MILF letter to Bush sped up settlement

GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star, Friday, August 1, 2008

Mindanao folk are incensed. Without consulting them, the Manila government is ceding to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front their civilian-ruled locales. That means elected officials suddenly will be under the local MILF battalion commander. Christian and Muslim governors and mayors are resisting. A plea has been filed for Malacañang to disclose the details of an impending settlement of the MILF secession. Part of the petition in the Supreme Court is to suspend any pact signing until the affected folk can study the draft.

But the Palace is insistent. Congressional allies have been mobilized to cancel the August 11 elections in the Muslim Autonomous Region, as the MILF demands. In typical opacity and arrogance, Malacañang is taunting the Mindanao leaders to contest the political accord only after the signing. Worse, it continues to keep secret what areas will be yielded to MILF rule, although leaked drafts list Zamboanga City, North Cotabato and a third of Palawan as “part of the Bangsamoro ancestral domain.”

Today’s flurry of events partly was prodded by a letter in 2003 of then-MILF head Salamat Hashim (now deceased) to the US President. No less than a Filipino national security officer helped the separatist leader craft the invitation for American intervention in the on-again-off-again talks. The official US response is its state secret. But soon after the Hashim letter, all US-AID projects in the Philippines were moved to the Muslim Region. Washington also promised millions of dollars in instant and annual help once a settlement is forged.

Following are Hashim’s words:

20 January 2003
His Excellency George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House, Washington D.C.

Your Excellency:

In the name of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), we send our profound and felicitous greetings of peace on behalf of the Bangsamoro People of our historic homeland in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan.

The Bangsamoro People have always looked upon your country, the United States of America, and its people, with esteem as a great champion of freedom and democracy. The founding fathers of the American Nation as firm believers of “self-evident truths” and “inalienable rights” have become inspirations for the Moro Nation in our quest for the right to self-determination.

Your ambassador to the Philippines, His Excellency Francis J. Ricciardone, who recently addressed the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, raised the question of the US Government’s desire to know “what they (MILF) want and how it’s (the Problem) going to be resolved”.

We take this opportunity to inform Your Excellency that the MILF is a national liberation organization, with leadership supported by the Bangsamoro People, and with legitimate political goal to pursue the right of the Moro Nation to determine their future and political status. As part of this process, we have an ongoing negotiation with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines to arrive at a negotiated political settlement of the Mindanao conflict and the Bangsamoro problem, through the mediation and tender of the good offices of the Government of Malaysia.

Your desire to be informed of the MILF goals remind us of the historic, legal and political relationship between the Moro Nation and the US Federal Government as borne out by documents, treaty relations and instruments. Your official policy, under President William McKinley’s Instruction to the First Philippine Commission of 1900, treated the Moro Nation initially as a Dependent Nation similar to the North American Indian Nations under treaty relations with the US Federal Government. Subsequently, the Moro Nation was accorded the political status of a US protectorate under the Kiram-Bates Treaty of 1899, confirming the Treaty of 1878 between the Sultan of Sulu and Spain.

Your policy to consider the Philippines as an unincorporated territory of the United States paved the way for the US Government to administer affairs in the Moro territories under a separate political form of governance under the Moro Province from the rest of the Philippine Islands.

Your project to grant Philippine independence obliged the leaders of the Moro Nation to petition the US Congress to give us an option through a referendum to either by remaining as a territory to be administered by the US Government or granted separate independence fifty years from the grant of Philippine independence. Were it not for the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Moro Nation would have been granted trust territory status like any of the Pacific island states who are now independent or in free association with the United States of America.

On account of such circumstances, the Moro Nation was deprived of their inalienable right to self-determination, without waiving their plebiscitary consent. Prior to the grant of Philippine independence on July 4, 1946, American Congressional leaders foresaw that the inclusion of the Moro Nation within the Philippine Commonwealth would result in serious conflicts in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, arising from the inability of the Filipino leaders to govern the Moro people. This condition or states of affairs have continued to prevail to the present day.

In view of current global developments and regional security concerns in Southeast Asia, it is our desire to accelerate the just and peaceful negotiated settlement of the Mindanao conflict, particularly the present colonial situation in which the Bangsamoro people find themselves.

We are therefore appealing to the basic principle of American fairness and sense of justice to use your good offices in rectifying the error that (sic) continuous to negate and derogate the Bangsamoro People’s fundamental right to seek decolonization under the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of 1960. For this purpose, we are amenable to inviting and giving you the opportunity to assist in resolving this predicament of the Bangsamoro People.

With assurances of our highest esteem and cordial regards.

Very truly yours,
Salamat Hashim
Chairman

Through: His Excellency Francis J. Ricciardone
United States Ambassador to the Philippines and Palau
US Embassy, Roxas
Boulevard, Manila

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Constitution and security experts would do well to read between Hashim’s lines. He cites treaties and agreements that the US historically has chosen either to ignore or uphold depending on the need of the time. The first decade of the millennium is marked by the global war against Islamist terrorism and search for new oil sources. North Cotabato Vice Gov. Manny Piñol says the GRP-MILF draft grants the latter 75 percent of extracted natural resources. And there’s natural gas, possibly oil, in Liguasan Marsh.

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E-mail: jariusbondoc@workmail.com