In late July, the Philippines enacted a landmark law called the Bangsamoro Organic Law. The new legislation provides for the establishment of a regional government with greater autonomy in a mostly Muslim area on the main southern Philippine island of Mindanao. It is epoch-making in that the law may lay the foundation for bringing lasting peace to Bangsamoro -- which means "indigenous people and land of Moro" -- at long last after nearly 50 years of armed clashes.
Needless to say, Japan needs to continue tackling two pressing national security issues -- North Korea's nuclear and missile development programs as an issue of more urgency and China's continuous military buildup as a long-standing issue. Nonetheless, it is also important for Japan to work together with the international community to reduce terrorist strongholds and eliminate instability in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean and Africa on the western side of the Indo-Pacific.
In that connection, the Philippines' decision to end armed strife in Mindanao and bring peace there can be an extremely significant touchstone of stability to troubled areas. Since the Cambodian civil war came to an end in the mid-1990s, Mindanao has been one of the few remaining areas of conflict in Southeast Asia. Since the 1990s, there has been a sharp decrease in the number of people falling victim to armed conflicts in Southeast and East Asia -- a decrease that is beyond comparison with the numbers of victims of conflicts from Afghanistan to the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa.
Exceptionally heavy toll
Decades of fighting in Mindanao between Philippine government troops and armed rebel groups have left an exceptionally large number of people dead and wounded. Even lately -- in May last year -- a group that is connected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group launched a siege on Marawi, the largest Muslim-majority city in the Philippines, while Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte immediately imposed martial law on Mindanao to quash the insurgency
Islam began spreading on Mindanao around the 14th century and the percentage of Muslims in the regional population increased. Later on, Christian settlers came to the island during colonial rule, first by Spain and then by the United States. Numerous clashes took place on and off throughout those periods. Even after the Philippines gained full independence in 1946, conflict hardly ceased. In 1969, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was formed and its members started waging an armed secessionist campaign. A drawn-out battle followed between the Philippine government trying to quell rebellion and the MNLF.
Rounds of peace talks were held time and again but peace did not prevail because of infighting and clashes among rebel groups and about-faces on the part of the government in Manila. Finally, in 2014, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) -- which had split from the MNLF and was now the largest separatist group in the country -- and the Philippine government signed a much-awaited peace pact, called the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, giving rise to the prospects of peace in the southern Philippines.
However, the Philippine Congress made little headway in its debate on the then proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law, which would lead to the creation of a regional government with greater autonomy on the basis of the peace agreement.
At around that time, the number of young people in the southern Philippines turning to Islamic extremism increased. Their presence was thought to have been one of the reasons for the breakout of clashes between separatists and government troops in May 2017. Now, the Bangsamoro Organic Law is in place as the product of decades-long peace negotiations and is hoped to lead to the eventual embodiment of peace.
Japan's peacebuilding support
For its part, the international community has not been indifferent to the protracted civil war in the southern Philippines. In fact, the international community has played an important role in facilitating the years-long peace process in Mindanao. Though it remains little known, Japan has assumed a greater role for such a purpose.
The international community became actively involved in the peace process in 2001 when the Philippine government and the MILF signed the so-called Tripoli Agreement on Peace in the capital of Libya. In 2002, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Philippines, promising Japan's support for the peace process. In 2004, the International Monitoring Team (IMT), comprising military officers from Malaysia and other countries, was deployed to Mindanao.
In July 2006 when then Foreign Minister Taro Aso visited the Philippines, Japan pledged to enhance its support package for the IMT and dispatch civilian personnel to the team. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has since assigned its personnel to the IMT, building relations of mutual trust with the MILF leadership. In December 2006, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Philippines to announce the Japan-Bangsamoro Initiatives for Reconstruction and Development (J-BIRD), and JICA began implementing J-BIRD assistance projects.
However, the confrontation between the Philippine government and separatist groups intensified again in 2009. Then, the International Contact Group (ICG), comprising Japan and other countries, was formed to participate in negotiations between the Philippine government and the MILF as an observer.
Benigno Aquino, who was inaugurated as president of the Philippines in the summer of 2010, eagerly tried to accomplish peace in Mindanao through direct talks with the head of the MILF. In the summer of 2011, both the Philippine government and the MILF approached the Japanese government to help Aquino and MILF Chairman Al Haj Murad Ibrahim meet secretly. They arrived at Narita Airport unannounced and held talks at a nearby hotel. Aquino later appreciated the Narita tete-a-tete as a catalyst for moving the peace process forward.
Why did the president and the separatist leader in the Philippines ask Japan to broker a secret meeting between them? I am sure that those JICA personnel working in the IMT and Japanese diplomats taking part in the ICG had earned a lot of confidence from both sides.
Plebiscite set for Jan. 21
When I became president of JICA in April 2012, I thought the cooperation agency should clarify to the Philippines how resolutely JICA is committed to facilitating the peace process. So I chose the Philippines as the first foreign country to visit in my new capacity as the chief of JICA. I went to MILF headquarters at Camp Darapanan, ensuring that JICA would continue steadfastly carrying out J-BIRD projects and that further reconstruction and development assistance would be possible should peace be accomplished in the Bangsamoro area. While staying at the camp, I gathered that the MILF leadership had very high expectations of President Aquino. Therefore, when I flew back to Manila, I met and told him of my observation, urging him to endeavor further for peace in Mindanao.
As such, I was personally pleased when the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro was finally signed in the spring of 2014. But I was then disappointed very much as congressional debate on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law for the creation of a regional government with greater autonomy came to a standstill and armed clashes erupted again in Mamasapano, Mindanao, in January 2015. When I retired from the cooperation agency in the autumn of the same year, the Mindanao peace process was one of JICA's projects to which my thoughts hardly stopped going.
The Bangsamoro Organic Law enables the Philippines to pave the way to creating an autonomous regional government. A plebiscite determining the territorial jurisdiction of the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region is now scheduled for Jan. 21, 2019, with the campaign period set for Dec. 7 this year to Jan. 19. Once the territorial scope is ratified in the plebiscite, a new autonomous entity will be installed through the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) to be appointed by President Duterte. The BTA will rule the region until the next general elections in May 2022, during which the first set of officials of the autonomous region will be elected. The future of the peace process will hinge decisively on how competently the transition authority will govern the area.
If the BTA causes the regional population to be fearful of the resumption of the civil war, extremist groups will likely grow in strength again.
The Bangsamoro area remains least developed in the Philippines because it has been engulfed by the civil war for decades. I would like the Japanese government and JICA to keep extending assistance to the area in close coordination with the Philippine government.
Tanaka is president of the Tokyo-based National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), a post he assumed in April 2017. Previously, he was a University of Tokyo professor specializing in international politics. He was president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency from 2012 to 2015 and vice president of the University of Tokyo from 2009 to 2012.
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