Word: mindanao
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September 1 marked the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting and reflection. But on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, wracked for the past month by bloody fighting between Muslim separatists and government troops, what should have been a peaceful day instead brought a new horror. That afternoon, a bomb exploded aboard a packed passenger bus in Digos City, killing six and wounding at least 34. According to a witness report, the powerful blast nearly tore off the roof of the bus, decapitating one passenger...
Philippines police connect the bombing to al-Khobar, a shadowy extortion gang that has carried out numerous attacks against public buses in southern Mindanao in recent years. Police Chief Inspector Querubin L. Manalang Jr. said the group called the bus company late last week threatening new attacks if their demands for payment weren't met. He said nails and other debris recovered from the site resemble bomb material used in a July attack that killed one bus passenger and wounded 35. "It was the signature bomb of the al-Kohbar group," Manalang said...
...toward a political solution. On Aug. 4, negotiators for the Philippine government and the main insurgent group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), struck an agreement that would have set boundaries for an autonomous Muslim homeland, and, hopefully, dampened the insurgency. Yet, as has happened so often before in Mindanao, the center did not hold. After a challenge by Christian leaders in the minority-Muslim region who objected to the inclusion of some villages in the proposed Muslim area, the Philippines Supreme Court halted signing of the agreement...
According to Abhoud Syed Lingga, executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies in Mindanao and an expert on the conflict, the court's intervention set off a reaction among more radical MILF fighters. "When the Supreme Court interferes in an issue that is mainly political, it's a drawback," Lingga says. "It's a disincentive to insurgents to stop fighting and come back to the negotiating table...
Less than a week after the court's decision, MILF insurgents attacked 15 towns on Aug. 11 in Mindanao's North Cotabato province, killing at least nine people. Around 130,000 people were displaced by the North Cotabato violence, according the World Food Program, which is supplying refugees in the area. Fighting soon spread to neighboring areas, driven, says Lingga, by frustration with the political deadlock in peace negotiations...