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.