Chapter 7
Muslim Separatism and the Bangsamoro Rebellion

The year 1968 saw the onset of a decade of turmoil in Cotabato brought about by a convergence of tendencies that had been building since the founding of the Philippine republic. By that year, the social pressures generated in the postindependence period (especially as the result of Christian migration to the Muslim south) had begun to agitate the unsteady political status quo in Cotabato. Within a short while, the system of provincial governance constructed by Pendatun and Matalam disintegrated in the face of the rise of a Muslim counterelite and the onset of organized aggression by the Philippine state against its Muslim citizens. The declaration of martial law in 1972 by President Ferdinand Marcos ignited an armed separatist insurgency throughout the South directed by a new array of Muslim leaders. With few exceptions, the established datus of Cotabato denounced the rebellion and aligned themselves with the national state that had underwritten their local rule for more than seven decades.

The Emergence of a Muslim Counterelite

Two quite dissimilar education projects begun in the 1950s produced a distinct but variously composed Muslim counterelite by the late 1960s. The first project was a government program expressly designed to "integrate" Philippine Muslims into national life by providing a number of them with postsecondary educations in the national capital. The sec-

ond effort was an externally funded Islamic education project designed to enhance Islamic faith and practice among Philippine Muslims by granting some of them the opportunity to study at Islamic centers in the Middle East. The graduates of these two scholarship programs constituted a new and differentially educated Muslim elite that was joined in Cotabato to an emergent Muslim commercial elite composed, for the most part, of former smugglers. These groups forged an alliance that provided the leadership for the separatist rebellion begun in 1972 and posed a direct challenge to the established postcolonial elite. We begin by considering these two education projects and their political consequences.

The Commission on National Integration and the Generation of Muslim Separatism

In 1954 the Philippine Congress, prompted by an intensification of Muslim "banditry" in Mindanao and Sulu, appointed a Special Committee to investigate what were by then the conspicuous economic disparities between Philippine Muslims and Christians generated by Christian migration to the Muslim South.^[1] The committee, headed by Domocao Alonto, a prominent Muslim congressman from Lanao, selected a familiar object of study—"the Moro Problem"—and adopted the colonial discourse of Muslim backwardness and guided integration in its report. The Moro Problem was redefined to accord with the ideology of the postcolonial Philippine nation, referring now to "nothing less than the problem of integrating into the Philippine body politic the Muslim population of the country, and the problem of inculcating into their minds that they are Filipinos and that this Government is their own and that they are part of it" (Congress of the Philippines, House of Representatives, 1955, quoted in Gowing 1979, 208). The Congressional Report acknowledged the poverty plaguing Philippine Muslims but ignored the evidence linking the relative impoverishment of Muslims to Christian in-migration and blamed only Muslim culture for Muslim poverty: "In their ignorance and in their trend toward religious fanaticism, the Muslims are sadly wanting in the advantages of normal health and social factors and functions" (Congress of the Philippines, House of Representatives, 1955, quoted in Glang 1969, 35).^[2]

The Special Committee recommended the creation of a Commission on National Integration (CNI). A 1957 act of Congress established the commission, authorizing it to "effectuate in a more rapid and complete

manner the economic, social, moral and political advancement of the Non-Christian Filipinos" (Congress of the Philippines, House of Representatives, 1957, Republic Act 1888, quoted in Gowing 1979, 208). One of the few substantive accomplishments of the Commission on National Integration was to provide scholarships for a significant number of Muslim students to attend universities in Manila. Majul reports that the number of CNI scholars increased from 109 in 1958 to 1,210 in 1967 (1979, 191–92). While political maneuvering ensured that many of the CNI scholarships went to the children of datus, the scholarship program also represented the first opportunity for considerable numbers of non-elite Muslims to attend universities.

The total number of Muslim college graduates for the period between 1958 and 1967 was 1,391, many of whom received professional degrees. Although that number represents only about 16 percent of all CNI scholars, it is nonetheless a notable increase over the handful of Muslim students (probably never more than ten to fifteen per year) graduated from Manila universities during the late colonial and immediate postcolonial period. The CNI graduates, most of them from nonelite backgrounds, gradually constituted themselves as a new professional elite in their home communities. The shared experiences of the more than 8,000 Muslim CNI scholars studying in Manila between 1958 and 1967 also profoundly affected Muslim politics after 1968. Much of their political education was gained outside university lecture halls from observing and participating in campus political activism. They also experienced firsthand the magnitude of popular anti-Muslim bias in the national capital and, after the election of Ferdinand Marcos as president of the Philippines in 1965, witnessed an increasing antagonism toward Muslims by the same Christian-dominated state that had provided them scholarships.

In 1968 an event came to light that politically aroused the Muslim student community in Manila. In March of that year the newly elected Senator Benigno Aquino told the Senate of a report that Christian army officers had shot dead a number of Muslim recruits on the island of Corregidor in Manila Bay. According to a survivor who had told his story to Aquino, 180 Muslim trainees had been recruited in 1967 as part of a covert force connected with the Philippine Army and administered by the Civil Affairs Office. The trainees had reportedly protested the conditions of their training and demanded to be allowed to return to their homes. In reaction, at least 14 of them (and perhaps as many as 28) were executed without investigation or trial (George

1980; Majul 1985). Despite four separate congressional and military inquiries, and a great deal of press interest, the true purpose of the clandestine "Jabidah Project" and the reason for the execution of the Muslim recruits have never been made clear. The most widely repeated interpretation was that the project was part of a Marcos administration plan to invade the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo by a force from Sulu that could not be directly linked with the Philippine Army.^[3]

The so-called Jabidah Massacre had a galvanizing effect on the Muslim student community in Manila. Throughout the year, Muslim students demonstrated against the Jabidah killings. The Jabidah protests transformed one campus activist in particular into a Muslim separatist. Nur Misuari was a Tausug from Sulu and the son of a very poor family. Supported by a CNI scholarship, he had graduated from the University of the Philippines and by 1968 was teaching there in the Department of Political Science. Misuari had been active in progressive student politics for some time but, shortly before 1968, had begun to focus his efforts on issues specific to Philippine Muslims.^[4] In 1967 he helped to found the Muslim Nationalist League and became editor of its official publication, the Philippine Muslim News (George 1980). Misuari has stated that it was the Jabidah protests that inspired his political career and motivated his rise to the leadership of the Muslim separatist movement (Majul 1985, 45). In a 1968 editorial in the official organ of the Muslim Nationalist League, he wrote: "Separatism is a costly and painful process and few ordinary mortals are prepared to pay the price. But this world has been a witness time and again to the division of certain countries into smaller ones. For, political division is a matter which is not fully within the control of men, nor yet a sole product of their whims and caprices. It is in fact mainly the creation of the actual conditions in which men find themselves. It is the creation of the system" (quoted in George 1980, 200). The rhetoric employed by Misuari here in one of his very first published statements on Muslim separatism borrows the language of revolutionary Marxism and reflects the political influences of the university-based activism of that period. Significantly, Misuari has redirected the revolutionary rhetoric of the Manila student movement (and of student movements elsewhere in that period) toward the goal of Muslim nationalism rather than adopting a specifically Islamic discourse.

That the assimilationist efforts of the Commission on National Integration should yield in ten years' time a Western-educated revolutionary

poised to lead a Muslim nationalist rebellion against the Philippine state is as illuminating as it is ironic. It presents a characteristic instance of the genesis of ethnonationalism—a sweeping political phenomenon for which Brackette Williams has recently offered an innovative reading. According to Williams, any adequate analysis of ethnonationalism must treat ethnic differentiation as "an aspect of a total system of stratification"(1989, 421). In such a system, the most powerful members of any particular nation-state "determine who, among persons of different 'tribal pasts,' is trustworthy and loyal to the political unit" (1989, 419).

Following Williams's schema, in the new Philippine republic only Christian Filipinos were deemed entirely trustworthy and thereby considered "non-ethnic" despite the quite considerable ethnolinguistic diversity found among them. Non-Christian Filipinos (comprising Muslim-Filipinos and "Tribal-Filipinos"), deemed culturally suspect, were labeled "ethnic" (by assigning them hyphenated designators) and regarded as socially and morally substandard. Muslim-Filipinos, comprising the largest single category of non-Christians, were judged to be dangerously disloyal because of their long history of armed enmity toward Philippine Christians.

The distrust and devaluation of Muslims by the Christians who controlled the Philippine state is evidenced in the 1954 report of the Special Committee, which depicts Muslims as socially problematic by nature—mired in poverty as a result of their own ignorance and religious fanaticism. Official expenditures aimed at integrating them into the "body politic" were thought necessary precisely because Muslims were viewed as "holding the nation back" (B. Williams 1989, 435). It is worth noting that while the legislation establishing the Commission on National Integration authorized the commission to institute a broad spectrum of development programs and services ranging from irrigation projects to legal aid to road building, the only component to receive more than token funding was the scholarship program for higher education. In this respect, the postcolonial Philippine government continued the practice established during the American period of "developing" Philippine Muslims not by providing them the material resources of the West but by endeavoring to remove (by the selective provision of university educations) the cultural disabilities perceived to be impeding their advancement and, indirectly, that of the Philippine nation.

An unintended consequence of the CNI scholarships was the creation of a group of young Muslim intellectuals schooled in political ac-

tivism and able to articulate the frustrations of a much larger group of Muslim students disaffected by their encounters with Christian cultural hegemony in Manila. Nur Misuari and other Western-educated leaders of the separatist movement that began to take form in 1968 had inherited an ethnicized Muslim-Filipino identity from their colonial-era predecessors and experienced its contradictions in their frustrated attempts at integration in the national capital. The Jabidah Massacre provided both provocation and metaphor. Philippine Muslims who had volunteered to serve the republic had been deceived, exploited, and treacherously murdered by Christian agents of the state. Efforts by Muslims to contribute to the Philippine nation as Muslims were repaid with abuse and betrayal. Misuari and other young Muslim activists saw only one proportionate response: Philippine Muslims had to "separate themselves from those against whom they [were] judged unfavorably and . . . in relation to whom they [were] materially disadvantaged"—they must proclaim themselves a "new people" (B. Williams 1989, 429). The separatist intellectuals rejected their ascribed hyphenated identities as Muslim-Filipinos (Muslim citizens of the Philippine nation) and proclaimed themselves "Moros." In a bold piece of semantic alchemy they appropriated and transfigured a colonial and Christian pejorative to denominate the citizens of their newly imagined nation. Henceforth, "Moro" would denote the descendants of those unsubjugated peoples whom the Spaniards and their colonized subjects feared and distrusted.

Middle Eastern Educations and the Formation of an Islamic Counterelite

Before tracing further the path of Nur Misuari and his fellow Manilabased intellectuals toward Muslim separatism, the genesis of a second group of Philippine Muslim intellectuals needs exploring.

Between 1955 and 1978 the government of Egypt, as part of the pan-Islamic programs of Gamel Abdul Nasser, granted more than two hundred scholarships to young Philippine Muslims, the great majority of whom studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo (Mastura 1984; Majul 1979; George 1980). In the previous few years, some graduates of al-Azhar (mostly Indonesians) had been sent to teach in the Muslim Philippines, but it was only with Nasser's ascent to power in 1954 that significant numbers of Philippine Muslim students were able to undertake advanced studies at Islamic institutions in the Middle East.^[5] A number of those students were scions of datu families, but many others

were not, and the scholarships thus became another avenue for ordinary Muslim students to gain higher educations. Al-Azhar graduates returned to the Philippines after overseas stays averaging eight years, and most became religious teachers in their home provinces. While far fewer Philippine Muslims studied in Cairo than in Manila, the influence of Islamic graduates was out of proportion to their numbers. That influence initially took a political-symbolic form as al-Azhar graduates became involved in the leadership of the separatist movement. It was much later before the presence of indigenous Islamic teachers had a commensurate effect on popular Islamic consciousness in the Philippines. As in Manila, the Philippine Muslim student community in Cairo became a center for the development of activism in pursuit of social and political change in the Muslim Philippines, but, unlike that in Manila, student activism among Philippine Muslims in Cairo was explicitly and exclusively Islamic in character.^[6]

One of the most politically inclined of the Cairo students was Hashim Salamat, a Magindanaon from Cotabato. Salamat, who left for Cairo in 1959, was related to Congressman Pendatun but his family was neither wealthy nor prominent. Salamat was a member of the fourth cohort of Cotabato Muslims to receive scholarships to al-Azhar. He returned to Cotabato in 1967 and obtained a position as provincial librarian. However, his real interest, as he stated in a 1977 interview, was to work to reform Muslim political and religious affairs in the province at least partly by participating in politics. Salamat and his al-Azhar cohort were frustrated in their attempts at political participation because, as he said, "the old Muslim traditional and political leaders wouldn't even allow us to get near them" (quoted in Mindanao Cross , February 12, 1977). Salamat eventually became associated with established Muslim politicians and, more consequentially, with Nur Misuari through a most unlikely intermediary, Datu Udtug Matalam, the recently retired governor of Cotabato and renowned champion of Muslim-Christian cooperation.^[7]

Datu Udtug Matalam and the Muslim Independence Movement

In May of 1968 the establishment of the Muslim Independence Movement (MIM) was announced by its founder and chairman, the newly retired governor of Cotabato, Datu Udtug Matalam. The MIM had as its formal goals the secession of Muslims "from the Republic of the

Philippines in order to establish an Islamic State" (MIM Manifesto quoted in Glang 1969, 103). A contemporaneous editorial in the Cotabato City newspaper (Mindanao Cross , June 1, 1968) noted the irony in the fact that Datu Udtug, the former governor of the province and prominent advocate of Muslim-Christian political harmony in the region, had now founded a Muslim secessionist movement. The proximate cause for the sudden political transformation of Datu Udtug may be found in the circumstances of his retirement from the governor's office. In 1967, Datu Udtug became a political casualty of the national party politics about which he cared so little. Following the lead of his brother-in-law, Congressman Salipada Pendatun, Datu Udtug had been aligned for some years with the Liberalista Party. After an exceedingly bitter presidential election campaign in 1965, won by the Nacionalista Party challenger Ferdinand Marcos, Marcos led a Nacionalista push to unseat Liberalista officeholders in the 1967 local elections. One of the targeted provinces was Cotabato, previously considered the unassailable territory of Pendatun and Matalam. Marcos personally selected a Muslim Nacionalista candidate for the governorship of Cotabato, Datu Abdulla Sangki. Sangki was a member of the Ampatuan clan,^[8] which was closely aligned with the Sinsuats, the persistent political rivals of Pendatun and Matalam. The Sinsuats and Ampatuans had, that year, affiliated en masse with the Nacionalistas.

Datu Udtug, who disdained electioneering, was unimpressed by this challenge, but Pendatun, a modern campaigner, took it quite seriously. Presumably, he was also aware that were a Nacionalista to attain the governorship of Cotabato, his own position as congressman for the province would become untenable. Pendatun persuaded the sixty-eight-year-old Udtug to withdraw from the election by offering to run for governor himself in his stead.^[9] Pendatun chose Simeon Datumanong, a political protégé, as his running mate for vice-governor. Datumanong was a member of the Ampatuan clan and was chosen at least partly as a counterweight to the Nacionalista candidate. Pendatun won the governor's race by a slender margin but decided not to give up his seat in Congress after all. He never took the oath of office and Datumanong automatically became governor.

Datu Udtug thus found himself in 1968 involuntarily retired from public office and far from the reins of provincial power, which were now held by a youngster closely related to his political foes. He reportedly felt abused by his old comrade Pendatun and more disgusted than ever with national party politics. His resentment was intensified as the

result of a separate incident. In August of 1967 his eldest son, Tuting, was shot and killed by an off-duty agent of the National Bureau of Investigation. Datu Udtug was anguished at this loss and then deeply offended when none of the newly elected provincial officials (with the exception of Pendatun) visited him to pay their condolences. The compounded frustration of Datu Udtug at his sudden powerlessness apparently led to his willingness to attempt a dramatic gesture to seek renewed respect and recognition. In his effort to be once again taken seriously he was successful beyond his expectations, at least in the short term.

Datu Udtug's MIM was never a popular secessionist movement. Its only public political actions were pronouncements in the form of manifestos and declarations of policy publicized in the national and international press and disseminated to politicians and Muslim leaders in the Philippines and abroad. There was little apparent public support for the secessionist goals of the movement among ordinary Muslims (George 1980, 152; McAmis 1974), and Datu Udtug himself eventually retreated publicly from his initial positions.^[10] Nevertheless, the published statements of the Muslim Independence Movement were taken more seriously by Cotabato Christians, the national media, and the state than they were by Cotabato Muslims and, evidently, more seriously than intended by Datu Udtug. In the months following the initial manifesto, the national press carried headlines announcing that "War Brews in Cotabato." Christian settlers left some towns in anticipation of a Muslim uprising, and the national government transferred combat-ready troops to the province (George 1980, 135).^[11]

The manifestos of the MIM also drew the prompt attention of those who controlled the state. President Marcos met with Datu Udtug publicly in October of 1968. Marcos acknowledged Datu Udtug's self-proclaimed role as "the leader of the more than four million Muslims in the Philippines," presented him with his gold watch as a token of friendship, and appointed him presidential adviser on Muslim affairs (Mindanao News-Bulletin October 25, 1968, quoted in Glang 1969, 28–29). The apprehension induced by Datu Udtug's essentially notional movement appears clearly related to its timing, coming just six weeks after the disclosure of the Jabidah Massacre. From the perspective of Manila, MIM appeared to be "a spontaneous southern backlash against the notorious Jabidah shooting" (George 1980, 133). Despite appearances, and notwithstanding Datu Udtug's implications to the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Jabidah Massacre was less

an impetus for Datu Udtug's movement than were his own personal motivations. As George (1980) has argued, any provincial Muslim reaction to the Jabidah Massacre would have emanated first from Sulu, the home province of the recruits, rather than from Cotabato. By referring to the incident, Datu Udtug was, in all likelihood, merely making use of media attention and Muslim anger generated by Jabidah, for personal ends.

The Muslim Independence Movement did, however, serve purposes and produce consequences quite apart from the intentions or actions of Datu Udtug. The MIM acted as a lightning rod, attracting mostly young, educated Muslims either disenchanted with or debarred from Muslim electoral politics. For a period of time Datu Udtug's homestead at Pagalungan again became a center of political activity.^[12] Udtug himself played a very limited role in MIM activities after his initial efforts. He appeared content with the recognition he had garnered by signing his name to manifestos and spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1983 at the age of eighty-four, farming his land.

While credible information on the covert political activities associated with the Muslim Independence Movement is hard to come by, enough data are available to indicate how the MIM, though never a broad-based movement, became a vehicle for the convergence of old and new, established and anti-establishment, Muslim interests. In 1969, Hashim Salamat established an organization, Nurul Islam, to promote Islamic renewal in Cotabato. By 1970 Salamat had aligned himself and his organization with the MIM. Presumably, Salamat was attracted to the MIM by Datu Udtug's break with party politics, his call for an Islamic state, and his willingness to associate himself with young and idealistic men. It is known that by early 1969, Nur Misuari had also made the acquaintance of Datu Udtug and, more important, had made common cause with the two most prominent Liberalista Muslim politicians of the day, Salipada Pendatun of Cotabato and Rashid Lucman of Lanao. Misuari most likely had cemented his relationship with these men as a result of the Jabidah protests in Manila, which received significant support from opposition Muslim politicians.

Misuari became most closely associated with Rashid Lucman, a prominent Muslim congressman and Pendatun's counterpart in Lanao. Lucman was also closely acquainted with Tun Mustapha, the chief minister of the Malaysian federal state of Sabah. Mustapha had been angry with the Philippine government since it first announced a claim to Sabah. Mustapha was also an ethnic Tausug with many relatives

living in Sulu and had become incensed both at the recruitment of Sulu Muslims to invade Sabah and at their subsequent treatment at the hands of Philippine agents (Noble 1983). The Jabidah Massacre served to confirm his worst suspicions of Philippine intentions. At some point in early 1969 a decision was made within this group to initiate a training program for Muslim guerrilla fighters. In late 1969, ninety young Muslim recruits, most of them Lucman's fellow Maranaos from Lanao—but also Magindanaons and Tausugs—began military training in the forests of Malaysia by professional instructors (Mercado 1984; Noble 1983). Nur Misuari was among the group, as was the son of Rashid Lucman and eight young Magindanaons. Although there is no evidence that Datu Udtug actively participated in the decision to train Muslim fighters, and although only a small percentage of the trainees were Magindanaon, this training has been referred to as an MIM program (see Mercado 1984; Noble 1983). The training was evidently financed as well as sanctioned by the government of Malaysia through the intercession of Tun Mustapha.

Misuari's intentions in taking part in (and probably initiating—see George 1980) the training program are rather easily discernible. It is apparent from his 1968 editorial quoted above that he had already accepted the inevitability of armed struggle to achieve Muslim secession. Given those convictions, Misuari's association with established Muslim politicians was pragmatic. With no resources of his own, and having disengaged himself from the campus-based Marxist nationalist opposition, he turned to those apparently sympathetic Muslims who had their own resources and, more important, access to potentially significant quantities of external resources.

The intentions of the Liberalista Congressmen, Pendatun and Lucman—both of whom publicly denied any association with the MIM or guerrilla training—are much less easy to discern. There is no evidence to suggest that their secret sponsorship of an armed force was a defensive response to any immediate threat to their persons, or even to their positions. It was more likely conceived as a new tactic in the evolving national party politics of the period. Both men found themselves in 1969 aligned as bitter foes of an increasingly aggressive national president who was actively strengthening (with money and arms) their Nacionalista Muslim rivals in their home provinces—in Cotabato, the Sinsuat-Ampatuan alliance; and in Lanao, Congressman All Dimaporo. Pendatun and Lucman most probably saw the creation of a welltrained armed force, whose instruction and supplies they did not have

to finance and whose existence they could deny, as a useful new resource in a mixed political strategy.

The Magindanaon recruits returned from Malaysia to Cotabato to train additional young men and form part of the nucleus of the MIM youth section—the only dynamic segment of the MIM. The rest of the active core was composed of Hashim Salamat and some of his fellow al-Azhar graduates. Datu Udtug pledged to finance arms purchases but, according to Datu Adil, spent most of the allocated funds on farm improvements.

Although never a popular secessionist movement, the MIM did have political consequence as both a notion and a provocation. By articulating the idea of Muslim separatism at an opportune time it galvanized a new non-datu and anti-establishment group into political action while offering established Muslim politicians a novel weapon for opposing an unusually aggressive ruling party.

The focus thus far has been entirely on the formation of new Muslim political elites and their relation to the beginnings of a movement for political separation from the Philippine republic. To understand how ordinary Muslims became inclined toward armed separatism requires the investigation of an unprecedented string of violent incidents in Cotabato beginning in 1970.

Sectarian Violence in Cotabato

The communal violence that swept across Cotabato in early 1970 was a diverse and complex phenomenon with multiple causes.^[13] Written and oral reports of the violent incidents confirm that they were overwhelmingly sectarian in nature—that is, they consisted of attacks by armed Christian or Muslim gangs on (often unarmed) members of the opposite ethnoreligious category. Most commonly, Christian gangs assaulted Muslim farmers and burnt their houses, and Muslim gangs retaliated in kind against Christian farmers. Although the ethnoreligious strife never occurred on a provincewide scale—instead exploding in particular localities or municipalities for fairly specific reasons and usually for a limited duration—the scale of destruction was catastrophic. In one two-month stretch, the Mindanao Cross reported more than 137 people killed. A government report published in the Mindanao Cross (November 20, 1971) cited 305 Muslims and 269 Christians killed, and almost five hundred homes burned, in the period between January and October of 1971. The actual number was likely

much higher as many incidents were not reported (McAmis 1974). By the end of 1971, the number of refugees within Mindanao forced from their home communities by the violence was estimated at more than 100,000 (Majul 1985; McAmis 1974).

While the preponderance of violent clashes was sectarian in appearance, the antagonisms that underlay them, when closely analyzed, were not solely (or even predominantly) ethnoreligious in nature. The three major lines of dissension in the region seem to have been principally class-based rather than ethnically motivated. These were, first, conflict between ordinary Christian settlers and Muslim elites; second, conflict between ordinary Muslims and Christian elites—often representatives of the state; and third, intra-elite conflict—usually, but not always, between Muslim and Christian elites. Although many, if not most, of the actual clashes occurred between ordinary Muslims and Christians, an exploration of four major outbreaks indicates that the antagonisms that motivated the violence were of one of the above three types, and that often those initiating the violence were in the employ of one or another elite group.

Episode 1: "Toothpick" and the Tiruray Resistance

In March of 1970 in the small town of Upi in the Tiruray Highlands south of Cotabato City, an eruption of violence occurred that is generally regarded as having opened a two-year period of intense sectarian conflict in Cotabato (see, e.g., George 1980; McAmis 1974; Stewart 1977). The instigators in this case were an armed band of Tiruray led by Feliciano Luces, alias "Toothpick," a Christian Ilonggo settler.^[14] They clashed initially with an armed Muslim gang led by Disumimba Rashid, an already notorious outlaw. Toothpick himself went on to attain quasi-legendary status as a ferocious and fanatical anti-Muslim (see, e.g., George 1980). It is impossible to assess the accuracy of this image, but it is important to note that, at the outset, newspaper reports indicate that Toothpick's attacks were neither simply anti-Muslim nor generally perceived that way.

Native Tiruray who had taken up plow farming and Ilocano farmers who had migrated to the Upi Valley in the 1920s had coexisted peacefully for some time. In the postwar period they were joined by Ilonggo homesteaders and, increasingly, by Magindanaons (Schlegel 1979). Since independence, the municipality of Upi had been under the

political control of the Sinsuat family. By 1970, the tensions produced by postwar immigration to Upi were released in violent responses to perceived exploitation. Early newspaper accounts and letters to the editor portrayed Toothpick's armed exploits as those of a Robin Hood defending poor Tiruray, Christians, and Muslims from Muslim outlaws in the employ of wealthy and powerful men. Newspaper reports suggest two causes for the outbreak of violence in Upi: "landgrabbing" and extortions by elites. Influential Muslims and Christians had reportedly titled a good deal of occupied land in the area and were using Muslim outlaw bands to gain possession by scaring off the inhabitants. In addition, Muslim datus had been coercing tribute from Christian and Tiruray villagers. The Tiruray band led by Toothpick was originally organized as a response to both those provocations. Later, Toothpick apparently was employed by a Liberalista Christian politician in a violent but unsuccessful attempt to oust the Sinsuats from power in Upi. The anti-Muslim reputation of Toothpick seems to have derived from those efforts.

Episode 2: Provincial Elections, Ilaga Terror, and the Manili Massacre

The next outbreak of sectarian violence occurred in the Cotabato Valley proper in late 1970, and by mid-1971 had encompassed eighteen municipalities in its northeastern portion (McAmis 1974, 46).^[15] This conflict was unrelated to that in Upi; it was also much more costly in lives and property damage, with scores of farms burned and farmers killed, and thousands made refugees. The violence was largely limited to new settlements in Christian majority areas. A newspaper editorial early in 1971 blamed the violence on "Ilonggo fanatics new to the area" (Mindanao Cross , February, 20, 1971). These were the so-called Ilaga, or "Rats"—armed bands of Christians, usually Ilonggos, that terrorized Muslims. The single most shocking act committed by the Ilaga—and the one that was to reverberate the farthest—was the massacre of sixty-five men, women, and children in a mosque in the village of Manill in June of 1971.

There has been a good deal of speculative writing pointing to a group of Ilonggo Christian politicians as the founders, masterminds, or sponsors of the Ilaga (see, e.g., George 1980; Majul 1985; Mercado 1984). These suppositions are beset by certain logical problems^[16] as

well as by an almost complete lack of reliable information. However, there is evidence to indicate that certain politicians gave some support, and reason to assume it would be in their interest to do so.

Local elections were held in 1971, with the governorship once more being contested. President Marcos again handpicked the Nacionalista candidate for governor—this time Carlos Cajelo, an officer in the Philippine Constabulary. Marcos had apparently come to the conclusion that no Muslim candidate could topple Pendatun's Liberalista machine in Cotabato, so he chose a Christian candidate, presumably aware that in order to win, Cajelo would need to draw virtually all Christian votes away from the incumbent, Simeon Datumanong.

Cajelo, who was still the active commander of the Philippine Constabulary of the province at the start of the campaign period, faced formidable problems in his bid. First, Datumanong was a moderately popular governor and Cotabato Christians were accustomed to voting for Muslim gubernatorial candidates. Second, Cajelo was a relative newcomer to the province and was not well known. Although an Ilonggo himself, he could not even automatically rely on Ilonggo support. A number of Ilonggo politicians and voters resented Cajelo as a presumptuous newcomer and had pledged their support to a popular veteran Ilonggo mayor who was running for governor as an independent Nacionalista candidate. Any development that moved Christians away from Muslims, consolidated Christian strongholds, and roused Christian interest in a strong law-and-order candidate was in the interest of Cajelo and those Nacionalista mayors who supported him (most, apparently, did not); and although as recent provincial commander of the Philippine Constabulary he had ample access to armed force, the existence of a deniable, freelance force able to expedite such a development would also have been in his interest.

No firm evidence exists to support the suggestion that the official Nacionalista candidate for governor encouraged or supported Ilaga terror. The Liberalista Congressman Pendatun was, however, clearly of that opinion when in an October 1971 speech he blamed the violence in the province on Christian politicians trying to "wrest control of the province from Muslims" and warned his audience that the Ilaga would disturb "bailiwicks of the Liberalista Party one week before the elections" (quoted in Mindanao Cross , October 30, 1971). It may also be noted that Carlos Cajelo won the governor's race by a comfortable margin, that some municipalities that had always supported a Muslim

for governor voted in favor of Cajelo,^[17] and that Ilaga violence ended suddenly soon after the election.

Episode 3: Repudiating the Ampatuans

In a series of incidents that began in mid-1971, the Ampatuans were virtually driven out of most of their home municipality, Ampatuan, by armed Christian bands. Although Nacionalistas and strong supporters of Marcos, the Ampatuan clan suffered significant losses during this period. The Ampatuan datus were widely regarded as the most abusive toward Christian settlers. They reportedly sold a great deal of forested land to Christian homesteaders, allowed them to clear it, then drove them away. They were said to have extorted rice and money from Christian farmers, ruling their municipality as a private fief. Muslim farmers reportedly fared little better than their Christian counterparts and were taxed and fined excessively, in 1971, Christian victims of the Ampatuans retaliated. The Ampatuans responded in force and the municipality became a battle zone for some months. As in Northeast Cotabato, however, it was the ordinary unarmed Muslims of Ampatuan municipality who suffered most at the hands of Christian bands.

Episode 4: "The Battle of Buldun"

In August 1971, in the town of Buldun in the Iranun highlands to the north of the Cotabato Valley, fighting broke out between the indigenous Muslim inhabitants and Christian loggers for reasons not made clear in reports of the incident. After some Christian loggers were killed in retaliation for the shooting death of a local Muslim official, Buldun was fortified by local Muslims in expectation of a counterattack. A detachment of the Philippine Constabulary advancing on the town was fired upon and its commanding officer killed. The impression spread that those behind the barricades in Buldun were well armed and well organized and thus members of the "Blackshirts," the rumored military arm of the MIM. The Philippine Army arrived in battalion strength and Buldun was bombarded by artillery for four days, after which an ultimatum to surrender was issued to the townspeople. By this time, however, the national media had relayed the story of Buldun around the country, and public outcry forced the intervention of President Marcos, who personally negotiated with the mayor of

Buldun and averted the almost certain destruction of the town (George 1980; Majul 1985; McAmis 1974).

The Aims and Consequences of Sectarian Violence

These four episodes are meant to illustrate some notable aspects of the period of sectarian violence in Cotabato and throughout the southern Philippines.^[18] While in all four episodes it was Christians who were the primary instigators of violence, in two of them—at Upi and Ampatuan—the initial targets of the attacks were specific Muslim datus aligned with the Marcos administration. In the other two episodes—at Manili and Buldun—the primary targets were ordinary Muslims. The dissimilar nature of this initial targeting suggests that the apparently sectarian violence was neither uniformly structured nor monocausal. The first type consisted of more or less spontaneous uprisings by ordinary Christian settlers (or Tiruray farmers) aimed at oppressive Muslim datus. By 1970, the Sinsuats and the Ampatuans were the two most powerful Muslim political families in Cotabato. That their close connections with the ruling national party did not deter the Christian attacks upon them suggests strongly that their attackers were not simply agents engaged in a Marcos administration master plan to control the province. The hundreds of ordinary Muslims who were spillover victims of these two episodes of violence certainly experienced the attacks as sectarian in nature but also, one may imagine, directed blame at the datus who drew the Christian fury down upon them.

The second form of sectarian violence consisted of organized assaults on Muslim communities. The episodes of violence in the Cotabato Valley and Buldun point to the conspicuously non-neutral attitudes and activities of representatives of the state. At no time during the sectarian conflict in Cotabato did the Philippine Constabulary or Army assault a Christian armed camp the way they did Buldun. Further, when Muslim noncombatants were attacked by Ilaga gangs, the Philippine constabulary was invariably slow in coming to their defense. Most distressing to Cotabato Muslims was the ample circumstantial evidence implicating the Philippine Constabulary in Ilaga terror. An often-cited example was the fact that Manili, where the Ilaga massacred scores of Muslim civilians, was under formal constabulary control at the time of the massacre. The incidents in Buldun occurred just two months after the Manili massacre, and it is understandable that the Muslim inhabitants of Buldun reacted to the arrival of the Philippine

Constabulary with armed apprehension. By the end of 1971, with the man who was commander of the provincial constabulary at the time of the Manili massacre and the battle of Buldun now the governor-elect, Cotabato Muslims had good cause for intense distrust of the provincial and national administrations.

No documentary evidence exists to suggest that the apparent collusion of agents of the state with armed Christian terrorists was part of a political strategy formulated by the Marcos government. Nevertheless, incidents such as the Manili massacre and the battle of Buldun left many with the impression that such a "genocidal" state policy existed. That impression was consequential in at least three ways. First, the perception of a government-endorsed anti-Muslim policy reached the international Muslim community and led to protests and other activities on behalf of Philippine Muslims. Most important for subsequent events, that impression was gained by Libyan Premier Muammar Kadaffi, who heard news of the Manili massacre from a BBC radio broadcast (Majul 1985). In the United Nations, Kadaffi charged the Philippine government with genocide and threatened to give aid to Philippine Muslims (George 1980; Noble 1976). Evidence suggests that Rashid Lucman was the principal link at this time with both Tun Mustapha and Muammar Kadaffi.^[19]

Second, the perceived anti-Muslim strategy of the state also spurred the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), an underground organization founded by Nur Misuari. According to Mercado (1984), in mid-1971 Misuari held an organizational meeting in Zamboanga that was attended by the most committed of the ninety original Malaysia trainees. At that meeting, certain traditional leaders, such as Datu Udtug, were repudiated for their opportunism, and the MNLF was organized with Nur Misuari as its chairman. Its goal was the liberation of the homeland of Philippine Muslims from the Philippine state. Although the MIM under Datu Udtug was rejected at the meeting, some traditional leaders, most notably former congressman Rashid Lucman, were approved for leadership positions in the MNLF.

Finally, the biased and aggressive actions of the Philippine Constabulary and Army left the ordinary Muslims of Cotabato with the lasting impression that those who held state power not only had little interest in protecting them but actively meant them harm. Associated with this impression was the developing realization that datu officeholders were either unable or unwilling to protect them against the hostile forces of the state. That knowledge, and the consequent search for new

protectors, conditioned the response of ordinary Muslims to the next major episode of state aggression.

Martial Law and the Bangsamoro Rebellion

When President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, the principal reasons offered for its imposition were the existence of armed conflict between Muslims and Christians and a Muslim "secessionist movement" in the Philippine South (Marcos 1972). The information available from that period provides scant justification for such an emergency measure. Sectarian violence was on the wane, with no serious incidents reported in the previous six months. There had also been no public pronouncements or activities by Datu Udtug and the MIM for more than a year.^[20] The imposition of martial law was, in fact, the proximate cause, not the consequence, of an armed Muslim insurgency against the Philippine state, and it led to an unprecedented level of violence and disruption in Cotabato and all of Muslim Mindanao. By 1977, the government estimated that there were as many as million displaced civilians in the South and at least two hundred thousand additional refugees who had fled to Sabah (Mercado 1984, 162).

The martial law regime immediately moved to collect all unauthorized guns in the Philippines by ordering the surrender of civilian firearms. Three weeks after declaring martial law, President Marcos announced that he was prepared to commit an entire division of troops to the South to "annihilate" outlaws if all guns were not turned in by the 25th of October. A few days before the deadline, Marawi City, in the province of Lanao, was attacked by more than four hundred armed Maranaos. They held strategic positions in the city for three days until overpowered by superior army forces.^[21] One week later, fighting began between Muslim rebels and government soldiers in Cotabato, and in mid-November Marcos sent thousands of troops to Mindanao (Mercado 1984). By late November, fierce clashes between government units and separatist rebels were occurring throughout the South (Schlegel 1978).

The Activation of the Moro National Liberation Front

Martial law, with its ban on political groups, caused the dissolution of such aboveground Muslim organizations as the MIM and Nurul Islam, and the activation of the underground Moro National Liberation

Front. By the end of 1972, the developing Muslim insurgency began to coalesce under its banner. The MNLF never controlled all of the rebels fighting the government and was, in fact, a loosely knit group, with the borders between those fighters who were members of, aligned with, or exterior to the MNLF never very clear. Nevertheless, the MNLF was the principal, and by far the most important, armed separatist organization, largely because it became the major supplier of arms and ideological support for the insurgency. One of the reasons for the loosely knit character of the MNLF was the fact that virtually its entire core leadership was, by 1973, operating from outside the country, far from local commanders. Nur Misuari, with a large reward offered for his capture, escaped from Manila to the South after martial law was declared, from there to Sabah, then on to Libya (George 1980; Majul 1985).

The MNLF was formally organized into two parallel structures: one political, the other military. The political wing was composed of a central committee, various bureaus, and a system of provincial and village committees. The military wing—the Bangsa Moro Army—had an overall field marshal, provincial field marshals, and zone commanders at the municipality level (Noble 1976). The chairman of the central committee, almost all of whose members were in Tripoli by 1974, was Nur Misuari. The vice-chairman, by 1974, was Hashim Salamat. In his 1977 interview, Salamat states that he and his companions were forced underground when, immediately after martial law, Datu Udtug signed an "affidavit" against them and turned it over to the Philippine Army (Mindanao Cross , February 12, 1977). A short while later, his group joined forces with Nur Misuari, and Salamat then made his way to Tripoli. Abulkhayr Alonto, member of a prominent Maranao family, was overall field commander of the Bangsa Moro Army and one of the few top leaders to remain in the Philippines. Although all estimates remain only rough guesses, the MNLF probably came to have between ten thousand and thirty thousand men in its military branch^[22] (Noble 1976; Majul 1985). The authority over rebel fighters enjoyed by the MNLF derived at least partly from its access to critical resources, particularly weapons, from outside the Philippines. Before the removal from power of Tun Mustapha in late 1975, the primary conduit of weapons was by boat from Sabah (Noble 1976). The weapons arrived in Sabah from Libya and other Muslim nations. The MNLF also controlled political and military training, propaganda, and diplomatic contacts with Muslim, primarily Arab, states. Before considering the

ideological and diplomatic strategies of the MNLF, a description of the armed struggle in Cotabato is in order.

The Insurgency in Cotabato

Cotabato was the site for some of the earliest and most extensive armed collisions between government troops and Muslim insurgents. Despite the defensive and seemingly spontaneous nature of the earliest clashes, the insurgency in Cotabato quickly took on the appearance of coordination and centralized planning. In early 1973, in a "blitz-like operation" rebels simultaneously attacked at least eight municipalities in Cotabato and controlled them for some time (Abat 1993, 37). Cotabato City and its airport complex were ringed by MNLF-controlled areas and Datu Adil remembers that for lack of traffic, "grass grew on the main highway" linking the city and airport. After recovering from their shock at these coordinated assaults, Philippine Army commanders began to retake rebel-held areas by making use of their superior weaponry. In some cases, army counteroffensives were particularly brutal—reminiscent of the slaughters committed by the American army seventy years earlier. In a two-month siege of Tran, a rebel mountain stronghold in the Tiruray Highlands, hundreds of Muslim civilians were reportedly killed in repeated air bombardments.^[23]

Both rebel and Muslim civilian casualties were heavy throughout 1973 due to a lack of training on the part of rebels and their reliance on the traditional but questionable strategy of creating fixed bases and attempting to hold them with relatively large contingents of fighters (Ahmad 1982). As a consequence, the rebels conceded the advantage of mobility to the army, which moved its troops in helicopters and troop carriers. In Tran, Reina Regente, and elsewhere, the Philippine Army conducted siege operations that left the rebels outmaneuvered and outgunned (Abat 1993; Ahmad 1982). By early 1974, however, the rebels had switched to a war of mobility and surprise, using guerrilla tactics and taking advantage of their familiarity with local marshes and jungles. Philippine Army strategy gradually shifted in response. In January of 1974 the Pulangi River was closed to all civilian traffic to impede the movements of Muslim guerrillas, and two months later all of the waterways in the newly created Maguindanao Province were closed by the military.^[24] The government also gradually increased the number of military personnel deployed in Cotabato, and it adopted such Vietnam War tactics as the creation of strategic hamlets, new sur-

7.
Cotabato MNLF fighters in the field, circa 1975. Although the Philippine
military closed all major rivers in Cotabato to civilian traffic in 1974 to impede
guerrilla activities, MNLF fighters were able to move largely unhindered on the
innumerable small waterways of the region. As pictured, MNLF fighters were
typically quite young, and many wore their hair long in keeping with the
fashion of the period. Photograph by Larry Johnson.

veillance techniques, and assassination squads (Ahmad 1982). The rebels, nonetheless, fared better than they had in 1973. Casualties lightened and morale increased. By February 1975 they were steadily harassing army positions at the edge of Cotabato City and shelling the city with mortars. Rice production in the region fell to less than 20 percent of normal yield (Kiefer 1987). Threatening the city, however, proved to be the maximum extent of rebel military capabilities, and by 1976 the war in Cotabato was stalemated, with neither side able to inflict a critical defeat on the other.

Rebel Leadership in Cotabato

Precise information on the organizational structure of rebel resistance in Cotabato is unavailable, but it is possible to discern some general outlines. Rebel leadership revolved around the MNLF but there also existed some independent or mostly autonomous commanders. The top MNLF leadership in the province was overwhelmingly young, most of them college students or recent college graduates when they joined the rebellion. These were, for the most part, the former members of the MIM youth section, both al-Azhar-graduated clerics and college-educated students or professionals. A number of them attended

classes at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City just prior to martial law. Some were members of prominent datu families, others were not.

Local rebel commanders were of two general types. Some were young and relatively well trained, having learned military skills in the army, the ROTC, or in the MNLF's Malaysian training camps. Others were former outlaws, possessing the two requisites for insurgency—guns and the inclination to use them against agents of the state—and finding common cause with the antigovernment stand of the MNLF. Two of the best-known rebel commanders in the province, Datu Ali Sansaluna and Disumimba Rashid (the same man who fought against the Tiruray), were outlaws as well as sons of nonprominent datu families before joining the MNLF. Both had acquired popular (if not entirely deserved) reputations as social bandits prior to becoming rebels. Datu Ali attained a high position in the provincial command of the MNLF but was assassinated as the result of an internal power struggle in 1974. Disumimba surrendered personally to President Marcos in 1980 for the promised sum of 1 million pesos (see chapter 8).

Support from elite noncombatants is also somewhat difficult to assess. Some established datus supported the rebels clandestinely, a few did so openly; most, as we shall see, did not support them. There was one new elite group that provided quite substantial financial, logistical, and even military support to the rebels. They were the former cigarette smugglers of the Cotabato coast. Those engaged in cigarette smuggling had generally prospered from the trade, and the most successful of them had shifted fairly easily to legal enterprises, investing in maritime transportation, fishing, urban real estate, or agricultural land. When the insurgency erupted, the former smugglers were positioned, as well as inclined, to aid the rebels. For one, they possessed the resources, skills, and contacts to smuggle arms from Sabah through Sulu to Cotabato. They were also well positioned to help rebel commanders in Cotabato coordinate activities with fellow rebel leaders in Sulu and those in self-imposed exile in Sabah. Very few of the former smugglers had been involved with national party politics and most were strongly opposed to the Philippine state, and to Ferdinand Marcos in particular, because of the forced curtailment of smuggling. In addition, they had no strong ties with the prominent datu families of the province, most of whom regarded them as parvenus. A number of the former smugglers provided very substantial support for the separatist rebellion in Cotabato in the form of supplies, shelter, transportation, and smug-

gling services. Many former smugglers and, more commonly, sons of smugglers also fought actively in the rebellion.

Magindanaon Datus and the Rebellion

Individual members of prominent datu families were faced with severe political constraints during the rebellion. If they supported the martial law government they risked rebel retaliation and the loss of political legitimacy. If they supported the rebels, they invited government reprisals and the forfeiture of their political positions. Given those pressures, the established Muslim political elite of Cotabato responded to the insurgency in three general ways. One segment reacted by denouncing the rebels outright and pledging loyalty to the martial law state. This group was composed, first, of Nacionalista datus such as the Sinsuats and Ampatuans. At the first indication of insurgency in Cotabato in early 1973, the Sinsuat family issued a "manifesto" in which they denied any part in the rebellion, pledged their loyalty to President Marcos and the republic, and predicted the "ultimate triumph of the military forces" (Mindanao Cross , March 31, 1973). However, that sort of response was also publicly made by a number of their former Liberalista foes, including the two most prominent ones. Datu Udtug met with President Marcos in early January 1973, well before any concerted rebel activity in Cotabato, to pledge his cooperation with the martial law regime. A few months later, after the insurgency had intensified, Datu Udtug publicly denounced the rebels, expressed ignorance of their motives, and stated that he was "against them" because they did "not listen to and cooperate with the datus of Lanao, Sulu, and Cotabato" (quoted in Mindanao Cross , March 31, 1973). Udtug made similar public statements throughout the rebellion, charging the rebels as outlaws and condemning "unscrupulous" Islamic clerics associated with the rebellion.

While the response of Datu Udtug was motivated (at least in part) by his loss once again of influence and authority, the reaction of Salipada Pendatun illustrates the more ambivalent reaction of an opposition Muslim politician left suddenly with neither power nor a familiar forum. Pendatun remained in Manila (and spent some time in the United States) for two years after the declaration of martial law. In late 1973, in his one public statement on the rebellion published in Cotabato, he urged Muslim support for the martial law regime. In late

1974 he returned to Cotabato, he announced, in order to "get involved in the restoration of peace and order in Maguindanao" (quoted in Mindanao Cross , November 9, 1974). Pendatun arranged a series of meetings with city leaders soon after his arrival to try to stop the fighting, which had become quite intense and close to the city. The major result of those meetings was a joint statement calling for, among other things, the withdrawal of the military from Cotabato. A few weeks later, four grenades were thrown into the Pendatun compound in Cotabato City and a short time after that Pendatun left the country for the Middle East. There he joined with Rashid Lucman and together they offered their assistance to Nur Misuari, who created an advisory council for them to head (George 1980, 262). By 1977, however, the two former congressmen were attempting to take control of the MNLF away from Misuari. Not succeeding at that, they formed their own organization, the Bangsa Moro Liberation Organization (BMLO), based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The BMLO took precedence over the MNLF, stated Pendatun and Lucman, because their early support of Misuari had been crucial for the formation of the MNLF. Notwithstanding their claims, the BMLO garnered little support in the Philippines and almost none in Arab capitals (Majul 1985). In 1980, Pendatun returned to the Philippines and publicly pledged his services to President Marcos and the martial law government. Within weeks he was back in Cotabato making speeches where he "reminded the Muslims of the many good things done for them by President Marcos" (Mindanao Cross , January 10, 1981).

A second group of datus, mostly young and educated at Manila universities, were less obviously but more actively compliant to the martial law regime. These individuals professed sympathy with many of the grievances of the rebels but rejected violence or secession as legitimate means to redress those wrongs. They accepted government money or took government positions and, as sponsored intellectuals or government officials, cooperated with the martial law state.

A third segment chose active rebellion. Those who initially chose this course were often the junior members of datu families, many the sons or younger brothers of those who followed the first two strategies. Some became local field commanders and others attained high positions in the Kutawato Revolutionary Committee, the provincial leadership body of the MNLF. The most notable feature of the traditional elite leadership of the rebellion in Cotabato was its rapid rate of defection. Datu commanders surrendered earlier and in greater num-

bers than any other rebel leaders. The defections of the most prominent datu commanders appear directly linked to the efforts of other datus (often close relatives of the former) working with the martial law regime. Datu Guiwan Mastura, the nominal leader of a segment of the Tran insurgents and the former mayor of Lebak, was the first prominent datu commander to surrender. In June of 1973, Datu Guiwan and twelve other ostensible rebels—all prominent datus—personally surrendered to President Marcos. Their surrender reportedly was arranged by Simeon Datumanong, who, a few months later, was appointed by Marcos as governor of the newly created province of Maguindanao (Damaso 1983). In March 1975, Peping Candao, an MNLF commander and son of a prominent Muslim politician in Cotabato City, surrendered with his men. One year following his return, his brother, Zacaria Candao, was appointed governor of Maguindanao Province to replace Datumanong who had taken a higher position with the government. In January 1976, the director of the political bureau of the Kutawato Revolutionary Committee defected to the government, and one month later his older brother became executive director of the Regional Commission for the newly created Region 12, a multiprovince governmental division covering central Mindanao. By 1980, virtually all members of the traditional elite had abandoned the rebellion. Most former outlaws had also surrendered for cash rewards, thus leaving, in the words of a current rebel commander, "mostly the poor remaining" to carry on the armed revolt.^[25]

The War of Representations

As noted above, the ideological and diplomatic strategies of the MNLF were as important for directing the insurgency as were its military efforts. The diplomatic contest between the MNLF and the Marcos administration is the best-documented element of the war and has received prominent and comprehensive treatment in the literature on the rebellion (see, e.g., Majul 1985; Noble 1983; George 1980). For that reason, and because diplomatic maneuvers bore little direct relation to events in Cotabato, I will treat them only superficially. The ideological struggle of the rebellion, which impinged more immediately on the course of the fighting in Cotabato, has received less careful attention.

Although specifically religious appeals in the form of calls for Islamic renewal and jihad (struggle in defense of the faith) played an instrumental role at various points in the Bangsamoro Rebellion

(especially in Cotabato, see below), the central theme employed by the MNLF was a cultural-historical appeal to the concept of Philippine Muslim nationalism. That theme was articulated by Nur Misuari in a 1977 speech given in Algeria: "In keeping with the desires of the broad masses of our people, the MNLF adopted a political programme which called for the complete liberation of our people and national homeland from all forms and vestiges of Filipino colonialism, to ensure our people's freedom and the preservation of our Islamic and indigenous culture and civilization" (quoted in Majul 1985, 139).

The rebellion as conceived by Misuari was a nationalist struggle that had as its goal the establishment of a single independent homeland for the three major and ten minor ethnolinguistic groups that comprise the Muslim peoples of the Philippines. It was therefore necessary to place primary emphasis on preexisting bases for political unity and political competence—foundations that transcended ethnolinguistic boundaries. The search for the fundament of a modern Philippine Muslim nation motivated the development of the myth of Morohood—the account of a concerted, persistent Muslim resistance to Spanish aggression. The term "Bangsamoro" ("Moro nation") was a distillation of the core nationalist theme.^[26] "Bangsa," which may be glossed as "descent group," "tribe," or "race" as well as "nation" (Fleischman et al. 1981, 10), is a term connoting descent, corporateness, and shared heritage. "Moro" was, as we have seen, the term used by Spanish colonizers to refer to the local Muslim societies that resisted Spanish attempts to establish hegemony in the southern Philippines. That term survived as a pejorative among Christian Filipinos primarily through the cultural institution of the "moro-moro," a form of folk theater in which Christian heroes battled Moro villains, who were depicted as cruel and barbarous pirates. Rebel ideologues, led by Nur Misuari, transformed the epithet into a positive symbol of national identity. Moros were depicted as the first nationalists of the Philippines, an entity whose very name denotes a colonized people. "Moro not Filipino" became a slogan of the rebellion. Moro culture heroes such as Sultan Kudarat were rediscovered and the unity and continuity of the Moro anticolonial struggle reestablished. The Moro nation was imagined as a sovereign republic composed of the descendants of those freedom fighters and their supporters.^[27]

A logical correlate of the Muslim nationalist appeal was renewed emphasis on traditional Philippine Muslim political institutions, particularly the long-defunct sultanates, which were, it was pointed out, the

first indigenous states in the Philippines. Because their aim was to focus attention on a glorious past, rebel leaders were understandably ambivalent about the living descendants of the rulers who led past Moro resistance to alien domination. Although both Misuari and Salamat, in their pre-MNLF days, had held as a top priority the reform or elimination of datu leadership, the official ideology of the MNLF hardly addressed issues of internal social transformation. In official communiqués, contemporary datus were chided for slipping from the high standards of their heroic forefathers, but in the process their status as hereditary leaders was reaffirmed. The existence of aristocratic, autocratic leadership was retained, at least implicitly, as an intrinsic component of Moro political culture.

There were practical considerations in the hesitation to criticize the institution of datuship. First, the MNLF, especially in the early days, relied on the help of certain prominent traditional leaders and, even though relatively little assistance was forthcoming, could not afford to risk its loss through political condemnation. Second, strong criticism of traditional leadership might have alienated some ordinary Muslims, especially in areas, such as Lanao, where traditional datuship (in a form in which power was distributed much more diffusely than in Cotabato) was still very strong. Third, a call for the abolition of the datu system would have undercut the rebellion's symbolic claims to continuity with past anticolonial struggles and, moreover, would have sustained the critical opinions of Christians who advanced the view that the "datu system" was the single cause of Muslim underdevelopment.^[28]

In the war of representations, the MNLF faced a formidable foe in Ferdinand Marcos, a consummate manipulator of political symbols. With the assistance of certain collaborating datus, Marcos quickly moved to ensure that the central symbols of the Bangsamoro Rebellion were dislodged from the exclusive control of the MNLF and employed for the purpose of advancing the legitimacy of the martial law regime among Muslims.

President Marcos realized fairly early on that an exclusively repressive response to the rebellion in the South was far too costly financially and politically. By 1975 he had committed the bulk of his armed forces to counter the rebellion and had three-fourths of the Philippine Army deployed in the South. The annual budget of the Armed Forces of the Philippines had increased fivefold, to approximately $325 million, since martial law was declared (Ahmad 1982; Noble 1976). Military casualties were estimated to exceed one hundred per month in periods

of intense fighting. Most of the 1973 graduating class of the Philippine Military Academy was reportedly killed in the fighting (Noble 1976). There was a high level of dissension in the army and growing dissatisfaction with the military draft (Ahmad 1982; Noble 1976). Equally worrisome was the threatened suspension of oil deliveries to the Philippines from Arab oil producers should Philippine policy toward its Muslims not take a visibly more benevolent turn (Noble 1976).

Marcos quickly augmented the mailed fist with the outstretched hand of friendship to right-minded Muslims. He began a two-pronged campaign to convince Muslims in the Philippines and, more important, heads of Muslim states abroad, of his sincere desire to solve the "Moro problem." As one measure he began a highly publicized program of economic development for Muslim Mindanao. Plans included reconstruction projects to repair war damage, infrastructural improvements, relief and welfare projects, and the resettlement of refugees. The only projects actually implemented in Cotabato were airport, road, and harbor improvements—projects which, not incidentally, benefited the Philippine military more directly than ordinary Muslims (Noble 1976).

The second component of the government's public relations campaign was a concerted effort to symbolize its good intentions toward Muslims. A large mosque was built in the center of Manila, important Muslim holy days were officially recognized by the government, and President Marcos himself claimed Muslims as his ancestors (Majul 1985). With the assistance of cooperating Muslim scholars, an Islamic Studies Institute was established at the University of the Philippines and a code of Muslim personal laws was drafted and approved by the president, though never effectuated while he held power. As part of the symbolic initiatives of the government, Moro culture heroes, originally resurrected by Muslim separatists, were incorporated into the national pantheon. Statues were erected, streets renamed, and national holidays declared by the government in honor of the apical ancestors of Moro nationalism.

In line with these iconic endeavors, collaborating datus and the martial law regime cooperated to enhance one another's claims to legitimacy among the Muslim population through the symbolic trappings of datuship. The frequency of investitures of traditional titles increased steadily throughout the martial law period. In 1974, at the height of the armed rebellion, the Christian military commander of Central Mindanao, Brigadier General Fortunato Abat, was "adopted as a son in the Sultanate of Maguindanao" by the collaborating datus

of Cotabato (Abat 1993, 98). The culmination of this series of proclamations was the 1977 investiture of President Ferdinand Marcos himself as Sultan Tinamuman (the Sultan Who Has Fulfilled the Prophecies) in a ceremony sponsored by the combined royal houses of Lanao.

Equivalent efforts were exerted by the government to delegitimize the MNLF and its leaders. From the outset of the insurgency the government labeled MNLF rebels as communists and "Maoist Muslims" (Imelda Marcos quoted in Schlegel 1978). Repeated efforts were made to associate Nur Misuari with the Communist Party of the Philippines in order to convince Muslims at home and abroad that he was a Marxist-Leninist disguised as a Muslim (Majul 1985). A related strategy promoted returned rebel commanders as legitimate spokesmen not only for Philippine Muslims in general but for the MNLF. These men, many of them from datu families, had surrendered to the government in exchange for incentives that included large cash payments, timber concessions or other special export licenses, and government positions. In July 1975, to counter MNLF advances on the diplomatic front, the government convened a highly publicized "peace talks" conference in Zamboanga. Two hundred or so "rebels," all of whom had already come to terms with the regime, were invited. The participants rejected Misuari as their leader and pledged loyalty to the government. A number of them were then ceremoniously sworn in as local officials or inducted into the regular army (Majul 1985).

In 1977, partly as a result of this skillful orchestration of political illusions, the martial law regime was able to gain and maintain the upper hand in the contest of international diplomacy. In the last weeks of 1976, representatives of the Philippine government and the MNLF met in Tripoli, Libya, to negotiate an end to the war in the South. Those meetings culminated with an agreement on a cease-fire and tentative terms for a peace settlement (Noble 1983). That peace settlement, known as the Tripoli Agreement, "provided the general principles for Muslim autonomy in the Philippine South" (Majul 1985, 73).

The Tripoli Agreement was initially hailed as a breakthrough in the Mindanao war by all sides—the government, the MNLF, the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, and Libya, the latter two having jointly sponsored the Tripoli conference. The agreement seemed an enormous diplomatic victory for the MNLF, for it implicitly recognized the MNLF as the official representative of Philippine Muslims and accorded it belligerent state status. Further, the terms of the agreement were quite favorable to MNLF demands. The cease-fire went into

effect in late January 1977 and was generally successful for about nine months. Talks were begun in February on the implementation of the peace settlement and very soon broke down over widely divergent interpretations of the key terms of the agreement. Marcos then proceeded to "implement" the Tripoli Agreement on his own terms, principally by creating two special "autonomous regions," one for Central Mindanao and the other for Sulu. The Marcos administration also benefited substantially from the signing of the Tripoli Agreement; it provided a much needed breathing spell from the economic drain of the war and eased the considerable diplomatic pressure for settlement coming from the Middle East. It is doubtful that President Marcos ever sincerely intended to implement the agreement as signed. The unilateral actions of the Marcos administration provoked angry responses from both the MNLF and the Islamic Conference (which still stopped short of imposing economic sanctions).

Although the cease-fire collapsed in much of the South before the year was out, the fighting never again approached the level of intensity experienced before 1976. After the signing of the agreement, the rate of defections from the MNLF accelerated, its support from foreign sources was reduced, and dissension intensified in its top ranks. The MNLF threat to the martial law state remained significant but was no longer an immediate one.

The "autonomous" regional governments devised by the Marcos administration in the South have been aptly described as "essentially hollow, and productive of cynicism, frustration, and resentment" (Noble 1983, 49). The governing bodies of the nominally autonomous regions were cosmetic creations with no real legislative authority and no independent operating budget. They were headed by martial law collaborators and rebel defectors, many of whom were datus and all of whom were absent from the province more often than not, usually in Manila pursuing separate careers or looking after business interests. By 1983, the regional governments had developed a layer of bureaucracy that employed a number of college-educated Muslims, but the great majority of Muslims were completely unaffected by the new regional administrations.

Despite the tremendous political upheaval of the 1970s, the structure of Muslim politics in 1980 looked remarkably similar to that in 1968: formal political power in Muslim Cotabato (now politically circumscribed as Maguindanao Province) remained in the hands of those most closely tied to the powers that controlled the central state. Those datus

who had collaborated most energetically with the martial law regime had, for the most part, retained and in some cases enlarged their hold on Muslim politics in Cotabato. Appearances notwithstanding, Muslim politics in Cotabato, as well as political relations between the Philippine state and its Muslim minority, had been thoroughly transformed. A Muslim counterelite had emerged to condemn datu collaboration and defy state control. The separatist leaders had been outmaneuvered but not defeated in their war with the martial law government. The insurgents who supported them, though depleted by defections, remained under arms in considerable numbers in remote camps. Of equal significance, the actions of representatives of the Marcos regime before and during the war turned many ordinary Muslim civilians against the Philippine government and its datu collaborators and inclined them toward the separatists who claimed to be fighting on their behalf. The next chapter examines the Bangsamoro Rebellion from the perspective of its ordinary adherents. The chapter following chronicles the reemergence of a unified and reinvigorated Muslim counterelite to lead the unarmed struggle for Muslim autonomy and challenge directly the authority of datus to command Cotabato Muslims.