‘Liberated’ Marawi

There are mixed reactions over the news that Isnilon Hapilon and Omar Maute are dead and that their death ended the fivemonth-long battle in Marawi City. On social media, the virtual world was mostly filled with praises for government soldiers and jeers for the two “terrorists.” This as photos of the dead were shared.

For the virtual world residents, who mostly are in the comfort of the cities and in the comfort of their gadgetry, the world had been made safe and peaceful. But out there in the real world, in evacuation centers and in the peripheries of Marawi, uncertainty still lurks over the words “peace” and “safe.” Some 60,000 families and over 300,000 residents of Marawi are still uncertain as to how to move forward.

The irony is that as President Rodrigo Duterte, the generals, and the president’s supporters announced victory in Marawi and declared it as “liberated,” no such words come from the very people of Marawi. Instead, as one looks and listen to the words and thoughts of the Maranaos, the residents of Marawi and Moro leaders, theirs is a voice of uncertainty, a mixture of relief and sadness over the things that happened to their land and home.

Robert Maulana Alonto, who is from the peace panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rightfully states in an essay that there is no praise for the deaths of Hapilon and Maute. He contrasts this to the death of their founding leader Hashim Salamat, who was mourned by the Moro people as a revolutionary and remembered for fighting for the Moro land and self-determination, a struggle not like the extreme and twisted ideas of Islam espoused by the Islamic State (IS).

But there are more words of pain coming from Moro residents. From a story in Mindanews, a teacher mourns that she has lost her memories of the home she built from her hard work. In video interviews from the Breakaway Media, a student of Mindanao State University (MSU) tries to resume his studies and pursue his dreams while thinking of how his family will ever return from the evacuation center. In another video, evacuees wonder what lies ahead.

These longings linger as foreign aid comes in hundreds and millions of pesos and one wonders how the political and emotional scars heal for the folks of Marawi. We have found out now that the Marawi we know is no longer the same. And so is our political landscape in relation to peace and war, and a Martial Law that is still not being lifted.

If you ask again what we feel about this, maybe a quote from novelist Agatha Christie speaks of the moment : “One is left with the horrible feeling that war settles nothing : that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.”--