Irrigation project brings fragile peace

by Ron Arriola

To say that the trouble in Southern Philippines arises from Christian-Muslim enmity is to oversimplify a complex problem if not to miss the point entirely.

In Central Mindanao, the P3.18 billion Malitubog-Maridagao Irrigation Project suffers costly delays due to breakdown of peace and order, but religion has nothing to do with it. Intermittent warfare is waged between rival Muslim groups, primarily for economic and political control. And of course the killings and the kidnappings that hog international headlines are plain banditry clothed in a cachet of religious jihad.

Mal-Mar Irrigation, as the project has come to be known, consists of a bridge and a diversion dam that upon completion will irrigate 13,100 hectares of farmlands for the benefit of 5,840 families.

The bridge, which spans Maridagao River between Pikit in the mostly Christian Cotabato and Pagalungan in the predominantly Muslim Maguindanao, is only 100 meters long and six meters wide, but it is supposed to close the gap that has divided the two communities for as long as anybody cares to remember.

In December this year President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo inaugurated the bridge and the dam with so much fanfare. At last the project was going somewhere. The celebratory atmosphere was therefore understandable.

Despite delays, construction continues on the Mal-Mar dam project, scheduled for completion in late 2004.

Funded with concessionary loans secured from Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC), Mal-Mar was supposed to be completed in seven years, from October 1989 to December 1996. Rampant criminality got in the way.

It was President Cory Aquino who initiated the project 14 years ago. Her term and that of her successor, Fidel V. Ramos, ended, but hope for an irrigation system remained on hold.

At the time of the launching nobody had reasons to believe that the target date could not be met. Indeed, everything went on smoothly during the initial phase of the construction. The first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines even dropped by to see the work in progress.

Ironically, it was Mal-Mar itself that planted the seed of the conflict. Because of the irrigation project the land that had until then been left to “birds and wild animals” became valuable tracts of real estate. Families and clans came to stake their claims and counterclaims. The shooting started soon after.

The dispute left the project proponents vulnerable. While the fighting was between warring Muslim groups, the government and the contractor hired to do the work found themselves embroiled in it.

In addition to the bridge and the diversion dam, there is a need to construct roads, government facilities, and the water distribution and drainage canals. The question as to who own the land traversed by the road and canal networks and thus who should receive the right-of-way payments from the government has resulted in not a few deaths among the combatants.

The original contractor, Shinsung Corporation of South Korea, tried to get the job done, but it packed up and left after its engineers were kidnapped.

When he took over the government, President Joseph Estrada, on August 24, 1999, relaunched Mal-Mar and moved the completion date to December 2002 with CETIC Corporation of the People’s Republic of China as the new contractor, but work soon suffered another setback, this time because of fierce fighting between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

After Estrada yielded the presidency and the hostilities between government and secessionist forces ceased, the Macapagal-Arroyo Administration, on September 22, 2001, revived the project and called on the clans to settle their claims in court or in an arbitration council set up by respected Muslim leaders.

To date, Mal-Mar is 80 percent complete, with about P2.5 billion already expended, and the inhabitants have already begun trekking back to the land.

Mal-Mar would have required a mere P1.047 billion in funding if construction had proceeded as scheduled. When the target completion date was moved to December 2002, the price tag went up to P2.5 billion. The cost ballooned to P3.18 billion after the completion date was reset to December 2004.

Armed with a mandate from the central government, the newly appointed project manager, Noldin S. Oyod, who is himself a Muslim, brought together the two leaders of the warring clans, Datu Samad Idol and Datu Sultan Alonto, and told them they should allow the construction to proceed unimpeded, for only with the completion of the project could their people be redeemed from poverty that had been their lot for countless generations.

The appeal apparently bore fruit. The factions signed a peace pact, with Governor Manuel Pinol of Cotabato and Governor Ampatuan of Maguindanao pledging to help enforce its provisions. But Datu Dima Ambil, MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) State Chairman for Central Mindanao who claims to command five brigades, is the real force that could make the peace last.

At the inauguration of the bridge and the dam, the 602nd Brigade of the Philippine Army, which is tasked to enforce the agreement, and the National Irrigation Administration assured the public that nobody could bring firearms in the farmlands served by the irrigation project.

But Ambil insists on keeping his arsenal. On the possibility of the Armed Forces truly enforcing the no-firearms policy, he has a ready and ominous answer. The MNLF, he says, didn’t surrender but merely entered into a peace treaty with the government.

For now Ambil is busy overseeing work in his ten-hectare farmland, which he has apportioned to his four wives, and heading a farmer irrigators association. Still, the fact remains that he has armed men under his command, and one can imagine the mischief he can wreak if he decides to resume fighting.

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