The Southern Philippines in 2013: One Step Forward, One Step Back

Summary

The peace process in the southern Philippines is making progress after a banner year in 2012, in which the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government signed a peace pact a decade-and-a-half in the making. Known as the framework agreement, it will grant real autonomy to Muslim-majority Mindanao and the adjacent Sulu archipelago, and put the MILF in charge of a new region, the Bangsamoro, for an interim period. President Benigno Aquino III has set the stage for the MILF's transformation from an antagonist of the Philippine state into a mainstream political actor.

In 2013, the MILF and the government slogged through yet more negotiations necessary to flesh out further details of the framework agreement. But the real drama lay elsewhere. Into the limelight stepped a descendant of the sultan of Sulu whose followers invaded eastern Malaysia with tragic consequences in February and March; an alleged new terrorist alliance whom the government blamed for a sharp uptick in violence in central Mindanao in July and August; and a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the MILF's predecessor, which fought a weeks-long battle with the military in September.

When the discontents and opportunists circling the peace process acted provocatively, the MILF and the government found themselves working together to shield the framework agreement from the fallout. Through these incidents, this chapter examines the moderating effect of the peace process on the MILF, and the potential implications for the southern Philippines in the years ahead.

The 2012 Framework Agreement and the Peace Process

Shortly after signing the framework agreement in a lavish ceremony in the presidential palace in Manila on 15 October 2012, the MILF held a press conference at its headquarters, Camp Darapanan, a forty-five minute drive outside Cotabato City, in central Mindanao. The camp sits on the edge of the Liguasan marsh, a watery expanse home to communities sympathetic to the MILF. The chairman, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, appeared dressed in a dark suit with a striped tie and made brief remarks from behind a lectern to the journalists perched on plastic chairs set in neat rows before him. Murad was exuding a statesman-like aura that day. The atmosphere was in stark contrast to Murad's last encounter with the press at Camp Darapanan.