The Spoils of Civil War

Posted on October 3, 2008
Filed Under Human Rights, International, IslamoFascism, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, News, Philippines, civil war, culture, culture of violence, fanaticism | Comments Off

There is war going in the Philippines for the last 30 plus years, does anyone care?

The forgotten victims of Mindanao’s Muslim war

DATU PIANG, Philippines, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) – Arbaya Musalip gently cradles her three-day-old daughter swaddled in a piece of old cloth amid the chaos of this filthy evacuation camp in a remote corner of the southern Philippines.

She is waiting for her husband Amil to check on what remains of their tiny village of Dapiawan, days after Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels forced them to flee with only what they could carry of their meager belongings.

The infant, who does not yet have a name, has not been inoculated and has no proper clothes, just the piece of cloth from a nearby pile of relief items.

‘We need water, food,’ Musalip, 25, tells AFP as she swats away flies buzzing near her baby’s head.

‘It is a very difficult life, I was in labour for nearly two days in this area since we didn’t have the money to go to a hospital.

‘I just want the war to stop and bring my baby home.’

The Musalips left their modest wooden home in Dapiawan’s marshlands when fighting between the MILF and the army recently spilled over to their area.

They had initially decided to stay, but when the MILF started harassing civilians, there was no choice but to leave.

She said she walked several kilometres (miles), despite her advanced pregnancy and having two young children in tow.

Hours later, a military airstrike hit a small boat carrying her neighbours who were also fleeing, killing a pregnant woman and five children.

The military apologised for the civilian deaths, but said the attack was justified because their planes were being fired at from the ground.

It claimed 16 rebels were also killed in the devastating airstrike using machine guns and rockets.

‘They didn’t care even if there were civilians on the ground,’ says Siti Salipala, a 33-year-old mother of two toddlers.

‘The airstrike killed our neighbours, we had to run and seek shelter here,’ she says, looking around the plaza in the town of Datu Piang now crowded with thousands of war refugees.

They are the forgotten victims of Mindanao’s three decades of struggle for self rule in which more than 120,000 people have been killed and between one million and two million made homeless.

Many people have left the trouble spots while others spend their time in relief camps waiting for the day they can return to their homes, or what’s left of them.

Senseless civil war not for regaining rights usurped by a dictatorship, but for autonomy for a group following a different religion is bringing misery to some of the followers of that very religion asking for autonomy. The misery, the death, the dispossession is mostly caused by the guerrillas and those suffering the most are their own coreligionists. Throughout history, the worst, most devastating wars were always fought “in the name of God” or because one group had a problem with another’s religion or ethnicity. Yet, every religion believes their god is a god of peace! Look at the former Yugoslavia, for example, where Christians and Muslims share the same ehnicity and language but fought ruthlessly because each side sought to impose its beliefs on the other.

IslamoFascists, however, have elevated their belief system from a religion (a belief system centering around a god) to a political idea that will engulf the whole world of infidels in the flames of ruthless armed combat. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) must be stopped and their leaders made to pay for their violence, the senseless destruction, the trampling of human rights. Failure to do that will only exacerbate the actions of these fanatics and serve to inspire many more such groups and armed insurrections around the world.