ARMM officials seek support of clerics against misguided Islamic militancy

COTABATO CITY --- Officials wants to extensively involve clerics in thwarting the alarming spread in Mindanao of Jihadist blocs in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, Basilan Gov. Jim Hataman and Lanao del Sur Vice Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr. separately recommended the enlistment of clerics in security efforts on Thursday during a meeting in Cotabato City of the security council of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.Mangudadatu told ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, chairperson of the inter-agency regional peace and order council (RPOC), it is good to tap the support of Imams in Mosques and missionaries in Madrasah schools in preventing the spread of ISIS-inspired groups in the local communities. There are only few, very few people out there propagating this kind of ideology. There are more preachers out there who are moderate in their views and do not want extremists whose practices are against the teachings of Islam, Mangudadatu said.Mangudadatu said casting undue aspersions on spiritually upright Islamic theologians and lumping them together with fanatical jihadists can only complicate and worsen the problem.Hataman, who has ministerial control over the Regional Police Office-ARMM and the region’s local government department, said he can embark on extensive summits with local Islamic theologians to build consensus on how they can help in the government’s campaign against Islamic militancy.Major Gen. Carlito Galvez, Jr., commander of the Western Mindanao Command based in Zamboanga City, said religious extremism in Mindanao is now a serious problem confronting the government, next to the narcotics issue besetting the region.Galvez said there are now 26 fanatical Jihadist cells in Lanao del Sur that are linked 25 other fraternal cells in central Mindanao.Lanao del Sur and provinces in central Mindanao are covered by an interim ceasefire accord between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Some of those who have joined these extremists groups have relatives in the MILF and the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), Galvez said.He said while many leaders of both fronts have actively been helping the government prevent the entry of extremists in areas they control, there are Jihadists who still manage to hide in recognized guerilla camps without them knowing. These are intelligent young people who come from popular and wealthy clans. They are the kind we least expect to become terrorists, Galvez.Adiong, a member of the Lanao del Sur provincial peace and order council, said there is also a need to evaluate the government’s approach in neutralizing the Maute terror group now wrecking havoc in his province.Adiong, governor of Lanao del Sur for three consecutive terms prior to his election as vice governor of the province, said the Maute group, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya, could be open to a dialogue with the government.The Maute group boasts of loyalty to the ISIS and is even using its black flag as revolutionary banner, which Moro recruits kiss as part of an initiation rite for admission in its fold. It’s been about two months since I notified some government officials about it. I’m still waiting for them to respond, Adiong said.Mayor Dimnatang Pansar of Butig town in Lanao del Sur, where the Maute group first emerged and establish a shadow government, said the military’s recent artillery and air attacks against the group could only achieve temporary positive results. They leave the areas they occupy whenever there are military offensives and then return after the soldiers have left, Pansar said.Pansar said he and his constituent-leaders wants the deployment of at least a battalion of soldiers in the municipality to prevent terrorists from returning to the villages they had used as takeoff areas for their activities.Galvez committed to deploy a battalion of soldiers in Butig to be scattered in areas frequented by terrorists led by siblings Abdullah and Omar Maute, founders of the Maute group.Adiong and Pansar had both insinuated that the on-going infrastructure projects of the ARMM government in Butig can help hasten the efforts of curtailing the influence on local folks of the Maute group.Misguided Jihadists are known for their eloquence in stoking public hatred to government using poverty and underdevelopment as pitch.The ARMM government has more than P50 million worth of current infrastructure projects in Butig.Hataman, who is overseeing the operations of the ARMM’s public works department, said his administration is ready to allocate funds, from the region’s 2018 infrastructure subsidy, for more projects in Butig to be implemented after 2017.The RPOC’s meeting on Thursday, the first for 2017, was also attended by members of ARMM’s 24-seat Regional Legislative Assembly, Maguindanao’s provincial prosecutor Rohaira Lao, Bryan Babang, director for ARMM of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, and Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac of the regional police office.