Former Abu Sayyaf bandits take up farming in Basilan

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Agriculturists training former Abu Sayyaf bandits on modern farming find helping them return to mainstream society a fascinating challenge.

 

A group of 84 former Abu Sayyaf bandits from across Basilan, all former hardcore violent religious extremists (VREs), who have pledged allegiance to the Philippine flag, are now studying the propagation of rubber trees and hybrid corn to ease their assimilation into the local communities.

 

“This teaching experience is something so new to us. We have never even thought that one day we shall help outcasts like them reform for good. This is a big challenge for us,” Gani Yahiya told The STAR on Tuesday.

 

Yahiya is the provincial chief of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for Basilan.

 

The Agriculture and Social Welfare departments of ARMM are now cooperating in extending capacity-building aid to the 84 erstwhile VREs to support their recovery.

 

Their reintroduction into mainstream society began with a fellowship activity early this week in a resort in Isabela City, led by ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, himself born and raised in Basilan.

 

The event was capped off with Islamic re-orientation sessions organized by local officials and moderate clerics.

 

“This project is quite strange, something so unusual but absolutely very challenging,” said Pablan Alih, a senior staff member of the Department of Interior and Local Government-ARMM.

 

The youngest of the 84 is a 12-year-old former child soldier, whom Hataman promised to help return to school.

 

The returnees were accompanied to a government demonstration farm in Barangay Santa Clara in Lamitan City on Monday by officials of different ARMM line agencies to educate them on modern farming, as symbolic start of their livelihood studies.

More than a hundred Abu Sayyaf members in Basilan surrendered in recent months after the police, the military and ARMM officials regained control of 16 remote barangays there that the group ruled with impunity for many years. 

 

Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez, Jr. of the Western Mindanao Command said the implementation in the past five years of more than P5 billion in infrastructure projects in Basilan, among them concrete roads, markets and new school buildings, dramatically reduced the group’s influence in remote communities.

 

"These projects helped these 84 former Abu Sayyaf members realize that life could be better if they surrender and avail of the dividends of development now being felt by the people there," Galvez said.

 

There were recorded encounters between armed villagers and Abu Sayyaf forces in the province in the past two years that resulted in the deaths of more than 50 bandits.

 

Some of the recovering former VREs explicitly said during their fellowship engagement with ARMM officials early this week that life is dangerous now in their camps, which are now accessible to the police and military because of roads built by the ARMM government in the past five years.

 

One of them, Ashraf, said separation from their families, as a consequence of their hiding in the jungles in Basilan, was also disheartening for members of the Abu Sayyaf.

 

Ashraf said he and his companions decided to surrender early this year after realizing that peace and development has markedly been spreading around Basilan, disproving assertions by Abu Sayyaf leaders that Muslims in the province are being neglected by the government.

 

“We now look forward to training more former Abu Sayyaf members on modern farming in the coming years,” Yahiya said.

 

He said most of the 84 VREs have confessed to having joined the Abu Sayyaf due to poverty and underdevelopment.

 

“Obviously, their recruiters used poverty and neglect to agitate them, fan their anger to the government,” Yahiya said.