Caught in the crossfire, Mamasapano folk call for peace

COTABATO CITY – Those calling for all-out war over the clash in Mamasapano would do well to spend time in conflict areas, according to Bassit Accoy, an official of the remote town in Maguindanao province that few had heard about until January 25, when 44 elite police troopers were killed there.

 

“Dapat matikman nila ang natitikman namin,” he told reporters at the Mamasapano town hall, where a row of Philippine flags fly at half mast. One of the vans used to retrieve the bodies of the fallen troopers is parked a few hundred meters away under a tattered flag also lowered in mourning.

 

With many of its residents making a living growing corn, rice, and bananas, Mamasapano is not a rich town, but there is irrigation, and the road that runs along the town is paved well.

 

Mamasapano also has two district high schools. “That proves education is running well,” Accoy, secretary of the municipal council, said.

 

But not since Jan.25, when troopers of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force leaving the area from a mission to get Malaysian bomb maker Zulkifli Bin Hir (alias Marwan) and Abu Sayyaf member Basit Usman were caught in a firefight with members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, and other armed groups.

 

The government has declared Marwan dead while Usman is still at large.

 

The clash has been blamed on a lack of police coordination with the military and with the MILF, which controls communities there. Both Houses of Congress, the police, the Justice department, the Commission on Human Rights, and the MILF are already investigating the clash.

 

“Sikat kami bigla,” Accoy said of the town that he said had not seen conflict since the government and the MILF agreed to a ceasefire. He said that the town has not even had a rido, or clan war, in recent history.

 

According to Bidarya Adam, who talked to reporters and civil society organizations in Barangay Tukanalipao later that day, the only other time the area was this tense was after the Ampatuan Massacre in 2009, when police were deployed there for added security.

 

Although most of the residents of Mamasapano have returned to their homes, some families from a part of Tukanalipao where fighting lasted from before dawn until the late afternoon, have yet to go back. They are afraid, Accoy said, of another government operation in the area.

 

He said talk from Manila about bringing more fighting to their province has not helped matters. In the days following the clash, Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano and Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito have withdrawn support for the Bangsamoro Basic Law, a proposal to create a political entity with more powers but will remain part of the Philippines.

 

Cayetano has referred to the MILF as a terrorist group and, reacting to reports that the SAF troopers were mutilated, has dared the MILF to do the same to the breakaway BIFF.

 

“Napakalayo nila sa area, bakit sila ang matatapang?” Accoy said of politicians talking about ending peace talks with the MILF and going back to war.

 

Women in war

 

Warda Dagadas, 32, has not slept in her home since she woke up to gunshots in the cornfield that her family tends.

 

She said that she had to drag her child out of bed, cross several streams, and walk for an hour to get to the barangay proper. It was only then that she noticed her 4-year-old son's feet were bleeding from fleeing barefoot. There had been no time to get his shoes, she said.

 

She now lives with relatives in Tukanalipao and doesn't know when she will return to her cornfield. Her husband goes there during the day, but comes back before dark and never goes alone.

 

“Natatakot kami bumalik doon, baka meron pang mangyari tapos nandoon na naman kami,” she said.

 

Badruddin Langalan, 21, will never go back. He went out to have his mobile phone charged and is said to have been killed in the crossfire. He had gunshot wounds and his hands were tied behind his back.

 

His widow 20-year-old widow Sara, speaking through an interpreter, said she hopes there will be no more firefights like the one on Jan. 25.

 

“Ang hirap na nga ng buhay, mangyayari pa 'yun,” she said, adding news reports focusing on the fallen SAF members and on comments calling for war only add to her pain.

 

Sara, an elementary school graduate, said she is not sure how she will support her two children now that her husband is gone.

 

Bidarya Adam, a grandmother who is around 50, has the same problem. She, her children, and grandchildren are now living in an abandoned house in Tukanalipao because they are too afraid to go back to the fields.

 

Cut off from their source of livelihood, they have had to depend on relief goods from the government. In the past 10 days, there have been two bags of relief goods to share among her family of 17.

 

This is just the latest of her problems. She said, through an interpreter from a civil society organization, that on Jan. 25, ten families –including hers – were held at gunpoint for hours by 30 men in combat gear.

 

Pressed to identify them, she said they were members of the SAF and that they were kept from evacuating from the area until given the go signal by an unknown officer. The families were finally allowed to leave at around 5 p.m., when the shooting was dying down.

 

She said she also lost 18 chickens that the armed men killed and roasted while there.

 

GMA News Online tried to reach the PNP-SAF for comment but had yet to receive a response as of posting time. At hearings at the Senate and at the House of Representatives, police officials have repeatedly said that PNP personnel have been instructed to observe the rules of engagement and to avoid collateral damage.

 

‘Peace, the only option’

 

Adam, like the rest of the women gathered for a “listening session” in a madrasah in Tukanalipao by international development organization Oxfam, said she supports the peace process.

 

“Kung anuman ang makabubuti sa Bangsamoro, doon kami lahat,” she said.

 

She said she hopes the peace talks continue and, like Dagadas, will see the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law as a sign of better things to come.

 

“Isang araw, babalik kayo at maglalakad tayo ng sabay-sabay,” she said.

 

Lyca Sarenas of the Oxfam Mindanao program said the listening session was necessary not only to demonstrate solidarity with the women and children of Tukanalipao and with the peace process, but also to give affected civilians a voice.

 

“Ang daming imbestigasyon pero hindi lumalabas ang mga kuwentong ito,” she said the same afternoon that members of the House of Representatives were grilling military and police officials over the clash.

 

According to Oxfam data as of Jan. 29, around 6,620 people, or 1,324 families, were displaced by the clash. This is a trickle compared to the 750,000 displaced in 2008 after the scrapping of a proposed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain to create a Bangsamoro homeland sparked fighting in Maguindanao and North Cotabato.

 

Hundreds of thousands have also been killed in more than four decades of fighting, she said.

 

“Mamasapano is a regular community,” she said. “There are schools, there is a basketball court.” Yet on Jan. 25, a teenage boy sent to the field to fetch the family's carabao was hit by a stray bullet during the clash.

 

Sarenas, members of CSOs at the session, and the women from Tukanalipao fear more civilians will be killed and displaced if the bid for peace fails.

 

“We believe we will finally have peace here. I hope we stay the course,” she said. — ELR/KG, GMA News

 

GMA News Online was invited to the listening session in Mamasapano by Oxfam. According to a press statement from the international NGO, the activity was meant to show that “those among worst hit [by conflict] are not just the uniformed men on the battlefields, but civilians, including women and children.