Gov't war vs BIFF may affect Maguindanao school opening

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - This year's school opening in conflict areas in the province may be postponed with the government's ongoing offensive against the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Mujiv Hataman said that the government's law enforcement operation against the bandit group could last until June.

Hataman and Assistant Secretary for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations lawyer Kirby Abdullah on Tuesday jointly led the dispersal by the region's Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) of 10 tons of food rations to 28,113 villagers that relocated over the weekend to designated relief sites in Maguindanao's neighboring Mamasapano, Salibo, Datu Unsay and Datu Saudi towns for fear of getting trapped in the crossfire.

Battle-hardened combatants of the Philippine Marine Corps from Sulu now guards strategic areas in Mamasapano to prevent members of the outlawed BIFF from coming back.

Combined Army and Marine combatants now control the BIFF’s largest camp in west of Mamasapano, whose occupants hastily abandoned even before advancing government forces could arrive to drive them away, before dawn Sunday.

Barangay officials were elated with the military’s occupation of the rebel camp, where two notorious BIFF leaders, clerics Tambako and Karialan, and their men had assembled improvised bombs used in recent deadly bombings in Central Mindanao.

"They instilled fear among people to keep silent about their criminal activities," said 40-year-old evacuee Arsad Mindoh, whose family is now temporarily residing in a relative's house two barangays away from their farm.

Two Marines and an Army combatant were wounded on Friday in initial encounters with BIFF gunmen along stretches of the Cotabato-General Santos Highway in Maguindanao’s adjoining Datu Saudi and Datu Unsay towns.

"There is a possibility that the government's LEO (law enforcement operation) against the BIFF could last until June this year," Hataman said.

20 schools closed

More than 20 schools in the province have been shut down temporarily for security reasons, according to Hataman.

Hataman appealed to the BIFF, which splintered from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in late 2010, to support the Mindanao peace process and renounce violence as a means of seeking political redress.

“Why not join the peace process? Why not cooperate with the people in Mindanao now helping each another build lasting peace and development in the area? Use of guns in furthering a religious or political cause is absolutely so primitive,” Hataman said.

The BIFF, founded by Saudi-trained cleric Ameril Ombra Kato, is not covered by the July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF.

Hataman said the HEART emergency groups, comprised of workers from the ARMM’s health and social welfare departments and other regional agencies, will extend relief and rehabilitation services to all evacuation sites in Maguindanao.

Hataman said he has briefed President Benigno Aquino III on the extent of the evacuations in the province by villagers from areas where government forces are now hunting down BIFF bandits.

BIFF leaders Tambako and Karialan were said to have fled deeper into the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, where foreign-trained bomber Basit Usman and five cohorts, four of them Indonesians and the other, a tall man with Middle Eastern features, have also been hiding for a month now.

The BIFF is notorious for targeting non-military targets to retaliate for loses in encounters with government security forces.

The group had repeatedly attacked evacuation sites in Maguindanao in 2012 and 2013.