MILF: Davao City bombings revive religious war

By ROMER S. SARMIENTO
TODAY Correspondent

KORONADAL CITY - The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) claimed over the weekend that certain quarters are trying to fan a new round of religious war in Mindanao reminiscent of the discord in the 1970s between the Muslims and Christians.

The idea was raised with early Thursday’s attacks on several mosques in Davao City following the deadly explosion outside a seaport in the city on Wednesday night that killed 16 people and wounded more than 50 others.

At the same time, the separatist rebels also asserted that the Sasa Wharf explosion was apparently designed to spoil the peace negotiations between the government and the MILF.

Mohamad al-Haj Murad Ibrahim, MILF chief military officer, said the attacks on mosques in Davao City were planned to renew the Ilaga-Blackshirt conflict in the ’70s, the former composed of Christians and the latter by Muslims.

“The MILF believes that those responsible for the horrible incidents were out to revive the Christian-Muslim conflict or hatred even to the extent of sacrificing human lives and miseries,” Ibrahim said in news statement.

He failed, however, to identify the group or individuals apparently trying to revive a new round of religious conflict, known in the region as the “Ilaga Terrorism.”

In the 1970s the Ilaga (literally rat) movement, under the leadership of convicted priest-killer Norberto Manero Jr., reportedly acted as judge, jury, and executioner to Muslim insurgents. In turn, the Muslims, through the so-called Blackshirts, retaliated, resulting to hundreds of deaths on both sides.

Early Thursday unidentified gunmen lobbed two grenades and fired with an automatic rifle a Davao mosque in Ilang, Tibungco, about 8 km from the Sasa wharf. There were no casualties.

Another grenade exploded at 2:45 a.m. at the mosque in the Mini Forest, a slum community along Quezon Boulevard. A man, identified as Kahlid Mangundato, 31, was injured.

Armed men also fired at the mosque in the Ecoland Subdivision.

Like Ibrahim, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a Mindanaoan himself, warned that the mosques and Sasa bombings could have been designed to worsen the war situation in Mindanao and contrive a religious strife to provide an alibi for scuttling ongoing peace efforts by government and Muslim rebels.

“President Arroyo should put her foot down on these ominous signs and direct law enforcers to identify, arrest and prosecute the culprits [behind the bombings] to the full extent of the law,” Pimentel was quoted in reports.

Ibrahim also said the incidents were committed and calculated to sabotage the government-MILF peace negotiations because the culprits were aware that the exploratory talks between the two parties has just been concluded in Malaysia.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu also echoed the theories of Pimentel and Ibrahim, saying the Davao attacks were apparently designed to ignite a religious strife between Muslim and Christians.

Kabalu said that terrorists are out to fan a religious war in Mindanao so that the peace process would be derailed.

He, however, assured the government that the MILF is committed to the peaceful political settlement of the problem in Mindanao, where the 12,500-strong MILF is fighting for an independent Islamic state since the late 1970s.

“The MILF is urging its Muslim brothers not to retaliate or harm our Christian brothers. We are not at war with our Christian brothers but with the military only,” Kabalu said.

Owing to this, the MILF leaders said the government must have a strong political will to investigate and resolve these incidents no matter who are involved, if only to punish the culprits. They also offered the group’s help to resolve the incidents.