The 6th Infantry Division had lost hundreds of combatants in so many encounters with forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The Army’s 6th Infantry Division (ID) stands out among military outfits in Mindanao in supporting the government-Moro peace process.
The 6th Infantry Division (ID) had lost hundreds of combatants in so many encounters with forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Central Mindanao in the past two decades.
The division covers the neighboring Central Mindanao provinces of North Cotabato, Lanao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao, and the cities of Tacurong and Cotabato, all known bastions of the MILF.
Thanks to four officers, the now retired Gens. Anthony Alcantara, Ariel Bernardo and Rey Ardo and 6th ID’s incumbent chief, Major Gen. Edmund Pangilinan, the division evolved into what is most known now as “AFP,” meaning Army for peace, from what used to be the country’s most combat-exhausted unit.
The 6th ID even drew flak from groups hostile to the current government-MILF peace process for not providing artillery and air support to police commandos that figured on January 25 an 11-hour firefight with armed groups in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
The policemen were attacked while moving out from a barangay there after having killed in a dawn raid Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, most known as Marwan.
At least 44 operatives of the police’s elite Special Action Force, 17 MILF guerillas and five innocent civilians were killed in the hostilities, which shook the entire nation to its core and, as a consequence, mired the congressional approval for the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
The bill, which is pending in Congress, is the enabling measure for the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with an MILF-led Bangsamoro entity, based on the group’s final compact with government, the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.
For most local peace advocates, among them Christian religious leaders, the 6th ID’s having adhered to the 1997 government-MILF Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities in handling the January 25 situation in Mamasapano prevented escalation of hostilities that could have derailed Malacañang’s diplomatic dealings with the rebel group.
“My position then, as commander of 6th ID was based on wisdom and peace ideals,” Pangilinan told reporters from across Central Mindanao during an Army-media fellowship gathering on June 12 at Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao.
Except for what is now known as the infamous “Mamasapano incident” there was not a single encounter between MILF forces and the 6th ID and its component brigades and battalions from late 2009 until January 25.
“The January 25 `Mamasapano incident’ was, in fact, an encounter between the police and rebels in three areas in Mamasapano, not an Army-MILF encounter,” said a local official in Mamasapano in south of Maguindanao.
The conversion of the 6th ID into a peace advocacy unit was partly ushered in by the Nov. 23, 2009 “Maguindanao Massacre” involving members of the then feared Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao and their private militias.
The now detained patriarch of the clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr., had used units of 6th ID to fight groups in the MILF he had wanted to drive away from the 11 towns in the second district of Maguindanao.
During Ampatuan’s incumbency as Maguindanao governor, a tenure that lasted from 1998 to 2008, commanders of 6th ID were labeled as his “puppets” for condoning blatant violations of GPH-MILF ceasefire protocols his private militias perpetrated.
It was Alcantara and Bernardo, his deputy, who first reinvented the 6th ID from something that was so isolated from the local communities and hostile to the MILF into a peace advocacy unit.
Alcantara and Bernardo assumed as 6th ID commander and assistant commander, respectively, in January 2010 following a revamp in the division leadership structure as a consequence of the Maguindanao Massacre, which left 58 people dead, more than half of them journalist, and led to the incarceration of leaders of the Ampatuan clan.
Among Alcantara and Bernardo’s first major peace-building stride in tandem was declaring Camp Siongco, the command center of 6th ID, open 24 hours to all people with security problems, regardless of their faith and ethnicity.
They also both restrained 6th ID’s component units from siding with local officials locked in clan wars owing to the involvement in most conflicts of active MILF commanders, many of them enemies of the Ampatuans.
Among the bitter adversaries of the Ampatuans then was Imam Ameril Ombra Kato, who was to become the founder and figurehead of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
Kato, then chief of the MILF’s 105th Base Command, and his men figured in more than a hundred encounters with the governor's military-backed private army.
“Those peace initiatives then catalyzed the restoration of public confidence on the 6th ID and improved the security climate in Maguindanao effectively," said Mayor Ramon Piang of Upi town southwest of the province.
An ethnic Teduray chieftain, Piang, as member of the government’s peace panel, helped craft the wealth and power-sharing component of the GPH-MILF October 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro.
Alcantara and Bernardo also dismantled the monopoly on candidacy of barangay officials in towns controlled by the Ampatuans to enable elders not hostile to the MILF to get to the helm of the leadership in barangays where rebel forces and combined members of the Ampatuan militia and soldiers had figured in bloody encounters.
“We eventually realized that over and above our security missions is a peace process we need to support for lasting peace to reign in these troubled lands,” said Sgt. Nelson Usog, a former photographer of 6th ID, now a civil-military relations operative of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion under the 10th Division.
Ardo, who took over the 6th ID’s top post following Alcantara’s completion of his term as division commander, was bolder in his peace maneuvers.
He immediately built linkages with members of Central Mindanao’s Islamic Darul Iftah (House of Opinions), comprised of Moro preachers trained in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, the World Islamic Call University in Libya, and other religious schools in the Middle East and Pakistan, to boost Muslim-Christian relations in the 6th ID’s area of coverage.
Ardo was the first ever Philippine Army general to attend peace dialogues, involving the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process and top leaders of the MILF in Camp Darapanan, the rebel group’s main headquarters, in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao.
Ardo and members of 6th ID’s command staff even repeatedly hosted Iftar, the first meal after day-long fast, for members of Islamic religious groups during the 2011 Ramadhan fasting season.
“That was something we have not witnessed before. The gesture made us realize that this secessionist conflict in Mindanao can easily be won through diplomatic means, not through firepower,” said Cpl. Benito Baer.
Baer, a Visayan, said Ardo’s examples inspired him to host, as a personal tradition now, at least one Iftar for his Muslim neighbors during the yearly 30-day Ramadhan season.
Ardo had also offered to provide free medication for Kato at 6th ID’s Camp Siongco Hospital when he learned that the rebel leader suffered a hypertensive stroke in 2011.
Kato declined the offer and went on to live as a paralytic until April this year.
Pangilinan said what his now retired superiors had started was worth continuing, especially their examples in settling family feuds involving big clans and rebel groups in Central Mindanao.
Pangilinan and Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu had facilitated the settlement of more than 20 clan wars in the province in recent months.
Mangudadatu had earlier settled more than 30 clan wars in the second district of Maguindanao with the help of Pangilinan, while he was still commander of the 601st Brigade in Tacurong City.
Pangilinan was the assistant commander for the Mindanao peace process of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City before he assumed as 6th ID chief last year.
“All of our current diplomatic efforts are being done for the good of the peace process,” Pangilinan said.
The 6th ID saw extensive combat actions during the time of past commanders, the now retired Generals Raul Urgello, Gregorio Camiling Jr., Genereso Senga, and Agustin Demaala.
Camiling was the commander of the division when soldiers liberated from MILF control in 2000 what was touted then as “impregnable” guerilla stronghold Camp Abubakar in the tri-boundary of Maguindanao’s Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns.
The celebrated fall of the camp, established in the early 1980s by the MILF’s founder, Egyptian-trained cleric Salamat Hashim, did not even weaken the group tactically.
Urgello, while at 6th ID, even taunted repeatedly the MILF in radio interviews every after an encounter anywhere in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.
Urgello had challenged the MILF then over the radio to bring on the fight and, in some occasions, warned its forces not to mess with 6th ID.
http://www.philstar.com/news-feature/2015/07/13/1476519/army-peace-throws-support-behind-gph-milf-deal
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