MILF chief in historic visit to key army base

From the Gulf News (Nov 21): MILF chief in historic visit to key army base

The chief of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) paid an historic visit to the headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) even as government forces confirmed the killing of 10 members of the Daesh-linked Abu Sayyaf terror group during a clash on the island province of Sulu in Mindanao.

Mura Ebrahim, the MILF chairman who signed a peace agreement with the government, waxed nostalgic when he paraphrased the statement of Julius Caesar of “Veni, vidi, vici,” or “I came, I saw, I found friends and I made peace” following his visit on Monday at the AFP national headquarters Camp Aguinaldo in suburban Quezon City, Metro Manila.

Ebrahim recalled that ever since he joined the MILF’s fight some 40 years ago, he had avoided military camps and had thought only of destroying them.

“I never imagined during those dark days that Iwill one day step inside a military camp and be feted with this exceptional honor by what used to be our adversary,” Ebrahim said when he was welcomed and other MILF leaders to the AFP headquarters by General Carlito Galvez, the military chief.

He added that with the visit, the MILF has forged “an unshakable parntership that will help propel our country toward unity, peace, prosperity and development, under the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) that sets up a new Bangsamoro political entity to help bring just and lasting peace to resource-rich but violence-wracked Mindanao.

Last October, Galvez also visited the MILF main camp in Maguindanao where he declared that “the war between and military and the MILF is finally over” as he assured that when he is to retire as the military chief next year, he would campaign for the approval of the BOL during the plebiscite.

In a separate development, Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Besana, the spokesman of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, confirmed that at least 10 Abu Sayyaf terrorists were slain in a clash with government forces in a remote “barangay” (village) in the town of Patikul, Sulu on Friday afternoon.

It was in the same encounter, Besana said, that at least five soldiers and 23 others were wounded as government forces pursued the rescue operations of about 10 foreigners and Filipinos still being held hostage by the terrorists.

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