Basilan folk want Sampinit Complex made wildlife sanctuary

BASILAN --- Residents of this island province want the rainforests in the Sampinit Complex, now free from Abu Sayyaf forces that once ran a shadow government there, declared a protected wildlife reservation.The mountain ranges in the Sampinit Complex, where the Abu Sayyaf held no fewer than 200 captives from between 1994 to 2010, are now being connected to trading sites in Sumisip and Maluso towns and to the provincial capital, Lamitan City, via the Basilan Transcentral Highway costing more than P1 billion.Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said Saturday he will partly focus his remaining days in office to address the clamors for the Basilan provincial government and the incoming Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM to jointly declare the Sampinit Complex a wildlife sanctuary. That is our plan but since we are now in a transition process, transferring power from us to the incoming BARMM transitory management group, we need to let the new regional government and the Basilan provincial government work on that together, Hataman said.Hataman said he is optimistic that the incoming BARMM caretaker bloc, to be led by Hadji Murad Ebrahim, who is figurehead of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, will act on the issue. Besides becoming a wildlife sanctuary off limits to poachers, we also want the Sampinit rainforests made a `memorial site’ to remind people of what misery armed conflicts can give us, Hataman said.It was virtually the clatters of bulldozer engines and not artillery blasts that forced remnants of the Abu Sayyaf to abandon the Sampinit Complex.The Sampinit Complex was the group’s bastion for almost 20 years where it trained recruits from as Basilan and from smaller islands nearby.The construction of the Basilan Transcentral Highway now traversing Sampinit Complex, is now more than 50 percent done, according to reports obtained from state auditors.Half of its 17-kilometer span is being built by engineers from the office of Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman.Engineers and their foremen had a recent photo session in a channel of a river that springs from a rainforest at one side of the Sampinit Complex, where the slain Abu Sayyaf leader Khadafy Janjalani performed ablution rites prior to each of the five prayers he performed each day.The mountainous Sampinit Complex was once an impregnable Abu Sayyaf lair where no fewer than a hundred soldiers and militiamen perished in operations meant to flush religious extremists out.The construction of the overland artery is a common initiative of ARMM’s executive branch, Engineer Don Loong, who is regional secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways, the provincial government and Soler Undug, the chief of the District Engineering Office in the province.The Abu Sayyaf thrice attempted to kill Undug using improvised explosive devices to disrupt the implementation of high-ticket projects in Basilan designed to improve the local economy to weaken the group’s influence on impoverished communities.More than 200 Abu Sayyaf members in Basilan have surrendered in the past two years through the joint intercession of Hataman, the governor of Basilan, the Western Mindanao Command and the Regional Police Office-ARMM. We are certain the remaining less than 50 or so local Abu Sayyaf members will yield too once they realize that the BARMM is worth given chance to complement the peace and development efforts of the local government units and the provincial government in the province, said Hataman, who hails from Sumisip, Basilan.Hataman said he is certain that Murad will also mobilize MILF members in Basilan to help the PRO-ARMM and the WestMinCom prevent the return of Abu Sayyaf remnants to Sampinit Complex. Maybe BARMM can also name the area a `peace zone’ absolutely off limits to lawless groups, Hataman said.