Until he suffered a stroke sometime in late November 2011,
and perhaps up to his last breath, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
(BIFF) founder, Ameril Umra Kato, remained loyal to the revolutionary aims of
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Interviewed by the Inquirer in his mountain lair in
Guindulungan, Maguindanao province, in August 2011, the then 65-year-old Kato
said the MILF, as an organization, embodied the ideals and vision of Moro
self-governance articulated by its founding chair, Salamat Hashim.
The bottom line, according to him, was the liberation of the
Moro people from economic and political bondage to the Philippine Republic. He
envisioned an independent state.
When asked to describe Salamat’s vision of self-governance,
Kato, however, didn’t use the word independence. Instead, he said two elements
were key to Moro liberation—Islamic governance and freedom of the Moro people
from political and economic control by Manila
“So long as the two elements are present” the Moro people
will be assuaged even if self-rule will not cover the entire Mindanao
and even if there’s no “total independence or separation,” he said.
The two key elements, he said, were what the botched
memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) provided for.
The MOA-AD, which was crafted under the administration of
now detained former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, proposed the
establishment of a “Moro homeland” and listed the principles of governing that
territory.
“I will support an agreement that completely embodies the
MOA-AD,” Kato said.
But while remaining loyal to the MILF’s cause, Kato strongly
criticized its leadership for, among others, engaging in “protracted
negotiations.” According to him, he lost hope the MILF would ever achieve its
revolutionary goals if the MILF leaders stuck to this strategy.
Kato criticized in partcular MILF chief Murad Ebrahim for
meeting President Benigno Aquino III in Tokyo
Kato admitted to having wanted to retaliate for what he
perceived to be mistakes of the MILF leadership.
He said the MILF Central Committee was wrong in the way it
treated him in connection with the yearlong war beginning in July 2008.
Kato’s grudges included the issuance of a suspension of
offensive military actions (Soma) by the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces
(BIAF), the armed wing of the MILF, in July 2009 as a reciprocal gesture to an
earlier declaration by Malacañang of a suspension of military operations
(Somo).
These ended the yearlong war popularly attributed to the
aborted signing of the landmark MOA-AD.
Kato noted that the BIAF’s Soma was effective in all areas
while the government’s Somo was selective, not applying to his command and that
of Abdullah “Commander Bravo” Macapaar and Aleem Sulayman Pangalian in Lanao
del Norte province.
He said the Soma meant that his command would not be able to
defend itself from government offensives, making him feel he was being “left
alone to be pursued relentlessly by government troops.”
In the wake of clashes in the provinces of North
Cotabato and Lanao del Norte, Macapaar, Pangalian and Kato were
the subject of massive hunts. Macapaar and Kato carried a P10-million reward
money each, while Pangalian had a P5-million prize on his head.
Kato said that being abandoned by the MILF leadership, he
and the other former MILF leaders were declared “lawless” by the government.
At least 82 warrants of arrest were issued against Kato for
alleged atrocities committed in North Cotabato
during the post-MOA-AD war.
In December 2009, Kato resigned as head of the MILF’s 105th
Base Command covering the strategic areas around the Liguasan Marsh that
include towns in North Cotabato and
Maguindanao.
He began setting up his own base inside the MILF’s Camp Omar
With the BIFF organized, Kato said he wanted it to be
recognized as a separate army of the MILF as he remained committed to MILF
ideals, a proposal rejected by MILF leaders. The MILF eventually expelled Kato
and his followers.
The MILF said it regretted that decision, though, but tagged
those who chose to be with the BIFF just BIAF bad eggs.
Kato also complained of being tagged a provocateur.
“Provoking war is difficult. We know that the government has
strong armed forces,” he said.
Kato said his group’s armed operations had often been
misunderstood.
In April 2008, Kato recalled coming to the aid of a rebel
leader in Aleosan, North Cotabato , who was
being harassed. The operation by Kato’s group was wrongly attributed to an
escalation by Kato of offensives following the defeat of the MOA-AD at the
Supreme Court.
With Kato out of the BIAF, he was free to pursue military
goals that, he said, the MILF had forbidden him from doing.
This involved retaking lands forcibly taken from families of
members of the MILF’s 105th Base Command by powerful families in Maguindanao.
When asked about this in 2011, a ranking MILF member
explained that while Kato’s goal of retaking the lands might be just, his
military actions put the peace negotiations in peril.
Such operations, the MILF official said, invited retaliation
not just from private armed groups being maintained by the land-grabbing
families but also from the Philippine Army that could further escalate the
fighting.
Kato was immobilized by the stroke, reducing him to being a
mere symbolic leader of the BIFF, which ran under the rotating leadership of
Kato’s deputies, Abu Misri Mama, Kagi Karialan and Muhammad Ali Tambako.
With Kato out of the public eye, the three tried hard but
failed to secure for the BIFF a revolutionary stature to rival the MILF’s.
Styling the group as a nascent movement for Moro
independence, the three led it in launching attacks against government
installations, the most serious of which was weeks before the Framework
Agreement on the Bangsamoro was signed in 2012.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/686414/kato-revolutionary-moro-loyalist
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