Conflict In Mindanao Research Articles

A Christian Perspective on Islamic Concepts of Jihad, Iman And Islam in the Context of Mindanao Peace Process

This paper is an excerpt of a full-blown study that the author did on the role of religion in the peace process in Mindanao of Southern Philippines. It attempts to understand and analyze Islamic concepts of Jihad, Iman and Islam and their significance to the problem of armed conflict in Mindanao. Analyses of these concepts is based mainly from the perspective of Islamic liberation theology specifically on the works of Farid Esack, Asghar Ali Engineer, and Fazlur Rahman, whose thoughts on the subject are seen to have more relevance towards development of a contextual Islamic theology of peace and liberation that is reflective of the historical, socio-political, cultural, and economic conditions in Mindanao of Southern Philippines. The study attempts to understand the meanings of Jihad, Iman and Islam and draw out essential and significant theological, ethical, and political principles and values which are relevant to the issues of conflict in Mindanao of Southern Philippines, and the role of religion in the peace process. Based on the principles and values derived from the study of the said Islamic concepts, the study attempts to construct a theological and political agenda that is informed by the historical, social, and political context in Mindanao of Southern Philippines.

The ramifications of displacement for mealtime-related activities, practices and dynamics among people affected by conflict in Mindanao, Philippines

ABSTRACT Displaced by war in 2017, internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Marawi City in southern Philippines continue to face severe economic challenges, seriously undermining their mealtime-related affairs. This article examines the extent to which displacement has negatively impacted activities or practices related to mealtime preparation, the actual family meal or commensality and the frequency of mealtimes among the IDPs. Findings were drawn from fourteen IDP couples who participated in in-depth interviews. Results indicate that displacement has caused a serious decline in economic resources, which, in turn, has translated into less participation in meal preparation, decreasing quality and quantity of food served at the meal table, less enthusiastic involvement in mealtimes, and irregular family meals. The article argues that conflict and the displacement it causes impact not only the food itself but all that is related to its preparation and consumption within the household. The study suggests that examining the broader context of mealtime-related activities and practices offers a wider understanding of how IDPs suffer displacement in the context of kitchen and meal table environments.

The intimate politics of insurgency

ABSTRACT How is women’s engagement in armed insurgency shaped by intimacy? This article seeks to answer this question by exploring how political struggle for women is caught up in the entanglements of the intimate and the political. Drawing on fieldwork on the Bangsamoro conflict in Mindanao, Philippines, it analyzes four women’s stories about their trajectories as insurgents. Their accounts reveal that relational ties of kin, community, and marriage bound them to the insurgency and preceded ideological commitment; however, these relational ties also ruptured their involvement. Moreover, collective and personal closeness with war made political struggle an inevitable part of growing up and surviving. Contradictory commitments, dilemmas, and disruptions in their relational lives caused by critical events of conflict are read in the women’s political participation. The article’s conceptual answer is an intimate politics of insurgency, which underwrites women’s engagement and, more importantly, their maneuvers to fulfill conflicting political, ideological, relational, and gendered obligations. Intimate politics, I argue, brings attention to women’s work of unsettling and remaking boundaries between the intimate/private and the political/public, which allows them to reconcile continued political action and life as a whole inside conflict.

Bottom-up Peacebuilding: Role of Grassroots and Local Actors in the Mindanao Peace Process

The people of Muslim Mindanao in the southern Philippines overwhelmingly approved, in a plebiscite in 2019, the creation of a new and more autonomous region, raising hopes that the decades-long conflict in Mindanao would soon end. This article asserts that the Mindanao peace process is not just about peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but it should also include the effective participation of grassroots organizations and community-based peace advocates in resolving local conflicts. It evaluates four significant contributions of grassroots-level, local organizations and NGOs to the peace process: (1) combating violent extremism, (2) broadening peacebuilding by local women’s organizations, (3) solving local conflicts and rido (clan wars), and (4) ceasefire monitoring and civilian protection.

Forming Views towards People of Different Faith: School’s Religious Culture and the Perceptions of Students who Experience Conflict in Mindanao

Young people living in conflict-ridden areas in the southern part of the Philippines, Mindanao, experience hostility from communities motivated by religious ideologies and political beliefs. With this premise, this study will uncover emerging themes on the way students form their views towards people who have a different faith based on three distinct religious cultures of six schools situated in conflict-ridden areas in Mindanao. Guided by the precepts of phenomenology, this study utilized focused-group discussion with art-based activities and in-depth interviews to show the three dominant religious cultures in schools have distinct influences on their students’ perspectives of others.

A Realist Evaluation of a Community-Centered Radio Initiative for Health and Development in Mindanao, Philippines.

A small, local-level communication initiative aimed to bring about social change and development in communities affected by sustained conflict in Mindanao, Philippines. A realist evaluation involved a secondary analysis of existing data sets that revealed previously undetected mechanisms and 13 outcomes for improving dialogue, livelihood, and participatory communication. This article describes the method developed for the realist evaluation and constructs Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations from the existing data sets. The realist evaluation represents what took place in a context characterized by conflict, disadvantage and disempowerment through 2 key mechanisms, community-centered radio and community radio volunteers. Both mechanisms became voices for the voiceless. The community-centered radio program supported community volunteers to mobilize communities to participate in radio segments, offering opportunities for their voices to be heard on local issues resulting in discussion, provision of services not previously offered, community leaders more responsive to community needs, and coordinated community action that resolved needs.

From Bitter Memories to Heritage-Making? The Jabidah Massacre and the Mindanao Garden of Peace

The Mindanao Garden of Peace is a memorial to the victims of a tragic event, the 1968 Jabidah Massacre. It is widely believed in the Philippines that this episode sparked the still unresolved violent conflict in Mindanao. The recent establishment of the peace garden represents a major shift in the tenor of remembrance of the massacre, from being fiercely fractious to something rather tamed, domesticated and aestheticized. This shift reflected the optimistic collective views of the administration of President Benigno Aquino III, Muslim rebels and civil society organizations about the prospects for peace in Mindanao. Following the election of a new president, those prospects have become uncertain, and the direction of the ongoing process of remembering is in question. This development highlights the open-endedness of the heritage-making process.

Livelihoods for women in Mindanao: A post-conflict reconstruction approach

The conflict in Mindanao has displaced over two million people in the period 2000 to 2009. As it subsides, the displaced return to their communities and begin the process of reconstruction. This paper studies how women contributed to the post-conflict reconstruction of Mindanao by engaging in livelihood activities. It explores five different livelihood intervention projects implemented in Mindanao between 2000 and 2010. The extent of women's contribution to post-conflict reconstruction is measured by identifying the benefits gained at household and community levels, generated by women's livelihood work. I argue that women's participation in such activities have led to economic, social and political reconstruction of the communities affected by in Mindanao. This paper also compares the women's livelihoods approach with other reconstruction strategies. It also illustrates that interventions for reconstruction therefore must include livelihood programs that encourage women's participation, as exemplified by the experience of Mindanao.

Decentralization, Institutional Ambiguity, and Mineral Resource Conflict in Mindanao, Philippines

Based on an analytical framework that builds on theories of incremental institutional change, this article interrogates the relationship between decentralization and mineral resource conflict in the Philippines. Here, efforts to decentralize control over mineral resource wealth have resulted in a highly ambiguous institutional arena, wherein heterogeneous actor coalitions are attempting to influence trajectories of institutional change, and the associated distribution of mineral wealth. On the ground, this institutional renegotiation produces a diverse range of conflicts. Emerging on top of these institutional struggles are local elected politicians, which raises important concerns over elite capture of the decentralization process.

A Hermeneutics of the Kingdom of God in the Context of Armed Conflict in Mindanao

This study attempts to come up with a contextual theological understanding of the biblical concepts of the Kingdom of God in the light of the armed conflict in Mindanao. It seeks to understand the roots and causes of conflict in Mindanao (hermeneutical situation), into which the meaning of the biblical message of a peaceable kingdom is interpreted and understood in a meaningful manner. Taking into account the current socio-political, economic and cultural realities that contribute to the on-going armed conflict in Mindanao, this study raises the issue of how the kingdom of God which embodies God’s love, peace, liberation and justice should be understood and concretized in a way that it could inform and influence the different religious groups and organizations involved in the Mindanao peace process. This attempt for contextualization is based on the principle that theological formulation in the context of conflict in Mindanao, can only be meaningful and intelligible if it reflects critically on the lived-experiences that is shared by different Muslim and Christian communities in Mindanao, especially the poor and marginalized masses in their search for well-being and self-determination.

KAH SENG LOH, STEPHEN DOBBS, and ERNEST KOH, eds. Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xiv+205p.

History in Southeast Asia: and Fragments KAH SENG LOH, STEPHEN DOBBS, and ERNEST KOH, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xiv+205p.Oral History in Southeast Asia brings together a number of committed young scholars who discuss the applicability of oral history in two inseparable arenas: research and social involvement. It consists of nine chapters (four on Singapore, two on Malaysia, and one each on Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines) that are methodologically diverse and split into three parts.The first part, Oral History and Official History, engages with the themes of interaction between official narratives and oral accounts that have played a role in constructing the nation. How official narratives seized, captured, and suppressed voices to consolidate national histories is well recorded in volumes of historical discussion on Southeast Asia (see for example Reynolds 1993; Wieringa 1995). The post-independence period of the countries in the region offers fertile ground for academic debates, partly owing to post-colonial scholarship that deconstructs official narratives. The three chapters of this first part (all on Singapore's case) relate to such debates. Blackburn's chapter gives an interesting account of the results of a life-history project conducted by senior students who interviewed elderly family members. They found narratives that are not parallel to the Singapore story that they learnt from their text books. Koh's chapter describes the way the uneasy political climate of the newly created nation-state shaped the remem- brance of the Second World War. Loh's chapter, based on candid interviews, presents an appealing description of people's daily lives after British military withdrawal in the late 1960s. While both Blackburn and Koh's chapters interrogate the official history by providing accounts that differ from such history, Loh's chapter provides a moderate account that does not necessarily dispute it. With these converging perspectives, readers are made aware that people's accounts-whether they be alternative or collaborative ones-are diverse and the project of de/constructing an official narratives can find many ways to accommodate them.The second part, Memories of Violence, brings out the delicate issue of people's memories of mass violence in the context of the changing political landscapes of the nation-states in the region. All three chapters in this part operate in a similar vein in that they unpack the constitution of mass violence as an event to be remembered. Curaming and Aljunied's chapter analyzes the inter- twining coherent strands of memories of the 1968 Jabidah massacre in the context of political conflict in Mindanao (p.86). They show how the personal memories of Jibin Arula, the only key witness of the massacre, are encoded within the tragedy of his personal life and form part of a cultural myth of injustice and political conflict. Damrongviteetham's chapter, based on fieldwork, discusses the collective and individual memories of the Red Barrel (??? ???/thang daeng) incident of the early 1970s in Lamsin, Phattalung province. The incident and the annual ceremony that now marks it are a delicate issue, touching on the dynamics of Thai state-society and illuminating a discourse that touches upon human rights and state impunity. The chapter is an important contri- bution in the English language to the topic, helping scholars who do not read Thai (and are unaware of the debate among Thai scholars on the issue) to make sense of the incident. It also highlights the diverging collective memories of the community. Leong's chapter, based on eclectic sources, takes the troubled episode of the 1948 Batang Kali massacre as a departure point to lay out the political considerations of Malaysia's official narrative of the nation and the threat of communism. But despite the use of strong comparative post modernist vocabulary, it does not offer fresh engage- ment with an issue that is already well recorded. …

Dealing with Biased Meditation: Lessons from the Malaysian and Libyan Mediation in the Philippines

States intervene as mediators in pursuit of national or foreign policy interests. The prospective state mediator may be too closely aligned to one party or too directly involved in the conflict to be capable of meeting the minimum conditions of a sustainable agreement. The literature on mediation argues that neutrality serves as a necessary condition if a sustainable outcome is to be reached. Conflict of interests of mediators may further contribute to the intractability of the conflict. For instance, the unresolved conflict in Mindanao is increasingly seen as beneficial for Malaysia to detract the Philippine government in pursuing its claims over Sabah. Nevertheless, as the case of the Libyan and Malaysian mediation efforts in Southern Philippines shows, biased states as mediators can still manifest impartiality when they have stakes in being impartial. The condition of bias may actually promote the negotiation process by providing necessary political leverage towards the conflicting parties to recognize the “ripeness” for an agreement. A comparison of the Libyan and Malaysian mediation efforts in the Philippines shows two different directions: while Libya has remained biased to the benefit of the Muslim rebel groups, Malaysia has increasingly evolved from a biased to a genuinely neutral mediator.

Grounds for Separation: Comparing Recruitment to Separatist Rebel Groups

Separatist movements typically share a basis of legitimacy rooted in nationalism and common ancestral roots. However, a considerable subset of separatists bases their claims on religious difference as well. For instance, separatist conflicts such as the conflict in Mindanao in the Philippines, the Ogaden conflict in Ethiopia, the Karen’s struggle in Myanmar, and the Chechen conflict, all represent groups in conflict with the state involving religious claims-making. In this paper, we explore the differences across religious vs. solely ethno-nationalist separatists, as well as between groups of varying degrees of extremist doctrine, focusing on the mobilization to such groups. Through a game-theoretic model and empirical analysis of recent separatist conflicts, we demonstrate systematic difference in the capacity of separatist rebel groups and trace this to their recruitment potential based on doctrinal space.

The Agrarian Roots of Contemporary Violent Conflict in Mindanao, Southern Philippines

The decades‐old conflict in Mindanao, southern Philippines, is often framed as a Muslim–Christian conflict and reinterpreted as such within the US‐led global war on terror, with the Muslim secessionist movement standing accused of providing a hub for international jihad. In the meantime, global economic integration has made it easier to ignore the agrarian roots of violent conflict in Mindanao, enabling national and sub‐national actors, including the international community and the Muslim or Moro separatists, to dismiss the issue of agrarian justice. We counter these arguments by using an agrarian political economy framework to uncover the roots of resilient violence in Mindanao, using historical narratives of the region from the end of the nineteenth century that accentuate the links between state‐making, control of land and labour, and processes of agrarian modernization. We emphasize the critical role played by the Muslim landed elites who shaped processes of state‐making by brokering the interests of their clans with exogenous actors at the national and international level. We shed light on emerging state policies and competing interests among other landed and agribusiness elites that resulted in the spread of a parallel underground economy, renewing opportunities for violence and crime within semi‐autonomous social worlds.

Identity-building and Democracy in the Philippines: National Failure and Local Responses in Mindanao

The case of the Philippines provides an interesting example of how post-colonial governments in Southeast Asia are trying to govern multi-ethnic nations. The Philippines, despite being the country in Asia with the most vibrant civil society, is still dealing with a war on the southern island of Mindanao – a war fuelled by, rather than abated by, national dynamics of identity-construction and social practices of democracy. This paper looks into these protracted national dynamics and their influence on the conflict in Mindanao. It further contrasts those with local, predominantly civil-society-based, approaches of identity re-construction and decision-making that have changed the situation for many communities on the ground, but that haven't so far had much impact on the national setting. Therefore, the final part of the paper assesses the impact of local civil-society initiatives and draws conclusions on how those could provide blueprints for national solutions and complement high-level peace talks.

Legal Hybridity in the Philippines: Lessons in Legal Pluralism from Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago

From Kurds in Afghanistan to Muslims in the Philippines, we live in a world in which normative obligations do not always follow political boundaries. For a variety of political, economic, and social reasons, people sometimes find themselves residents of a state they neither helped create nor voluntarily joined. What allegiance do such people owe to the legal systems of the states to which they belong? Should they be permitted to adopt and follow proprietary legal codes that conform to cultural norms but exist distinct from national jurisprudential schemes? As nations throughout the world struggle to find plural solutions to normative conflict, these questions are of vital importance to subnational and supranational legal regimes. In this Article, I explore these issues by drawing on legal pluralism as a methodology to analyze subnational normative conflict. I do so by engaging in a case study of the Philippines, a country which has been a hotbed of conflict for more than 400 years. I first address the mechanisms employed by Spanish and American colonizers in responding to normative conflict in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. I then proceed to a discussion of the steps taken by the Philippine government to formally recognize Muslim normative obligations, including the adoption of Presidential Decree 1083, the Muslim Code of Personal Laws. Finally, I review the Philippine government’s approach to legal hybridity in the context of four practices identified by Paul Schiff Berman in Global Legal Pluralism: dialectical discourse, margins of appreciation, jurisdictional redundancy, and limited autonomy regimes. I conclude by suggesting that the Philippine government’s approach, though less than fully realized, models the possible benefits of pluralism in a normatively complex and contentious hybrid society.

Effects of Social Position on Societal Attributions of an Asymmetric Conflict

Traditionally, the study of peace and conflict has employed macro explanations such as social structure and state conditions. This article extends the discourse on peace and conflict by considering psychological conditions during a heated social conflict. The focus is on societal attribution, a cognitive process involving shared beliefs about the causes of societal events. The present study examines the effects of social positions on causal attributions in an asymmetric conflict that is taking place in the Philippines on the war-torn island of Mindanao. It was expected that causal attributions of the Mindanao war would differ between Christians and Muslims. Four hundred and thirty Muslims and Christians at Mindanao State University-Marawi stated their degree of agreement on belief statements about perceived intergroup inequality and ranked the three most important causes of the conflict in Mindanao. Results indicated that power inequality between groups is perceived only by the disadvantaged Muslim group, while members in the dominant social position were not sensitized to systemic issues. Findings also indicated intergroup disagreements about the causes of the war. The marginalized Muslims believed that structural problems, namely, displaced and landless Bangsa Moro (Muslim Nation) and loss of rights to self-determination were important origins of the conflict. On the other hand, the dominant Christian group attributed the Mindanao conflict to person-related causes like corruption of the mind and moral fiber, as well as sociocultural discrimination. Implications for attribution theory and the practice of peacemaking in asymmetric conflicts are discussed.

Migration and Violent Conflict in Mindanao

The contemporary conflict situation embedded in the social fabric of Mindanao in the southern part of the Philippines is rooted in the historical, systematic, and collective marginalisation and minoritisation of the indigenous Filipino Muslims or Moros and native Lumad peoples. This paper argues that the minoritisation of the erstwhile indigenous and majority Moros as well as the non-Christian and non-Muslim Lumads of Mindanao was the result of a series of deliberate programs to voluntarily resettle or repopulate the area with predominantly Christian migrants from Luzon and the Visayas (i.e., the northern and central parts of the country, respectively). This numerical domination of the indigenous Moro (and Lumad) minorities by nonindigenous (and predominantly Christian) settlers was exacerbated by (and may have in fact produced the conditions for) economic deprivation of the indigenous Moro and Lumad peoples. The paper also argues that the armed and violent conflict in Mindanao has led to large-scale and involuntary out-migration (particularly from the areas of direct and heavy conflict) mainly in the form of human displacements and movements (primarily involving Moros and Lumads who are non-combatants) out of the conflict zones. This paper illustrates the dynamics of how conflict situations interface with human migratory flows. More specifically, it makes the observation that the conflict in Mindanao is rooted in the voluntary inmigration to the area which eventually led to the minoritisation of the indigenous Moro and Lumad peoples. Moreover, as a consequence of the conflict, there has been a large-scale and involuntary movement outward or away from the conflict areas.

Failures at the National Level: The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Philippines

This article argues that the Philippines' small arms control measures have failed. This failure is seen in two ways. First, statements issued by the Philippines in the 2007 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in AI/ Its Aspects and the follow-up 2003 Biennial Meeting of States on the Implementation of the Program of Action of the previous conference are partly inconsistent with the national laws instituted in the country. Another way of looking at the failure of the Philippines in controlling the diffusion of small arms in its territory is through the conflict in Mindanao. The national mechanisms currently in place are insufficient to address this problem because the influx of weapons continues, further intensifying the conflict.

Failures at the National Level: The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Philippines

Abstract This article argues that the Philippines' small arms control measures have failed. This failure is seen in two ways. First, statements issued by the Philippines in the 2001 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects and the follow-up 2003 Biennial Meeting of States on the Implementation of the Program of Action of the previous conference are partly inconsistent with the national laws instituted in the country. Another way of looking at the failure of the Philippines in controlling the diffusion of small arms in its territory is through the conflict in Mindanao. The national mechanisms currently in place are insufficient to address this problem because the influx of weapons continues, further intensifying the conflict.