Japan plays peacemaker in the
Philippines By David Adam Stott
Once a foreign occupier and now a major
donor and investor, Japan is currently pursuing a
whole new role in Southeast Asia: peacemaker.
Tokyo recently put itself in the mediating middle
of the ongoing conflict between the Manila
government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) rebels on Mindanao, the second-largest
island in the Philippines.
At stake is the
prospective Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, which if
fully implemented would allow for enhanced
self-rule and a governing role for the MILF in the
troubled region. Bangsamoro refers to "Muslim
Nation" in the local vernacular, and it is worth
noting that Islam predates the arrival of
Christianity in the Philippines by a few
centuries.
Philippine Muslims - most of
whom are Sunni - have proudly
reclaimed "Moro", formerly a
derogatory term used by the colonial Spanish, as a
label for their national identity. The Moros
mostly live in Mindanao and the neighboring Sulu
Archipelago, and Muslim insurgents from the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) have since 1968
resisted the Philippine central government in an
armed struggle.
The 1996 signing of the
optimistically named Final Peace Agreement (FPA)
between the MNLF and the government splintered the
rebel movement, and the struggle has since been
carried on by the MILF, a more overtly Islamic
breakaway faction with an estimated 12,000 armed
fighters. In recent weeks, Japanese officials have
held meetings with the MILF with the aim of
forging a permanent peace deal.
Further
complicating the situation is the presence of
another armed separatist group, the Abu Sayyaf,
which has largely morphed into a criminal
organization specializing in kidnapping and
demanding ransom both from foreigners and from
locals. The United States has included the Abu
Sayyaf on its list of international terrorist
organizations, and Japanese nationals have been
among the group's victims.
The southern
Philippines' Muslim rebellion has been one of the
most protracted and brutal in modern Asian
history. It is estimated that from 1970 to the
present, the conflict has resulted in more than
150,000 battle-related deaths. Between 2000 and
2003, it is estimated that about 1.5 million
civilians were displaced by government military
offensives and MILF counter-offensives. For the
past three years a ceasefire has been in place,
and the casualty rate has thus dropped
dramatically.
Representatives of the MILF
met with at least two Japanese diplomats on May 7
in a MILF satellite office in Simuay, Sultan
Kudarat, Maguindanao. The diplomats reportedly
proposed that Japan join the International
Monitoring Team, led by Malaysia and assisted by
Brunei and Libya, to police the ceasefire while
peace talks are held in Kuala Lumpur. Ghadzali
Jaafar, the MILF's vice chair for political
affairs, was quoted as saying, "We are very
grateful to the Japanese government for [its]
great concern in ensuring the peace and stability
of our homeland and in Mindanao."
Inaugurated in 1990, the Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) consists of five
provinces and one city: Maguindanao, Lanao del
Sur, and Marawi City on Mindanao itself, and Sulu,
Basilan and Tawi-Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago. The
western and central Mindanao regions have
significant Muslim populations, while the eastern
part of the island is predominantly Christian.
Armed conflict has been concentrated in the ARMM
and the Zamboanga Peninsula.
Philippine
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has urged
foreign donors to pour more development aid into
Mindanao to help cement the tentative peace. The
ARMM received no local or foreign equity
investment in the period spanning 1994-200l, and
its gross regional domestic product (GRDP) is by
far the lowest of Mindanao's six already poor
regions. In per capita terms, the ARMM's output is
only two-thirds that of the next-poorest region,
Caraga in northeastern Mindanao, and less than
one-third that of the northern Mindanao region,
the island's leading performer.
Against
that dire backdrop, Manila reached out to Tokyo, a
longtime major donor of official development
assistance. In 1989, Tokyo launched the Grant
Assistance for Grassroots Projects in the
Philippines to alleviate poverty and help various
communities engage in grassroots economic
activities. Since then, more than 300 small-scale
projects have been implemented across the country.
As of this February, the Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JICA) had dispatched a total
of 77 staff members, 26 long-term experts and 60
volunteers throughout the Philippine archipelago.
Tokyo unveiled its 44 billion yen (US$383
million at the current exchange rate) Support
Package for Peace and Stability in Mindanao during
Arroyo's state visit in late 2002. Since then,
Tokyo has funded many humanitarian projects in
areas as far-flung as the Tawi-Tawi and Basilan
Islands - both Abu Sayyaf strongholds, where some
Japanese nationals have recently been killed.
Japan assured Manila this year that it would
continue its humanitarian projects in Mindanao
despite growing concerns about the safety of its
citizens and aid workers there.
Mediating motivations Japan has
long sought a political profile commensurate with
its economic weight in Southeast Asia. Tokyo has
previously attempted to play a mediatory role in
civil conflicts in Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor,
Indonesia's Aceh province, Afghanistan and, most
recently, Sri Lanka. In May, Japanese envoy
Yasushi Akashi held meetings with both sides of
Sri Lanka's protracted dispute, which is on the
verge of tipping back toward civil war as the most
recent ceasefire breaks down.
There are
various dynamics at play behind Japan's Asian
peace drive. Analysts note that the policy can be
traced back to the first Gulf War in 1991, when
Japan was widely criticized for conducting
so-called "checkbook diplomacy" where it committed
funds but not personnel. At the same time, Japan
seems to be responding to domestic calls to both
develop an imaginative foreign policy distinct
from its relationship with Washington and to play
a greater leadership role in Asia.
The
latter policy has been spurred by the resurgence
of China. Tokyo plainly realizes that Beijing
represents a growing threat to its "natural"
leadership role, particularly in Southeast Asia
and more generally in the Asia-Pacific region as a
whole. Japanese Official Development Assistance
(ODA) still vastly outweighs that of any other
country, and Tokyo has historically been more
determined than most to get good value for its
money by ensuring that Japanese companies are
often awarded related contracts.
At the
same time, a succession of scandals has recently
rocked Japan's Foreign Ministry and given the
public cause to question Tokyo's ODA distribution,
especially after a decade of stagnant economic
growth at home. Using ODA for high-profile peace
initiatives in conflict-ridden Southeast Asia thus
bolsters the ministry's otherwise sagging
reputation and fends off calls for further cuts in
its budget. Meanwhile, Japan's "Peace
Constitution" still draws widespread support among
the general public and the Foreign Ministry's
peace initiatives plainly appeal to this
constituency.
In recent years there have
been unsubstantiated reports of the MILF's links
with global terror group al-Qaeda, and more
recently with the Southeast Asian transnational
terror network Jemaah Islamiyah. By engaging with
the MILF, Japan is probably hoping that it will
gently help the Philippines battle against
terrorism, but also improve its image in the eyes
of the region's Muslims.
For its part, the
MILF denies any direct role in terrorism and often
contends that any terrorist activity attributed to
it is the handiwork of its alleged "lost
commands". Nevertheless, evidence continues to
surface that its jungle camps in Mindanao are home
to some Jemaah Islamiyah trainees and operatives
from around Southeast Asia.
Importantly,
there is also a potential commercial element to
Japan's Philippine peace initiative. Mindanao is
the second-largest island in the Philippines and
is considered by many Filipinos a land of
opportunity. The island contains 48% of the
nation's gold production, 63% of its nickel and
18% of its charcoal reserves. Mindanao dominates
most of the country's major commodity crops, such
as rubber, pineapple, cacao, banana, coffee, corn
and coconut, contributing anywhere between 60% to
100% of total output. Despite large-scale
deforestation, the island still boasts nearly 39%
of the nation's forest cover and currently
supplies about 90% of the Philippines' total
timber production.
Japan has historical
roots in the region. Japanese emigration to the
Philippines dates back to 1903, where Davao,
Mindanao's largest city, was known as "Little
Tokyo". Then, Japanese management and leadership
of the local hemp industry made the Davao area
economy thrive and turned abaca into a major
Philippine export commodity. So important was the
island to Japanese trade that apparently a trade
map in the Japanese consulate in Davao labeled
Mindanao - along with Korea and Formosa - as
domestic territories, according to a source
familiar with the matter.
Now, Mindanao is
obviously attractive to Japan because it holds a
significant portion of the Philippines'
unexploited oil and natural-gas deposits, much of
which rest in Muslim-majority territories,
especially within former MILF-controlled areas. In
2000, the Philippine government began implementing
the Liguasan Marsh Development Project to extract
natural gas in marshland occupied by Moro
communities claimed and largely controlled by the
MILF. The Muslim strongholds in Maguindanao, North
and South Cotabato, Basilan and the Sulu Islands
are also believed to contain various untapped
natural resources. With the ever-increasing global
competition for resources, in particular with
China, Tokyo surely recognizes the importance of
any goodwill it can build with the future
gatekeepers to such sought-after commodities.
Complicating the conflict resolution
picture are the at least 13 different
ethno-linguistic Muslim groups indigenous to
Mindanao, of which three predominate politically
and in numbers: the Maguindanao-Iranun in the
Cotabato region, the Maranaws of the Lanao region,
and the Tausug-Samal group of the Sulu
Archipelago. There are also an increasing number
of Islamic converts across the island, many of
whom married into the faith. Such tribal divisions
are significant because these ethno-linguistic
distinctions have formed the core of the three
main rebel groups, with the Tausug dominating the
MNLF, the Tausug and Yakan the top recruits to the
Abu Sayyaf, and the Maguindanao making up the
largest part of the MILF.
Conflicted
ethnic mosaic Early in the struggle, the
MNLF placed great emphasis on constructing a
shared cultural-historical identity that
transcended differences among these 13 different
Muslim ethno-linguistic groups. As such, the term
"Bangsamoro" was created to imply a shared
heritage and then overrode the occasional call for
Islamic renewal and jihad. At the same time, the
MNLF was keen to stress continuity with the Moro
sultanates, which had some modern state features
prior to their absorption into the Philippine
colonial state before World War II.
Meanwhile, the MILF has recently gone to
great lengths to accentuate its stronger
commitment to Islamic ideals in contrast to the
largely secular posture of the MNLF. That
religious stance has allegedly attracted financial
support for the MILF from such groups as al-Qaeda.
Nevertheless, the underlying Islamic
nature of both the MNLF and the MILF is
subordinate to the cause of defending Moro
territory and traditions, both as a response to
perceived Christian chauvinism and as a desire to
strengthen social and political connections
between Philippine Muslims and the wider Islamic
world. These connections, facilitated by rebels
and local ulama, or Islamic scholars, have
resulted in an influx of funds from governments,
private organizations and wealthy individuals in
the Middle East for building mosques and Islamic
schools throughout Mindanao. In turn, this has
helped foster an Islamic consciousness and,
through front organizations, the MILF promotes
Islamic religious and cultural values that have
increased its own local legitimacy and popular
support and hence contributed to its ability to
sustain armed conflict.
So does poverty. A
two-tier Mindanao is clearly emerging, in which
the Muslim areas in the west lag noticeably behind
the predominantly Christian eastern areas. Using
the United Nations Development Program's Human
Development Index as a benchmark, the quality of
life in Muslim Mindanao is significantly below
both the national level and the Christian-majority
provinces of Mindanao. These same areas have also
had the least access to potable water and
electricity.
Given that Mindanao's
Muslim-majority areas suffer from a plethora of
social, economic, institutional, demographic,
geographic and governance problems, Japan will
quickly find that ending the cycle of violence
will not come easily. Insufficient levels of
government spending, a lack of infrastructure,
abysmally low levels of foreign and local
investment, and clan rivalries among rebel and
government forces represent just the tip of the
iceberg.
The most pressing practical
problem to the peace process now is the lack of
agreement on which areas in southern Mindanao
should be declared Muslim ancestral domains, a
disagreement that is clearly tied to control over
natural resources. Entrenched personal and
corporate interests from Christian landowning
families in Mindanao and Manila will likely oppose
any major government concessions to Moros, and
overcoming these obstacles will be a formidable
task given the Philippines' deserved reputation
for corruption and oligarchism.
For all
Tokyo's good and commercial intentions, it will
take more than goodwill to solve the Philippines'
entrenched and costly conflict.
David Adam Stott is a lecturer
at the University of Kitakyushu in southern Japan,
where he teaches international relations and
researches the political economy of conflict in
Southeast Asia.
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