Moro Islamic Liberation Front Research Articles

Between the ballot and the bullet: rebel-to-party transformations and the structure of the competitive field

ABSTRACT When rebel groups transition to electoral parties and participate in the democratic process, the prospects of peace are often fragile. We argue that rebel parties’ capacity to effectively participate in the electoral arena and contribute to post-conflict stability is contingent on the nature and legacies of the wartime competitive field. Where rebels and politicians shared claims of representation over their constituents in wartime, we argue that elections-related violence is likely in postwar elections when the rebels transition towards political parties. These former rebel parties challenges established electoral holds of political actors who previously represented the community at the ballot box while collaborating with insurgents. The transformation from wartime allies to direct electoral competition creates new incentives for violence, especially where violence is already normalized. Conversely, where established politicians maintain hegemonic representation of their constituency, they create strong barriers to entry for former insurgents in the electoral realm. As a result, the incentives for violence are much reduced. We analyse the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s transformation into the United Bangsamoro Justice Party after the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

Engaging Ulama in the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law: A Case Study from Mindanao

Abstract In 2006 the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) produced rules of engagement in hostilities for members of its armed wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, which reference Islamic law and are also compliant with international humanitarian law (IHL). The release of these rules came following engagement with the MILF by both national and international humanitarian organizations. This article examines the role of Islamic scholars in the MILF and how they contributed to the development of the rules of engagement and the dissemination of humanitarian principles and IHL to its fighters. It also examines the support that humanitarian organizations provided to MILF’s Islamic scholars in their work on IHL. The findings show that MILF’s religious scholars played a major role in promoting IHL to the group’s armed wing through a framing of IHL from an Islamic perspective. A major motivation for the MILF to engage its Islamic scholars on IHL was the desire for international legitimacy as it was involved in a peace process with the government of the Philippines.

PHILIPPINES: DIASPORA AND HOMELAND CONFLICT. LOCATING THE MORO DIASPORA IN THE MINDANAO INSURGENCY

An ever-expanding body of literature suggests the possible link between diasporas and the exacerbation of civil wars in their home countries. One of the most notable findings on the link between diaspora and armed conflict is derived from a set of arguments known as the Greed and Grievances Thesis. According to the said framework, a higher diasporic support to a homeland conflict is positively correlated with a higher incidence of civil war intractability. Applying this framework to the data on external support to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) insurgency from 1990–2008, the study notes that there is a lack of support from the Moro diaspora which forced the MILF to secure peace with the Philippine government. On the contrary, the increase in conflict activities during the insurgency can be qualitatively attributed to the economic and political support from hostile states and international terrorist networks that support the Moro insurgents against the Philippine government. The study concludes that there is an absence of substantial evidence on the role of the Moro diaspora in funding the insurgents due to other factors such as internal financing for the rebellion and the role of international actors in prolonging the Moro conflict. Keywords: Moro Muslims, diaspora, civil war, homeland conflict, the Philippines.

Rebel network theory: The case of Moro Islamic Liberation Front

This paper explores rebel legitimacy building by investigating rebel network formation during civil wars. Through a longitudinal study of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, it examines various mechanisms through which a non-state armed group (NSAG) embellishes and enhances its legitimacy among domestic and international support networks. The research also theorizes the complex interaction between domestic and international legitimacy, when and why NSAGs prioritizes politically prestigious network over initial resource-based one, and the impact of the shift on rebel behavior. The causal process explores how rebels’ legitimacy consideration affects their lobbying and coalition-building efforts.

A Farewell to Arms in the 21st Century: The Case of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front

A Farewell to Arms in the 21st Century: The Case of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front

The Civil Society-Military Interface in the Protection of Civilians: the Bangsamoro Case

Abstract The peace process between the Philippine government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front provided breathing space for many communities and opportunities for calibrated civilian protection practices by the military and non-governmental organisations (ngo s). While the principle of non-intervention largely kept the imprint of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean) to a minimum, Indonesian and Malaysian brokering enabled the establishment of bridging mechanisms such as ceasefire monitoring committees to moderate the armed violence. A more permissive environment allowed ngo s to deliver humanitarian aid and acquire improved capacities for risk mitigation in the Bangsamoro region, aided in part by a shift in the Philippine military’s approach toward putting a premium on civilian consultation and dialogue. Despite these normative gains, the uptick in horizontal violence among rival clans and the military’s preference for the use of artillery fire as a conflict de-escalation strategy create enduring challenges for civilian protection on the ground.

Moro Women's Participation and Legitimation in the Bangsamoro Peace Process

Moro women's participation in the Bangsamoro peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) illuminates some feats and challenges to the UN Women, Peace and Security Agenda (2000) of improving women's lives post-conflict. From interviews, secondary literature, and document analysis, I found that Moro women's participation secured legal benefits for women in the peace agreements and legitimised the Bangsamoro peace negotiation to observers. Yet consistent with the MILF's push for self-determination, the negotiating panels reserved particulars of women's rights as a post-peace agreement agenda, for discussion within the Bangsamoro. I argue that Moro women's participation in the peace talks opened the space to realise, but does not guarantee, feminist goals of better living conditions for marginalised women and sustainable peace in the negotiation's implementation.

Rebels against Mines? Legitimacy and Restraint on Landmine Use in the Philippines

Rebels have become the most prolific users of landmines but still display significant variation in how they employ and restrict the weapon’s use. This article argues that how rebels exercise restraint on landmine use depends on which audiences they rely on most. In a comparative case study of three Philippine rebel groups—the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Abu Sayyaf Group, and the New People’s Army—this article highlights three main findings. First, rebels reliant on voluntary compliance from local communities are more likely to limit the effects of landmines on their perceived constituency. Second, when rebels have conciliatory relations with the government, they are more likely to comply with national law, reciprocate government behavior, and limit the effects of landmines on the government’s constituents. Finally, rebels seeking legitimacy from human-rights-conscious foreign sponsors are more likely to comply with international law related to landmine use.

Legitimacy, Syncretism, and Bangsamoro Jihad: Discourses of Struggle and Community within the Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Abstract Islam’s influence in nationalism and political legitimacy is frequently studied, but diversity across the umma warrants continued investigation into how Islamic tradition shapes its style, content, and potency. Investigating the discourse of 1980s Mindanao’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front, this article adopts a syncretic approach for understanding encounters between Islamic traditions, particularly jihad, and nationalist symbols. Through discourse analysis, this article creates a textured understanding of the power of Islamic-nationalism, focusing on both intellectual genealogy and textual practice. It concludes that in this instance, Islamic-nationalism can be an inherently legitimising phenomenon, animated by the uniquely moral, temporal drive of jihadi tradition.

GEOGRAPHY AND INSURGENT STRATEGY IN SRI LANKA AND THE PHILIPPINES

The article analyses the influence of geography on the strategy of insurgent groups in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. It uses the conceptualization of geography created by David Galula to examine the influence of 8 distinct categories of geography on the strategy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The analysis shows that while the geography of Sri Lanka was a driving force that enabled many of the LTTE successes, it had a divisive effect in the Philippines and heavily contributed to the military failures of the Moro independence movement.

The logics of insurgency in the Bangsamoro

ABSTRACT Over sixty years of conflict in the Southern Philippines, between the government and separatist groups, have made Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago an area prone to violence. Armed groups in Bangsamoro and their historical antecedents have often local origins. Even the original rebellion of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) from which the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) emerged, the largest rebel force in the area and current leader of a transition government in the Bangsamoro, was a coalition of armed elements across Mindanao that organized together before becoming a stronger united front. The following article will describe the evolution of the armed rebellion in Mindanao and analyse its subsequent trajectory, proposing four reinforcing lenses to understand the various Moro insurgencies and explain local splintering and contradictions within the rebel movement.

THE PHILIPPINES: THE CHALLENGES OF MORO AND LUMAD POWER-SHARING IN THE BANGSAMORO

Two self-ascribed ethnic groups—Moro and Lumad—are native to Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Both groups share a common history of oppression from Western colonialism, Christian resettlement, and capitalist interests where the former has waged a more organized insurgency against the Philippine government in the late twentieth century. Due to the political superiority of the Moros, the Lumads are often left marginalized in the various peace processes in Mindanao due to their accommodation to the Moro’s call for the creation of anautonomous region under an internal power-sharing agreement. This form of double marginalization against the Lumad promotes a sense of internal colonialism where such arrangements are only left between the Bangsamoro regional government and the Philippine national government, thereby forcing the latter to accommodate to Moro interests. Analyzing the text of the recent peace agreements between the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (GRP-MILF), the article attempts to understand the conflict dynamics between Moros and Lumads under power-sharing and power-dividing measures. The article concludes that consociationalismin ethnically divided societies often lead to more ethnic cleavages if done haphazardly to favor certain interests while leaving ethnic minorities at a disadvantage. Keywords: Moro, Lumad, Mindanao, Bangsamoro, consociationalism, identity politics.

The Decomissioning of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Combatants in Camp Darul Arham, Butig Lanao Del Sur and It’s Implication to Peace

Alongside the roadmap toward the creation of the Bangsamoro is an implementation of Normalization Process by both the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which mandates among others the decommissioning of MILF forces and weaponry. As a critical part of the similarly criti-cal normalization process, decommissioning shall be a process of putting the weapons of the MILF beyond use and a process of allowing a smooth transition for MILF combatants to productive civilian life. In line with this, this paper aims to: (a) track the socio-demographic profiles of the combatants; (b) examine the perceptions of the combatants in the decommissioning; (c) describe the role of the Independent Decommissioning Body (IDB) in the decommissioning process and challenges encounter; (d) draw implication from the findings of the study to peace building. The study utilized the explorative-evaluative research design that employed the qualitative descriptive approach in the interpre-tation of data to one hundred (100) combatants of Darul Arham and IDB staff. A researcher-designed survey questionnaire was used to elicit necessary information. Results show that the combatants highly perceived socio-economic assistance specifically financial, social development, and economic and sustainable livelihood assistance to be extended to them as they are being decommissioned. The study recommends for the strengthening of measures for the both parties, the GPH and the MILF, to promote and guarantee free movement of IDB and create an environment free of fear and of intimidation so it can fulfill its part in the normalization process.

Autonomous Peace? The Bangsamoro Region in the Philippines Beyond the 2014 Agreement

What kind of peace has emerged in the Bangsamoro region in the Philippines after the 2014 peace agreement? And how does it matter for the prospects of sustainable peace and development? The peace deal between the government of Philippines and the armed group Moro Islamic Liberation Front builds on the establishment of a new autonomous region. The new autonomy has the potential to end a prolonged cycle of armed rebellions. But if it fails to deliver the expected peace dividends, it could also lead to escalating violence. This article uses the Peace Triangle as a conceptual tool to analyse the current status of peace in Bangsamoro. As such, it advances a theoretical understanding of peace that focuses on how autonomy solutions impact on conflict issues, violent behaviour, and conflict attitudes and aid an assessment of the longer term prospects of peace in the wake of autonomy.

The Quality of Peace in Post-Conflict Situation: A Comparative Study Between Armed Conflicts in Aceh and Bangsamoro

This article investigates the quality of peace in armed conflicts that occurred in the Southeast Asia region. The authors compared the cases of Aceh, where the armed conflict between the Free Aceh Movement or GAM and the government of Republic Indonesia ended peacefully with the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding, with the conflict in the southern Philippines, where a peace agreement, the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, was successfully achieved between the government of Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. This research employed document analysis to analyse the peace settlement documents of both parties and the derivative laws of the agreed settlements, as well as other relevant sources as the secondary data. All documents and sources were processed through the NVivo 12 application. The findings revealed that in both Aceh and Bangsamoro, the quality of peace is far from significant, for not all the terms of the agreements had been realised and there was still mutual suspicion prevailing between the two fighting parties. Therefore, what had been agreed upon in the Aceh and Bangsamoro post-conflict agreements must be accomplished as they should be in order to create a lasting peace, thereby allowing the people to experience a sufficient quality peace together.

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.

THE MUSLIM MORO CONFLICT IN SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES: EFFECTS ON PHILIPPINES-MALAYSIA BILATERAL TIES, 1970-2010

This article aims to examine the rebellion in the southern Philippines carried out by the Moro Islamic community and the impacts that have shaped bilateral ties between the Philippines and Malaysia between 1970 and 2010. Malaysia was brought into the turbulence of conflict as a large influx of Muslim refugees fled from the Philippines to Sabah, Malaysia due to the rebellion in Mindanao and in the Sulu archipelago. During the height of the conflict in the 1970s, Muslim refugees and illegal migrants predominantly comprising of the Suluk and Bajau ethnic groups, entered Sabah in large numbers. Their influx sparked security, financial, social and economic problems in Sabah. The Philippine government accused the Sabah Chief Minister at the time for harbouring the Islamic separatists. This article also discusses Malaysia’s commitment to negotiations as a third party facilitator in the peace process between the government of the Philippines, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).Keywords: Moro, MNLF, MILF, refugees, third party facilitator

Greed and grievances: A Discursive Study on the Evolution of the Lumad Struggle in Mindanao, 2010-2019

Are vertical or horizontal inequalities causing the Lumad struggle in Mindanao? This study attempts to answer whether ethnic or economic causes, or a combination of both, are motivating the key conflict actors in the Lumad struggle to wage long-term wars. Employing the greed and grievances model in analysing conflicts, we hypothesize that the causes of the Lumad struggle stems from ethnic grievances in the onset of conflict but eventually become an issue on economic greed in the duration of conflict over time. Using critical discourse framework, the study generated a dataset of online headlines from news reports from 2010-2019 in order to trace the framing of the Lumad struggle from the Aquino to the Duterte administrations. The results show that shared discursive themes affirm the notion that the nature of the Lumad struggle is an interaction of ethnic grievances and economic greed due to the interrelationships of various conflict actors on the ground such as the Philippine government, Lumad and Moro insurgents, Christian settlers and multinational corporations. Overall, the findings indicate that issues on ethnic grievances and economic greed in the Lumad struggle are interacting with one another due to notable events occurring on both Aquino and Duterte administrations such as the ongoing peace process between the Philippine government, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Lumad ethnic groups themselves. Nonetheless, these results must be interpreted with caution due to a number of limitations such as the application of the greed and grievances model as an external explanation inferred from the discursive themes emerging from the news headlines and the lack of previous studies detailing the Lumad struggle using the said framework.

“Coexistence Ceasefire” in Mindanao

In the peace and conflict literature, a ceasefire is often conceived as an event or an outcome of an armed conflict. In this paper, I argue that we can gain a better understanding of ceasefires by approaching them as dynamic processes of change and by exploring patterns of interactions and changing relationships in the context of ceasefire. I use this approach in a case study of the ceasefire between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao. I suggest that the Mindanao ceasefire can be conceptualized as a form of “coexistence ceasefire,” and I trace the development of the particular ceasefire structure and interactions to features of the armed conflict, including its territorial dimension and the presence of multiple sources of violence. The paper contributes a new and more nuanced way of studying ceasefires that provides a better understanding of their characteristics and dynamics and of how they shape and in turn are shaped by the broader conflict landscape.

From “bandit” to “Amir”—The Rise of the Abu Sayyaf Group as a Jihadi Organization in the Philippines

While terrorism and violence tend to move in parallel, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) has brought this to new heights in its quest to attain an Islamic State in southern Philippines. Though small compared to other Islamist organizations, namely the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, its violent acts—kidnapping, beheading of hostages, among others—have more than made up for its size. In fact, it has been the most brutal terrorist movement in the Philippines. Partly due to this and the allegiance of its leadership to the equally brutal transnational terrorist group, Islamic State, its leader Isnilon Hapilon was designated as the Amir of Southeast Asia. The group was responsible for the Marawi Siege, which ran for five months from May to October 2017, and is considered the worst terrorist‐linked bloodbath in the country. The deaths of pro‐Islamic State leaders such as Hapilon are unlikely to change this key DNA of the ASG and of terrorism in the Philippines in the near future.