KORONADAL CITY (MindaNews / 27 July) – A total of 26,000 combatants of the 40,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would, have been deactivated this year with the resumption of the decommissioning process on August 3, Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. said.
MILF combatants. MindaNews file photo by BONG S. SARMIENTO
He said that 1,301 MILF combatants would be deactivated with the resumption of the third phase of the decommissioning process, which is expected to be finished before the end of 2023.
“Once that number is decommissioned, it will complete the first, second and third phases involving a total of 26,000 [MILF fighters],” Galvez said in Filipino in a statement issued Thursday by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU).
“Next year at sa susunod na taon, may 14,000 or 35% remaining na ide-decommission (Next year and the succeeding year, we will be decommissioning another 14,000 MILF fighters or the remaining 35%),” he added.
Galvez gave updates for the decommissioning process during the post-State of the Nation Address (SONA) discussions attended by several government agency heads on Wednesday in Pasay City, two days after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his SONA.
The decommissioning of MILF fighters is part of the Annex on Normalization of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), the peace agreement between the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the MILF signed in 2014 after 17 years of negotiations.
Under the normalization aspect of the CAB, members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the MILF’s armed wing, will be decommissioned as key milestones of the peace agreement.
Phase 1 of the decommissioning process took place in June 2015 in the municipality of Sultan Kudarat in the then undivided Maguindanao province, following the signing of the CAB. The late President Benigno Simeon Aquino III graced the occasion. It involved 145 MILF fighters and 75 high-powered weapons.
Phase 2 commenced in September 2019 with former President Rodrigo Duterte attending the event in the same town. It was completed in March 2020 with the decommissioning of 12,000 MILF combatants, 2,100 assorted weapons and at least 500 ammunition.
Phase 3 started in November 2021 also in Sultan Kudarat town, involving 14,000 MILF combatants, or 35 percent of its forces, and about 2,500 weapons.
Galvez said that the Independent Decommissioning Body (IDB) is expected to complete the decommissioning process before the first election in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in 2025.
The first parliamentary elections in May 2022 was postponed by a law signed by former President Rodrigo Duterte. The postponement effectively extended the transition period in the BARMM until June 30, 2025, when the first set of regional officials shall have taken their oaths of office.
In his SONA, Marcos said that he is “proud of the progress that the BARMM has taken. It will be self-governing, progressive and effective.”
Galvez noted that “it’s very critical that we build on the peace gains and ensure continuing progress.”
Based on the CAB, it is the IDB, which is composed of international and local experts, that oversees the decommissioning process of MILF combatants and weapons so that these are put beyond use.
“The partnership between the government and the MILF enabling the final leg of the Phase 3 of the decommissioning to push through serves as a testament that both sides are sincerely committed to implementing the nine-year old agreement,“ said Cesar Yano, chair of the government’s Peace Implementing Panel for the GPH-MILF peace accord.
Yano, a retired military general, said the deactivation will allow the MILF fighters to transform from “being combatants into productive members of civil society.” (Bong S. Sarmiento / MindaNews)
