Muslim rebels waging a four-decade insurgency in the Philippines signed a historic pact with the Government yesterday to end the conflict, but both sides warned the road to peace had only just begun.
President Benigno Aquino and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Murad Ebrahim witnessed the signing of the accord, which aims for a final peace pact by 2016, in a ceremony at the presidential palace in Manila.
“I come in peace and to forge a partnership of peace on the basis of the framework agreement between the MILF and the Philippine Government,” Ebrahim said in a speech during the ceremony.
“We extend the hand of friendship and partnership to the President and Filipino people.”
Aquino, who has driven the process since assuming office in 2010, also hailed the agreement as a chance to “finally achieve genuine, lasting peace”.
Ebrahim became the first MILF chief to visit the presidential palace, signifying the optimism from both sides about finally ending a conflict that has claimed 150,000 lives and the priority Aquino has put on achieving peace.
Under the plan, the 12,000-strong MILF would give up its quest for an independent homeland in the southern region of Mindanao in return for significant power and wealth-sharing in a new autonomous region there.
However the MILF’s leadership, the Government and independent observers have all warned the path towards peace remains littered with obstacles, and that yesterday’s signing does not guarantee an end to the conflict.
“As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Much work remains to be done in order to fully reap the fruits of this framework agreement,” Aquino said in his speech just before the signing by both sides’ chief negotiators.
The MILF’s chief negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, expressed similar caution in a press conference after the signing.
“With all the intensity, emotional attachment and substantive agreement, it is still a piece of paper. It will not implement itself,” Iqbal said as he warned of tough negotiations ahead.
Muslim rebel groups have been fighting since the 1970s for full independence or autonomy in Mindanao, which they consider their ancestral homeland from before Spanish Christian colonisation of the country began in the 1500s.
The estimated four to nine million Muslims are now a minority in Mindanao after years of Catholic immigration, but they remain a majority in some areas.
Muslims would be a majority in the planned new autonomous region.
The conflict has left huge areas of Mindanao, a resource-rich and fertile farming region covering the southern third of the Philippines, in deep poverty.