law in 1972. (Between 1903 and 1980, the inflow of migrants reduced Mindanao’s Muslim population from 76 percent to only 23 percent of all its people.)

Initially the rebellion was led by the secularist and leftwing “Moro National Liberation Front.” But in 1984, a religious-oriented faction separated from the MNLF as the “Moro Islamic Liberation Front.” It is led by Salamat Hashim, a Maguindanao aristocrat who had studied at the centers of Islamic orthodoxy in the Middle East.

In both Aceh and Mindanao, grievances against the far-off center (Jakarta is 1,700 kilometers away from the Acehnese capital) arise from perceived economic inequalities. Jakarta customarily returned to Aceh less than 5 percent of its revenues from Aceh’s natural gas resources. These grievances were worsened by the corruption of local officials and by military abuses. In Aceh, during Suharto’s last years, extra-judicial killings, torture, forced confessions and unlawful detention became rampant as special forces tried brutally to put down the rebellion.

Since then, Jakarta’s approach to separatism has wavered between repression and reconciliation. The Habibie government carried on Suharto’s mailed-fist policy. The Wahid administration offered Aceh enhanced autonomy in August 2001 and four-fifths of gas-and-oil revenues. It also gave the Acehnese the right to institute Islamic law. Megawati, whose ties with the military leadership are very close, has reverted to the Suharto-era policies. Hence the two sides remain poles apart.

Indonesian sides remain poles apart

Since GAM’s popular support depends on its demand for independence, its very reason for being would be imperiled if it accepted a compromise. Megawati’s government itself negotiates under harsh constraints. Preserving national unity seems to be its only tangible political platform.

East Timor offers object lessons for both GAM and Jakarta. Its bloody but successful separation from Indonesia in 1999 may be keeping up the hopes of Aceh’s separatist leaders–while also frightening secular Indonesian nationalists anxious about their country’’s territorial integrity. (The non-Malay Papuans in east Indonesia are also restive.)

Hence, neither side is eager to take the first step toward a compromise. Despite agreement last December on an “all-inclusive dialogue,” Jakarta now wants to exclude any talk of independence for Aceh. Meanwhile the exiled GAM leadership based in Sweden has not budged from its demand for complete independence.

Observers note that GAM has used the cease-fire to restock on war material and to recruit militants. Now it threatens to strike at commercial targets in Aceh, which include Exxon Mobil’s natural gas plants. Ordinary Acehnese remain caught in between. Over the last 10 years, the fighting has already claimed 10,000 lives.

In the Philippines a negotiated solution seems easier–if only because the national leadership realizes how costly the rebellion has been. From 1970, when it began, until the peace agreement between the Ramos government and the MNLF in 1996, the Mindanao conflict had apparently killed more than 100,000 people.

President Arroyo herself has kept open the possibility of compromise by dissuading the Americans from declaring the MILF a terrorist organization as they have done the Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom gang. It is likely that Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad and the Organization of the Islamic Conference will soon mediate a new round of peace talks between the Arroyo government and the MILF in Kuala Lumpur.

Autonomy must be attractive and credible

No established state wants to encourage separatism. But autonomy must be made credible-and beneficial in practical ways-if minority communities are to prefer it to the pie-in-the-sky attractiveness of self-determination. But for ordinary people in both Aceh and Mindanao, autonomy so far has simply been more of the same arrogant and uncaring local administrators they have known all their lives.

If anything, autonomy has worsened local corruption. In both Aceh and Mindanao, central governments have increased their infusion of funds into the autonomous government’s treasury while also reducing their supervision and control of its operations. Far from assuring more benefits and higher living standards for ordinary people, more money for the autonomous regions have so far merely meant more gravy for those in office. This is why many Acehnese and Muslim Filipinos-continue to see independence as a desirable alternative.

From http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/jun/01/opinion/20030601opi1.html