History of Armed Conflict
With reference to the Official MNLF Blogsite, "the MNLF believes that the Bangsamoro Land is already a sovereign nation hundreds of years before it was illegally annexed as part of the Philippines in the 1935 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines."
Mindanao became a land for new beginnings when broad tracts of land were given away by the Philippine government from 1903 to the 1970s to migrants from other parts of the country in a so-called Homestead Program., akin to Indonesia's transmigrasi. There was no land titling system by the natives of Mindanao at that time. The Philippine government took advantage of the absence of land titles to give away lots in Mindanao to poor farmers and other migrants from other parts of the country. Mindanao saw itself as the adopted home of a rapidly burgeoning population of Christian settlers who rapidly encroached on the living areas of the original Muslim and tribal residents, who now began to feel that they were also being robbed of their lands and the economic opportunities they provided.
With that systematic encroachment, the natives, especially the original Muslim and Lumad segments, developed a deep-seated distrust of the officials of the Philippine government, a government under which they felt they were being treated as second-class citizens. As a result of the systematic land grabbing, sporadic fighting in various parts of Mindanao ensued between the natives and the troops/militias of the Philippine government. Due to this, Mindanao become a battle ground of intense armed conflict, even the Americans sent forces to battle frontiers in Mindanao.
During the 1970s, President Ferdinand Marcos formed the ILAGA and CHDF (Civilian Home Defense Force). ILAGA is a Christian militia which claims to defend Christians from attacks perpetrated by Muslims. The ILAGA was one of the groups who fiercely fought against the MNLF. The ILAGA members were indoctrinated with religious motivation and it is rumored that the ILAGA had a reputation for cannibalism. After over three decades, in the year 2011, the ILAGA embraced the egalitarian ideology of MNLF and have joined forces with their used to be mortal enemy—the MNLF.
Read more about this topic: Moro National Liberation Front
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, armed and/or conflict:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A woman’s beauty is a storm-tossed banner;
Under it wisdom stands, and I alone
Of all Arabia’s lovers I alone
Nor dazzled by the embroidery, nor lost
In the confusion of its night-dark folds,
Can hear the armed man speak.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“There is no prescribed method for resolving every specific conflict a mother has with her child, and there is certainly no method that will enable her to have exactly what she wants....There is, however, a larger goal, which is to establish and over-all climate of reasonableness, one in which she and her child can hear each other.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)