Several hundred members of the Moro National Liberation Front attempted to march on Zamboanga City and raise their flag at city hall in the morning of Sept. 9. Having known the march would take place, authorities intercepted the rebels and a gunfight ensued. Most recently, armed rebels suspected to be members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and remnants of the Abu Sayyaf group attacked Lamitan, roughly 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) south of Zamboanga City. So far, two soldiers and five civilians have been killed in the fighting, as have an unknown number of militants. The Moro National Liberation Front and other rebel groups have also taken hostage an unknown number of residents.
Guaranteeing Capitulation
The Moro National Liberation Front was first created in the late 1960s by Nur Misuari. But like many other rebel groups, it has several factions headed by different people, and it is loosely structured so that authorities have a harder time monitoring and targeting its members. Its loose structure and fluid membership also make it difficult to form a unified, coherent political platform, without which a meaningful peace deal can never really be achieved.
Peace talks thus have long been a point of contention among Philippine rebel groups. In fact, the Moro National Liberation Front broke up following disagreements about a 1976 peace deal, culminating in the creation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In 1996, Manila offered the Moro National Liberation Front a semi-autonomous region known as the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The region included provinces in southwestern Mindanao, such as Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago.
However, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front refused to accept the 1996 agreement, and it has attacked government and Moro National Liberation Front targets ever since. The insurgency eventually led to peace talks between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the early 2000s. But in November 2001, Misuari led a Moro National Liberation Front attack against Zamboanga City and the island of Jolo, meant to sabotage local elections and peace negotiations. The attack left more than 100 dead, and the militant group took dozens of hostages it later used to secure safe egress from the city.
Then in August 2008, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front reached a memorandum of understanding over the expansion of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. However, the agreement collapsed after the group's members clashed with government forces. Shortly thereafter, some members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front broke away from the organization and formed the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, which wants to create an independent Muslim state. Since this group also rejects the most recent peace agreement, it too has the ability to disrupt future negotiations.
Clearly, militant violence ahead of potential peace deals is fairly common. Rival Philippine rebel groups constantly interfere with the negotiations of other groups to voice their disagreement with a particular issue. Sometimes, even rebels participating in the negotiations will stage attacks to remind the government that its failure to cooperate will come at a high price. This tactic sometimes guarantees Manila's capitulation.
Neutralizing Individual Groups
The Philippine government is now in its 40th round of peace talks with rebels generally and in what could be its final peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front specifically. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Manila have agreed to end the rebel conflict by creating by an autonomous region called the Bangsamoro that would replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao by 2016. But the area it is replacing is a Moro National Liberation Front stronghold, so the agreement could lead to even more of the type of conflict it is meant to resolve.
Misuari has said repeatedly that he feels excluded from the current peace talks. If past trends hold, he and his followers may incite more violence as the negotiations progress. He may even be behind the ongoing violence in Zamboanga City, though he has not claimed responsibility.
Like all peace deals before it, the current agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front corresponds with Manila's strategy to chip away at the Philippines' larger rebel problem by neutralizing individual groups. The militant threat thus becomes much more manageable for the government. The violence in Zamboanga City may not derail the peace process entirely, but it will certainly delay it. And even if both sides came to an accord, establishing peace would take many years, giving those unhappy with the outcome plenty of time to degrade Philippine security.
