et’s assume that the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front is bluffing, that all this talk about renewed fighting
in Mindanao is meant to stampede the government into going back to the
negotiating table even as what the national government sees as constitutional
issues remain unresolved over the grant of ancestral land status to areas that
the MILF considers as the Moro homeland.
Is this cause to be sanguine about the secessionist rebellion
in the South? There is no question that the MILF is incapable of carving out an
independent state in Mindanao and Sulu through military means. Government forces
are simply overwhelmingly superior in number, in armaments, in mobility, in
communications, in leadership and in training.
That said, the government, however, also has no reasonable
chance of crushing the rebellion. The Moros have been waging a guerrilla war for
almost 40 years. They have proven resilient because of the widespread support
they enjoy from the community from whence they sprung. They cannot decisively be
beaten short of waging a genocidal war.
We have a virtual stalemate, which can be broken only by a
political settlement. This is precisely the government rationale for entering
into negotiations with the MILF.
The MILF’s latest accusation is that Manila is only stringing
it along, that the latter is not sincere in reaching a peace agreement but is
interested only in keeping the current cease-fire in place. The MILF’s fear is
that government is exploiting the cease-fire to undermine the former’s political
support through ongoing community-based "development" efforts.
How the dynamics of the conflict in the South will play out,
given the two sides’ view points, is anybody’s guess. It could be war. It could
be peace. It could be an oscillation between the two poles in a low level
conflict.
The wild card is the communist rebellion. Since the start of
the truce with the MILF in 2003, the government has been shifting its fighting
forces to the western side of Mindanao, to Luzon and to the Visayas. This is
basis for Gloria Arroyo’s confidence the backbone of the communist rebellion
could be broken before her exit in 2010.
Five years has passed since the AFP’s strategic redeployment.
We have not seen any significant weakening of the communist rebellion. We
probably would not see any in the next two years even if the truce with MILF
could be maintained.
And if the truce breaks down, the government will be back to facing an
unwinnable two-front war. Thanks to the Napoleonic complex of someone who has
all of Napoleon’s attributes save genius in war.
