For Mindanao, violent extremism marked 2017
COTABATO CITY – Mindanao residents would remember 2017 as the year that violent religious extremist groups bared their brand of terror and expressed support for the Islamic State.
The Maute terror group first surfaced in late 2014 in Butig, Lanao del Sur. The group attacked Marawi City on May 23, 2017.
The religious adventurism of the Maute terror group in Marawi City also went viral on social media.
The conflict in Marawi, which lasted for five months, prompted President Duterte to declare martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in the whole of Mindanao.
It also resulted in drawnout hostilities that displaced more than 300,000 Maranaos and the deaths of more than a thousand, including more than a hundred soldiers and policemen, and left a historic city in ruins.
Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr. of the Western Mindanao Command and Butig Mayor Dimnatang Pansar confirmed recently that brothers Omar and Abdullah Maute and their five siblings were all killed in encounters with state forces from between May 23 to Oct. 23. Butig is hometown of the Maute clan.
The patriarch of the Maute clan, Cayamora, died in detention two months after he was arrested in Davao City last June.
Cayamora’s wife, Farhana, was nabbed in Masiu, Lanao del Sur. She is now being prosecuted for rebellion and other criminal charges.
The government has weakened the Maute group, but some members, among them an ethnic Maranao named Abu Dar, is trying to consolidate militants that were driven out of Marawi.
Abu Dar and his followers are now roaming the hinterlands of Lanao del Sur’s forested Unayan area.
It was in July 2017 when a third faction in the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), led by radical cleric Esmael Abdulmalik, declared war on non-Muslims in Mindanao.
He also announced then their rejection of the ongoing peace overture between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
More than 30 followers of Abdulmalik were killed in clashes with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) forces in the adjoining towns of Salibo, Datu Piang and Saidona in Maguindanao from July to August this year.
The MILF’s campaign against Abdulmalik and his men was launched to help the government address security issues in conflict areas based on its 1997 interim ceasefire agreement with Malacañang.
The Army’s 6th Infantry Division, which has jurisdiction over Maguindanao and North Cotabato, where the BIFF-Abdulmalik faction operates, has been enforcing tight security measures in both provinces to restrain movements of militants.
Moderate Muslims have rabidly been vocal against VREs claiming allegiance to the Islamic State.
Abu Huraira Udasan, grand mufti (preacher) of the Bangsamoro Darul Iftah, also known as House of Opinions, said it is sinful in Islam to foment animosity between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Udasan said Islam espouses the “la iqra fidin” principle, which literally means there is no compulsion in religion.
Neutral Muslims also rant about the enforcement by VREs of a ruthless Talibanstyle justice system which is for them absolutely primitive and barbaric.