Balay Mindanaw Foundation, Inc.

Kaangayan, Kalambuan, Kalinaw ... sa Mindanaw, sa Pilipinas, sa Kalibutan

More than winning wars, 6th ID officers work at winning the peace
By Winson Fuentes
Posted 24 July 2009

A pose after the seminar.

Amidst a landscape of unrelenting combat between state security forces and the MILF dating back to June of the previous year, a series of command-detonated explosives going off and injuring many civilians in key areas of Central and Northern Mindanao, as well as the ARMM region, and snowballing hawkish public calls for an immediate AFP reprisal dotting news stories in the mass media, the agenda for peace stayed defiant and kept its presence felt last week (July 7-8, 2009) right in Maguindanao province, where the alarm bells of war seem to ring loudest.

It found its voice in Balay Mindanaw Foundation’s orientation-seminar for the state security sector -- “Building Capacities for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding” -- and its message was heard by no less than leading officers of frontline units belonging to the 6th Infantry Division (6ID) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Eastern Mindanao Command.

While keeping up with the contingencies of securing lives and property throughout their respective areas of jurisdiction (straddling areas of North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao and Cotabato City), senior officers of the Division’s three infantry brigades (601st, 602nd and 603rd) – as well as of nine combat and two support battalions under them -- took part in the two-day seminar held at the Kampilan Hotel inside Camp Siongco, the 6ID’s headquarters in Awang, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.

	Brig. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, Chief of the Civil Relations Service (CRS), at the seminar.

Joining them were civil-military operations (CMO) officers of the 6ID’s different units, officers belonging to PNP-ARMM’s Police-Community Relations Office (PCRO), a senior Region XII officer for a task group belonging to the Air Force, and civil-military officers from the 10th Infantry Division and EastMinCom that helped shepherd the process.

The orientation-seminar – designed to be a broad introduction to future deepening courses on conflict management and peacebuilding that hope to help shape a peace and reform agenda for the state-security sector over time – was the fourth such activity to be carried out for a unit under the EastMinCom.

Reaction to the activity among participants was decidedly a mixed bag. A good number among brigade officers raised tactical concerns regarding the possible negative implications that the message of the seminar’s different modules may inadvertently carry on to enlisted personnel. “Will the thrust of peacebuilding not soften the combat-readiness of the troops and lead to tentativeness in battle?” “Isn’t peacebuilding better suited as a responsibility of government and civil society, so that soldiers may be left to singularly meet the demands of fighting?” “Won’t discussions on state security sector reform not weaken morale among troops, and perhaps even seduce them towards future attempts at military adventurism?” “Why single out the state armed forces for peace education when it is the enemy that often draws first blood and sets off the conflict?”

Lt. Gen. Raymundo B. Ferrer, Commanding General of the Eastern Mindanao Command, sought to dispel these worries, stressing that the introduction of conflict management and peacebuilding skills to soldiers are not meant to alternate – much less substitute – for their capabilities in combat. “Managing the fighting is different from managing the conflict. If anything, what this seminar will provide you are new skills meant precisely to complement what our soldiers already have in their arsenal to keep the costs of war from growing any bigger than it should.”

Ariel Hernandez, BMFI Executive Director (on leave), agreed, even as he welcomed the concerns as a natural consequence of honest dialogue among different peace stakeholders. The beginnings of sincere dialogue, he said, will only help to strengthen the levels of trust and openness among these growing partnerships. “Ten years ago, honest exchanges like this between an NGO and a military unit in a formal venue would have been difficult to imagine. And yet here we are today, talking straightforwardly about peace and security. On that score alone, we are making progress,” said Hernandez.

Many more upheld the seminar’s strategic value in providing new lenses and tools to soldiers for dealing with non-combat-related challenges before, during and after the breakout of armed hostilities. Like learning the value of community-level consensus building to strengthen “ownership” over many areas of public life, keeping soldiers from getting too thinly spread out trying to serve more areas than their numbers could actually cover. Or how enhanced conflict mediation skills in the future may avert the escalation of small community conflicts, leaving the soldier with more time and resources to focus on larger security threats. Or how new attitudes towards civilians caught in the armed conflict could lead to the crafting of more humanitarian protocols to mitigate the costs of war on the bakwits, or internally displaced persons (IDPs) .

EastMinCom chief Lt. Gen. Raymundo B. Ferrer.

For a few others, it was also a chance to bring some closure to an uncomfortable past, and make use of the seminar’s many broad themes – like legitimacy-building and institutional reform in the security sector – to find solutions. A brigadier general who graced the seminar admits to having committed serious human rights violations back when he was still a young officer in Lanao del Sur. “That was how our senior officers framed the war then, and we didn’t know any better,” he says. He expressed the hope that the participants can help “reverse our mistakes” by taking to heart the role of the armed forces as provided by the Constitution. “The armed forces is the protector of the people, and the Constitution doesn’t distinguish when it references ‘the people’. Whether they are sympathetic to the enemy, or are relatives of the enemy, for as long as they are non-combatants, they are not the enemy. Kasama sila sa pinagsisilbihan natin. Let’s earn their respect, and we will recover the high moral ground we lost in the past,” said Army Brig. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, Chief of the Civil Relations Service (CRS).

A soft-spoken but grizzled commanding officer of a frontline battalion – the “fightingest” in the whole Division, all concede, for having had the most engagements with MILF forces under Ameril Ombra Cato – recalls being told many tales of friends and family suffering from military abuses at the height of the MNLF rebellion in the mid ‘70s in Sulu, where he grew up. Today, he says he is doing his part to prevent the recurrence of those abuses by maintaining a high level of discipline among his men, and making sure civilians are not caught in the crossfire. He concedes it can be a tough juggling act – looking after the welfare of civilians affected by the war while “managing the fighting” -- but sees no need to concede one for the other, as he recalls Lt. Gen. Ferrer’s earlier remarks: “Legitimacy is indispensable to winning any war.”

In the words of Maj. Gen. Alfredo Cayton, 6ID Commanding General, in his remarks at the conclusion of the seminar: “While fighting is sometimes inevitable for soldiers…our strategic mandate is not simply to win the war, but more importantly to win the peace. Short of that, talo tayong lahat, and all our efforts will have been rendered meaningless.”