Foreign aid to MILF lessens after 9/11

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao - Foreign aid to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has “lessened” because its supporters abroad are having difficulties in sending the assistance to the MILF with “stringent international bank policies” implemented after the September 11 attacks on the US.

This phenomenon was, however, taken by the MILF positively, claiming that it taught the rebel forces to be more self-reliant.

Ghazali Jaafar, MILF vice chairman for political affairs, bragged that “there are a lot of people abroad willing to support the cause of the Bangsamoro people, but they are having a problem on how to send their support to us.”

Jaafar explained that “if we have $2 billion in a bank in Singapore, the most that can be transmitted to our account in the Philippines is only $2,000.”

However, despite the difficulty of the MILF’s foreign supporters in sending money, Jaafar said that the “MILF is able to cope with it easily by stressing on our self-reliant policy.”

Before the September 11 attack, Jaafar admitted that the bulk of foreign assistance the Front is enjoying came from individuals and organizations of Muslims abroad, as well as from Filipino-Muslims working overseas.

One of the MILF’s coping mechanisms, he said, was to involve regular guerrillas in [food] production. “From time to time, or even most of the time, the combatants help the people in their farms. They engage and participate in production.”

Despite the lesser foreign support, Jaafar said that the MILF did not experience any adverse effect on the MILF’s funds because the dwindling of assistance from overseas came at a time when they already dispersed their forces into small groups.

“We no longer have a big camp, like Camp Abubakar, to maintain, just as we do not worry of feeding a very big and stationed army,” the MILF central committee official said.

He explained that since the guerrillas have already been dispersed in small groups, “the people in the communities now are volunteering to give them food because it is not difficult for them [residents] to feed few people.”

Besides the support from the community, Jaafar said that the MILF also maintains “minimal allocation” for the combatants.

For feeding the combatants, he said that the MILF has also been “helping sustain community-based income-generating projects” through cooperatives.

He admitted that when the MILF was still maintaining a “positional strategy of fighting, most of our resources were drained to sustain the needs of the camp.”

After the fall of Camp Abubakar during the all-out war ordered by former President Estrada, the MILF shifted from positional to guerrilla-warfare strategy.