MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The largest Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines has suspended the disarming of its remaining 14,000 fighters after claiming that the government has not fully complied with commitments it made under a , a Philippine official said Thursday.
Under the peace deal, brokered by Malaysia, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels gave up their goal of a separate Muslim state in the south of the largely Roman Catholic country in exchange for broader autonomy. The group’s 40,000 fighters would be “ ” and given livelihoods and other help to bring them back to normal life.
The Bangsamoro region was established under the peace deal to replace a poverty-wracked five-province autonomous region with a larger, better-funded and more powerful area, which has been governed by former guerrilla leaders under a transition period that was to end with regular elections scheduled in October.
Presidential Assistant David Diciano, who has been helping oversee the transformation of the Bangsamoro region, said in a statement that the Muslim rebel front’s central committee has decided to “to postpone the decommissioning of 14,000 of its combatants and 2,450 of their weapons.”
He added: “We also express our disagreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s recent resolution, claiming that the government has not delivered substantially on its socio-economic commitments.”
He urged the rebels to use channels under the peace deal to address problems in its enforcement.
Rebel front leaders did not immediately comment on his statement.
Diciano outlined a range of government-provided benefits he said has been provided to more than 26,000 former guerrillas since 2015. The benefits included a 100,000-peso ($1,700) “transitional cash assistance” given to each combatant after giving up weapons.
The Philippine government has spent about 4 billion pesos ($69 million) since 2019 to provide health insurance, government registrations, job skills training and employment to former combatants, according to Diciano. Farm-to-market roads, bridges, drinking water systems, health clinics, irrigation and other infrastructure have been built in six southern rebel encampments from 2015.
Since 2020, the government has provided the Muslim autonomous region with grants totalling more than 420 billion pesos ($7 billion) for infrastructure and other projects, he said.
“The transformation process necessitates a shift in mindset as the possession of illegal firearms is anathema to a peaceful and civilized society,” Diciano said. “This constitutes the fundamental principle of the peace agreement, whereby armed revolutionary groups are to be transitioned into social and political movements.”
The 2014 agreement eased decades of on-and-off fighting that have left about 120,000 people dead, displaced large numbers of rural villagers and stunted development in a region with some of the country’s poorest areas. A separate communist insurgency had weakened but has endured for decades.
Philippine and Western governments, along with the guerrillas, saw an effective Muslim autonomy as an antidote to more than half a century of Muslim secessionist violence, which could be exploited by foreign radical groups to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia.
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