Malaysian defense minister tells MILF: Help contain terrorism in flashpoint areas

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines —The defense minister of Malaysia on Friday urged the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to sustain the Mindanao peace process by helping contain terrorism in conflict flashpoint areas in the region.

The Malaysian official, Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, was in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao on Friday to discuss with his Filipino counterpart, Delfin Lorenzana, the situation in Marawi City and the presence of Malaysians in the ranks of local misguided Jihadists groups now creating trouble in southern provinces.

Hussein said the MILF and the Philippine government must work together in addressing the problem to prevent the southern peace process from getting affected by the activities of Islamic militants.

Malaysia is helping push forward the diplomatic overture between Malacañang and the MILF as “third party facilitator” since 2003.

There is even a Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team, comprised of soldiers from Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, and civilian conflict resolution experts from Japan, the European Union and Norway helping enforce the now 20-year ceasefire pact between the MILF and the government.

“We must not allow terrorists to derail the peace process,” Hussein said after an hour-long dialogue with Lorenzana and other top Philippine defense officials at the headquarters of the Army’s 6^thInfantry Division in Camp Siongco.

Hussein and his entourage, among them senior officials of the Malaysian Royal Armed Forces, arrived Friday morning from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on board a military aircraft that brought them direct to the Maguindanao airport near Camp Siongco.

Hussein sounded optimistic on what was for him mutual cooperation between Malaysia and the Philippines in fighting fanatical Islamic militants together.

He called on the MILF to continue supporting the Armed Forces of the Philippines in preventing the spread of local militant groups claiming allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The MILF and the Philippine government are bound by a ceasefire accord, the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, to help each other enforce law and order and interdict terrorists in conflict flashpoint areas and inside duly recognized rebel strongholds.

“We must not give any foothold to these groups. We should not allow them to hijack people to support or recognize them,” Hussein said.

He said Malaysia and the Philippines would also cooperate in trying to determine who the foreign benefactors of local terrorists are and how funds from abroad earmarked for their operation are channeled in.

“We have an undivided support to efforts of addressing the ISIS problem here. Let no ISIS hijack people,” Hussein said.

He said the Malaysian and Philippine governments would work together in locating wanted Malaysian terrorists who have blended with Mindanao-based militant factions.

It is known to the local communities that there are Malaysians and Indonesians in the ranks of the Maute, the Abu Sayyaf and the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters operating in four towns in the second district of Maguindanao province.

A Malaysian terrorist, Zulkifli bin Hir, more known as Marwan, was said to have trained no fewer than a hundred recruits in fabrication and handling of improvised explosive devices while in Mamasapano town in Maguindanao.

Marwan was killed on January 25, 2015 by personnel of the police’s elite Special Action Force in his hideout in Sitio Inug-ug in Barangay Pidsandawan, Mamasapano.

His accomplice, bomb-maker Abdulbasit Usman, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was shot dead three months later by MILF guerillas in keeping with the group’s security pact with the government.

There are government-recognized MILF enclaves in Lanao del Sur province where there is presence of the Dawlah Islamiya, now comprised of mixed Maute and Abu Sayyaf gunmen. Marawi City is the capital of Lanao del Sur, a component province of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Lorenzana has appealed to the MILF to prevent intrusions by the Dawlah Islamiya and another group, the Ansa’r Al-Khilafa, into its camps that are now Malacañang-accredited peace zones.

The Ansa'r Al Khilafa, also operating in the fashion of ISIS, first emerged in Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat.

The MILF helped the Philippine Marine Corps take over in late 2015 the main camp of the Ansa’r Al-Khilafa in Barangay Butril in Palimbang through intelligence initiatives and by giving way to Marine servicemen who drove its occupants away after a four-hour gunfight.

Hussein and Lorenzana separately said failure to stop the spread of fanatical Islamic militants in the south can stifle the Mindanao peace process.