GMA's Gift to Bin Laden on September 11: A Jihadi Homeland in Mindanao

SPEAKING to reporters in Sydney, Australia after the APEC Conference, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced the beginning of a "pilot program" to issue Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title to "the Muslim community" as part of "confidence building measures" with the terrorist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

(Juliet Labog reports for PDI)
SYDNEY (VIA PLDT) -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo plans to award certificates of ancestral domain to Muslim communities even while the peace talks are ongoing between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

In an interview with reporters Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit, Ms Arroyo said the “pilot implementation” of ancestral domain was part of the government’s confidence-building mechanism to encourage the peace talks with the MILF.

“I want to give certificates of ancestral domain to a Muslim community so we can see that it works with them as well,” she said.

The President said this was in line with the existing policy of giving ancestral domain certificates to indigenous peoples.

“We already have a regulatory framework for ancestral domain. I was the one who authored that bill when I was a senator,” she said. “I’m not aware of the ancestral domain title given to Muslims as a tribe. [But] it’s given to indigenous peoples.”

Ms Arroyo said the certificates could be awarded to Muslim communities even before a final peace agreement is signed with the MILF and without any need for a plebiscite.

Notice that the President insists this move does not "need a plebiscite" -- even if the Indigenous People's Rights Act certainly says it does!

With the President intent on making her legacy to peace by breaking the laws of the Republic, naturally the confidence of said terrorist organization, or should I say, "partner in the peace process" has indeed been raised to elation. MILF Hails Arroyo Vow to Resume Peace Talks and the statements of both the Philippine Govt and the MILF's spokesmen should dispel any question in our minds that the "ancestral domain" talk is really about Philippine Sovereign Territory being handed over to the Maguindanao and Sulu warlords:

Chief government negotiator Rodolfo Garcia was quoted as saying that Manila is offering a new formula to resolve the ancestral domain issue.

He said he will present the new formula once the talks resume anytime.

Iqbal said he was surprised the government is again changing its stance on the territorial issue.

He said he was afraid the government might change what has been agreed upon. "Our panel wanted to find out what is this new formula," he said.

Jaafar said the early resumption of the peace process would good for everyone.

"Almost everybody is waiting for the resumption, we are waiting, peace advocates are waiting, representatives from Japanese, Canada, Libya and Malaysia are waiting, the businessmen in the ARMM [Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao] and the country are waiting, everybody is waiting for this because it is for all of us," Jaafar said.

One wonders WHO ELSE is waiting for this Allah-sent gift to the Global Jihad.

In the meantime of course, NOT A SINGLE SUSPECT in the July 10 ambush killing of 14 Philippine Marines near Tipo-tipo Basilan--admitted to and bragged about by the leadership of that self-same MILF--has been arrested. Instead, the self-same "chief Peace Negotiator" General Rodolfo Garcia led in preventing the service of Basilan Judge Leo Principe's 130 arrest warrants against his "partners in the peace process", got their Joint Independent Investigating Committee to declare that four Abu Sayyaf suspects did the beheadings, and then launched an "all out war" on the Abu Sayyaf. The result as I said is ZERO suspects arrested for the murder and beheadings of now 57 Philippine Military service men.

So now, neither has justice been done for the murdered and mutilated Marines, nor for their grieving families, but their killers and decapitators are to be rewarded with 1000 villages in the Pulangi River Basin of Mindanao (where the MILF used to hide Dulmatin and Umar Patek and where they will soon again be hosting many delegations from South Waziristan and the Jemaah Islamiyah's Bali bomberos). There is also talk that the government will abrogate the 1996 peace accord with the Moro NATIONAL Liberation Front of Nur Misuari and give the ARMM over to the newest partner in the peace talks, the MNLF's mortal enemies in the MILF. That will surely drive the MNLF to change its name to the NMLF (NEXT Moro Liberation Front) which will launch the next round of peace talks and all out war but with a major difference--this is now the Global Jihad and not the old Moro rebellions.

Mong Palatino, the voice of the CPP NPA at Global Voices Online, gooses the "all out war" in Mindanao in a recent post, using the old trick of confounding "peace or war" with law enforcement. My comment on that thread follows:

“Peace and Order” is a very different problem, in my opinion, than “War Or Peace” in the context of the Moro rebellions of southern Philippines. Roughly speaking the preferred solutions to the two problems respectively are “Law Enforcement” and “Diplomacy”.

Both are central to our concerns, but they are also central to our inability to resolve the Mindanao situation when the solutions to one of them are expected to apply to the other. This confounding, I can show is part of the reason for the unending violence there.

I think that the tasks of law enforcement should continue regardless of the progress or lack of it in the peace talks and other negotiations that comprise diplomacy as a long term solution to the question of war or peace between the Govt and the Moro rebels.

So, whenever a judge of the Republic issues an arrest warrant for a criminal suspect in a serious crime, all of the people, whether Moro or not, are entitled to an expectation that the police will serve the warrant,arrest the suspect and process them through the justice system.

If it should happen, as it did with the Marines who were ambushed and some beheaded on July 10 in Tipo tipo Basilan, that a case is related to the activities of Moro rebels (MILF/MNLF) or rogue elements or terrorist bandit gangs like the Abu Sayyaf, there ought to be no undue interference or micromanagement by peace negotiators into the normal workings of Law Enforcement authorities in a given province, town, city or other locality in the country.

It is simply amazing to me that none of the suspects in those crimes have been served the arrest warrants issued against them six weeks ago by Basilan Judge Leo Principe. But not inexplicable, for indeed, it was the hemming and hawing and the backstgage areglo going on with their counterparts in the MILF Ceasefire [sic!] Committee, that Jess Dureza and Co. got the efforts to simply serve those warrants delayed, until finally of course, an “all-out war” was called anyway, but suspiciously only against the Abu Sayyaf, not the “partners it the peace process”.

But nota bene, both the peace talks and the so called “all out war” are really the two main implements (peace or war) of the Diplomatic efforts to settle with the MILF rebels(who want to supplant the MNLF, the ARMM, all that Nur Misuari stuff). As such they enmeshed in a complex multinational negotiation driven by Politics with a cap P, involving, Malaysia, Dar Us Salaam and the OIC.

The needs of diplomacy are different from the needs of law enforcement, and ought not prevent each other’s goals.

But insofar as all sides surely agree that “There can be no peace without justice.” all must unite and support the idea that the activities of law enforcement ought to be regular and unimpeded irregardless of what is happening on the Diplomatic negotiating table.

Because of this, the needs of Law Enforcement have a just claim of Priority over those of Diplomacy. They should not impede each other, but in cases of conflict, the order of priority of satisfying needs, belongs to the Rule of Law, not the Rule of Talk.

The policies and actions of the Philippine Government should be carefully examined by all of our allies, especially the United States and Australia, as well as the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, because all will be directly affected by this.

Here for example are the insightful comments of the Belmont Club interpreting last week's video from Osama bin Laden:

Here's a link to the transcript of Osama Bin Laden's message to the American people. Two things stand out. The first is his claim to victory in a theater (Iraq) where by all accounts his forces have been worsted and the only insurgent force with a plausible claim to victory is not al-Qaeda's but Iran's. Secondly, his talking points, with their references to the Global Warming, taxes, Noam Chomsky, etc. almost seem to suggest an inversion. It's almost as if Osama the Muslim, not the infidel, has converted. From the tone of his remarks, Osama no longer speaks to the American people as the potentate of an unstoppable international apocalyptic movement, but rather as someone, who if you were ignorant of his true identity, might just as well be a spokesman for the Muslim wing of a Western political party.

Does that mean Osama has joined "us" or does it mean that some of "us" have joined Osama?

Well, I don't know about OBL joining us, but I do know that some of us have definitely joined him.

Read more than a hundred Philippine Commentaries on terrorism and Mindanao
including:

Ancestral Domain or Bangsamorostan?

The Human Security Act of 2007 (Anti Terrorism Law of the Philippines)

Understanding the Definition of Terrorism Under the Human Security Act

We Are All Abu Sayyaf Now

Laughable Textbooks Errors in Crucial Supreme Court Decisions

Are Tagalogs, Pampangos, Ilocanos, Cebuanos "Indigneous Peoples" of the Philippines?


click to zoom

UPDATE: Is Osama bin Laden in Indonesia or the Philippines?

RICHARD CLARKE, formerly a counter-terrorism adviser for the White House spoke to ABC News and has an intersting speculation involving OBL's black beard which is prominently obvious in both of the video tapes of the Al Qaeda leader released in the last week.

The jihadist Web site announced the tape with a banner, showing a still picture of bin Laden, now 50 years old, looking fit with a full beard of dark black hair, no gray at all.

"It does look oddly like he is wearing a false beard," Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official and now ABC News consultant, said. "If we go back to the tape three years, he had a very white beard. This looks like a phony beard that has been passed on."

The "phony beard" may be an important clue as to where bin Laden is hiding, according to Clarke.

"One place where a beard would stand out would be southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia," Clarke told ABC News. "No one's thought he was there, but that is an environment where most men, Muslim men don't have beards."

While this logic has some appeal, I think that even clean-shaven, bin Laden's HEIGHT would stick out in most of these countries, where six footers are a rarity.

An alternative explanation appeals to me more as closer to the possible truth: that it is a sign of war in the Salufi sect of Islam to which OBL is said to belong.