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MILF Accuses Filipino Troops of Violating Truce 

Al Jacinto, Arab News

ZAMBOANGA CITY, 18 April 2005 —

Government troops attacked a jungle base of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the southern Philippines, violating a standing cease-fire agreement, the group said yesterday.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said one of their fighters was killed and five others were wounded when dozens of Special Forces soldiers attacked their Camp Bader in the town of Upper Talayan in Maguindanao province on Friday.

“They attacked our camp and killed one of our men. Five others were wounded and two more are missing,” Kabalu told Arab News yesterday. He said two of the attackers may have been injured.

He said MILF fighters identified the attackers as members of the US-trained Light Reaction Company (LRC), based on their uniform, their patches, and the weapons they carried.

A military official said the soldiers were pursuing Abu Sayyaf militants whose group is tied to the Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah extremist networks.

Maj. Gen. Raul Releno, chief of the Philippine Army’s 6th Division based in Maguindanao, said the soldiers were checking reports that extremist chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani was in Talayan.

The troops failed to find Janjalani but instead encountered MILF rebels, he said.

Kabalu said the attack at around 6 a.m. on Friday triggered sporadic clashes inside the rebel camp that lasted about 8 hours. He said rebel forces fought fiercely and eventually repelled the attack. “The fighting was really fierce. Our forces defended the camp gallantly from the US-trained aggressors on both ground and air,” he said.

Kabalu said military helicopters attacked with rockets, but the thick jungle canopy prevented security forces from penetrating deeper into the rebel camp, one of several major bases of the MILF in the strife-torn region.

Kabalu said the MILF filed a protest with a joint cease-fire of the government and the MILF, but he was quick to say that the skirmish would not affect the peace talks this week in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia, an influential member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), is brokering the peace talks and has sent a team of international cease-fire observers to the southern Philippines to monitor the three-year old truce between the government and the MILF. Intermittent fighting between government troops and MILF fighters have marred the truce signed in 2002 but this has surprisingly held.

The MILF has become the country’s largest Muslim separatist armed group since the older Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari signed a peace agreement with Manila on Sept. 2, 1996.

The MILF under Hashim Salamat broke away with the MNLF in 1978 when Misuari, in talks brokered by Libya, agreed to water down their demand for independence to an autonomous rule covering most of Mindanao island and neighboring islands of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi Tawi, as well as Palawan in the southwest.

Misuari, who is in jail facing trial for allegedly agitating his followers to rebel in 2001, has insisted on the wider coverage even though only five provinces and two cities with Muslim majorities have voted to join the autonomous region. These are the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi Tawi, plus the cities of Cotabato and Marawi.

In a statement that could make Misuari more demanding, the MILF, of late, had said it was willing to compromise by including only those provinces, cities or towns with Muslim majorities.

In the forthcoming peace talks, peace negotiators hope to tackle the issue of ancestral domain, a ticklish topic spawned by the alleged forcible displacement of Muslim villagers from their lands in Mindanao by Manila-sponsored mass-migrations from the northern and central Philippines during the early part of the past century.