Short-cut to solve Moro problem: De-colonization

Through the process of 'de-colonization' we can put aside armed struggle while arguing cases before the United Nations International Court of Justice. Therefore, the lives of some five million Moro masses will not be put in jeopardy.

Under the circumstances, the Moro - Filipino feud can never find a just solution because there is no impartial arbiter involved. What we have are judges who are also the murderers and at the same time the accusers and defenders all rolled into one. Mindanews' commentator Pat Diaz observed that the OIC is not an impartial arbiter. Others also feel that the Malaysians are the same. So much more with government of the former Biak na Batu republic, which, obviously, is not interested in any just solution except to hold on to a perennial ceasefire and to illicit the capitulation of the adversary.

The impending departure of the Malaysian contingent from the International Monitoring Team (IMT) apparently will open another floodgate of terrorism, killings and mass destructions. Disinformation campaigns have been set in motion to discredit the Malaysians for pulling out of the IMT while covering up the real truth behind such a regretful decision. The Malaysians are very diplomatic in not divulging the overriding reasons for the pull-out. However, the international community - especially the diplomatic representatives in Metro-Manila, are not deaf and blind to the damning episodes that lead the peace process to its anti-climactic end. Unfortunately some of the main players are pointing fingers at others for their own (mis)-adventurism.

It is for this reason that the venue of talks should be shifted to a higher level, if not the penultimate layer of the arbitration process (the UN-ICJ) to achieve the much-desired permanent, absolute and guaranteed justice for all concerned.

Otherwise, the perennial mode of the peace process won't get far from the usual -"PAIKUTIN LANG NATIN SILA" (Let us just pull them around)! The ‘spoilers’ of the peace process, in particular, are aware that Muslim Mindanao was never a member of the original ‘Biak na Batu Republic’ and it is only heartening for them to avenge the humiliations faced by their Spanish masters, along with their canon-fodders, the Indios, in Mindanao and Sulu.

It is hard to change the mindset of the Indios, nurtured in a hate campaign over the span of three hundred years, as rowers of galleys for the colonial masters, against the Muslims of Mindanao. The latter have already hesitatingly accepted the derogatory moniker - MORO - coined by the frustrated colonial adventurer, the original Filipinos and former subjects of the Ottoman empire for eight centuries, who went berserk against Muslims upon regaining freedom by way of the infamous "crusades". Not only did the Spanish go on rampage to massacre Muslims in a genocidal proportion, but including valuable artifacts and scientific knowledge brought to their shelves by the brilliant Muslim philosophers, engineers, medico-legal experts and scientists, etc. Their hatred even grew against Muslims when they realized that what their religious mentors had tried to surreptitiously manipulate in the Bible to suit their whims and fancies, are being brought to light by the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam and most authentic record of God's revelations to man that culminated in the advent of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), preserved, perfected and guaranteed as humanity's final covenant with the Almighty Allah (SWT).

The series of Filipino administrations from the Commonwealth to present were all motivated to avenge the failures, frustrations and humiliations experienced by their Spanish forbears in Moroland between the 16th and 19th centuries. The neo-Filipinos are doing their best to humiliate the Moros in more ways than one, to prove they are better than their forbears, the original Filipinos.

For this reason, it is a foregone conclusion that Muslims will never find ideal peace with Filipinos under the same roof. I am not a prophet of doom, but only echoing the prophecies of the learned Americans, Europeans and Muslims who were privy to what the Spanish carpetbaggers and proselytes had done in the Philippines for three centuries, particularly in Muslim Mindanao. If I am wrong in my assessment, then Congressman Robert L Bacon and his colleagues, who fought hard to separate Muslim Mindanao from the Philippine Republic in the US Congress, before the Tydings-MacDuffy law sealed it for the Filipinos, could also be wrong. But for sure not the Moro patriots from Mindanao and Sulu who had virtually begged the Americans not to include them in the Philippine Republic, through petitions, memoranda and street demonstrations that only fell on deaf ears.

Now the Americans are working out the separation of (Sultanate of) Sulu from the Philippines (see ‘Under the Crescent Moon’ by Marites Danguilan and Linda M. Gloria, p. 175) and are monitoring the general situation from various points within the Sulu archipelago. Ostensibly, the Filipinos are biding for time in a last ditch effort to strike a humiliating blow to the pride of the Moro people to avenge the bitter humiliations of their forbears.

Most importantly, however, the GRP can hardly let go any portion of Mindanao because most of the solons and prime movers of the peace process have special business, mining and “milking” interest there, to the chagrin of the MILF.