Planned Philippine peace deal in danger
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Philippine President Benigno Aquino is on the brink of an accord to end one of Asia's longest and deadliest rebellions, but renegade guerrillas, hostile politicians and the nation's highest court lie in potential ambush.
After completing negotiations last month, Aquino is expected to sign a final peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for a power-sharing arrangement with the nation’s Muslim minority in the south.
In a process patterned on the 1998 Good Friday accord that ended the Northern Ireland conflict, the MILF would then gradually disband its 12,000-member force and put its weapons “beyond use”.
If successful, the accord would end a conflict that began in the 1970s, claimed an estimated 150,000 lives and condemned large parts of the fertile southern Philippines to violence-plagued poverty.
The Philippines’ Muslim population of about 5 million people considers the south their ancestral homeland, and the MILF has led the armed quest for independence or autonomy.
But, after 18 years of stop and start negotiations that produced repeated false dawns, even Aquino’s peace chiefs are warning that the toughest stages are yet to come.
“We can expect that there will be a lot of difficulties,” said university professor Miriam Ferrer, who led the government negotiators. “If the negotiations were hard, so much more the implementation.”
As the process gets under way, the government will need to stamp out the threat of other armed groups in the still largely lawless region who oppose peace.
A MILF splinter group that still wants independence, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), has a deadly history of trying to derail peace efforts.
Immediately after negotiations with MILF ended last month, security forces launched an assault against the BIFF in which 53 of its fighters and a soldier were killed.
