A former deputy battalion commander of the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Imba started fighting – like many of the men here – when he was just a boy. “I don’t remember my age anymore,” he said with a chuckle. But he can easily recall the long days of walking, the lack of food, and the sleepless nights spent in preparation for an attack. “It was hard, very, very hard,” he said in the local dialect. “And imagine that I was doing it since I was a teenager,” said Imba, who looks to be in his mid-fifties.
As poverty and job opportunities worsened, thousands of young Muslims were lured into the war in Mindanao starting in the 1960s. Many initially joined the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a secessionist rebel organization founded by former university professor Nur Misuari in 1969. The MILF, which broke away from the MNLF in the late 1970s, continued the fight by recruiting more soldiers and setting up camps all over central Mindanao.
The village of Pedtad, which has a poverty index of 35% and a malnutrition rate of 8%, is one of 24 villages in the town of Kabacan that is trying to rebuild homes on the ashes of war. Most of Pedtad’s 2,700 residents belong to the MNLF and the MILF, and reintegration into peaceful communities has not been easy. “You cannot imagine how it is to evacuate,” says Abdul Buat, 45, a resident of Pedtad village. “You have to run, and keep on running as bombs and mortars explode around you.” “I grew up in evacuation centers,” said Buat, who still remembers coming home to the village with his parents and their neighbors only to find their homes burned and their crops rotten.
At least 40% of households in central Mindanao experienced displacement at least once between 2000 and 2010, according to the World Food Program.
In October 2012, President Benigno Aquino signed a peace deal with the MILF to “pave the way for a final and enduring peace in Mindanao.” The government aims to set up a new autonomous political entity called the Bangsamoro in the region by 2016. The agreement calls for Muslim self-rule in parts of the southern Philippines in exchange for a deactivation of rebel forces by the MILF. Residents, however, insist the deal had little impact on their choices.
“We heard about the Bangsamoro, but we don’t know anything yet about it,” said Mantawil. “We just want to work here peacefully…. It was for the children.”
For the past few years, fighters and villagers alike have been focused on carving out a more promising future. A fish farm seems an unlikely place for a second start, but it is what many former fighters have pinned their hopes on in recent years.
“Farming is better than fighting…If you hold a gun, there is no future, and it’s dangerous. It’s better here, it’s safe. And the water lilies are beautiful,” Imbal said.
