Moro scholar confirms BIFF, ASG’s aim to build caliphate

From the Business Mirror (Aug 5): Moro scholar confirms BIFF, ASG’s aim to build caliphate

A Moro scholar has confirmed the desire of Moro groups to establish a caliphate, which is more than what two Moro guerrilla fronts have aspired for a self-determining autonomous region in Mindanao.

Mansoor Limba of the Alqalam Institute at the Ateneo de Davao University here said the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) were expected to mount their self-styled attacks after the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would not tread the path of nonviolence to establish the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

This new region would be born out of the recently enacted Bangsamoro Organic Law. The word Bangsamoro literally means Moro nation.

The government armed forces has sounded off a national alarm for vigilance against a repeat of the car bomb explosion in Basilan last week, a signature move of the anti-US militants in the Middle East and central Asia, including those affiliated or followers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis).

But the government military was less convinced of the strategy to be replicated elsewhere, saying that the explosion was the handiwork of the Abu Sayyaf to demonstrate is anger over a botched extortion attempt rather than an indication of the Isis presence in Mindanao.

Limba admonished, however, against failure by the government to address the “very roots of discontent” by various revolutionary groups and armed formations among the Moro people.

“Failure to give due attention and to give due solution to these concerns would only give reason for them to fan out more violence in Mindanao,” he explained.

Limba would not say, however, if the BIFF and the Abu Sayyaf would step up their attacks to fill in the void left by the MILF, whose armed followers were expected to enter into a phase-by-phase disarmament and decommissioning as part of the later concession in the peace settlement. In a show of gesture of goodwill to the peace settlement with the government, the MILF in 2015 already decommissioned a small portion of its fighters, some 145 of them, and their weapons.

The Moro National Liberation Front, the former main Moro revolutionary group in Mindanao before the MILF broke away in 1981, earlier entered into a peace agreement in 1996, sending some of its fighters into an integration program with the government armed forces and the national police.

Limba spoke in a forum on radicalism and violent extremism in Mindanao held on Friday here. The forum was organized by the Mindanao Institute of Journalism.

https://businessmirror.com.ph/moro-scholar-confirms-biff-asgs-aim-to-build-caliphate/