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If you will ask a Maranao and a Maguindanao where his ancestral homeland is, he will point to the whole of Mindanao, Sulu Archipelago, Basilan and Palawan as the place. However, if you will ask a Tausug, a Sambal, a Badjao and a Yakan where his ancestral homeland is, he will point to Sabah as the place.
The logic in the argument of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in pointing to the whole of Mindanao, Sulu Archipelago, Basilan and Palawan as their ancestral homeland is to justify any and future decision to secede because the Maranao and Maguindanao-dominated MILF has taken the position that they had been independent even before the Philippines became a republic.
That framework was originally carried out by the Moro National Liberation Movement (MNLF), and was openly supported by Malaysia because that effectively prevented the government and the Sultan of Sulu from claiming Sabah which it illegally annexed to become part of the federation.
On the other hand, the new logic of the MNLF in pointing to Sabah as their ancestral homeland is because it is the place (North Borneo) were they originally came from. They insist the territory remains a dominion of the Sultan of Sulu which he leased but was never returned even after he canceled the lease agreement.
As the ideological framework of the Tausugs, the Sambals, the Yakans, and the Badjaos gradually shifted in favor of claiming Sabah, many began to question the secessionist objective of then Malaysian lackey Nur Misuari in using as cover of the objective of establishing a secular Muslim state to impliedly reject the authority of the Sultan of Sulu. As his campaign faltered because of the success of the military and the support of the people in Mindanao to remain part of the Philippines, those directly involved in the secessionist campaign realized that they were losing by default their ancestral homeland to Malaysia.
It was that shift in the MNLF’s ideological orientation why Malaysia’s support for their cause began to wane. It cannot continue supporting a Frankenstein to grow big with the likelihood of wanting to get back their ancestral homeland which it acquired through chicanery and duplicity while forcing us to spill our own blood in creating a Bangsa Moro Islamic republic to detract us from wanting to get back what legitimately and historically is ours. Besides, the bulk of the fighters of the MNLF are mostly Tausugs whose ancestors came from Sabah.
Realizing that, Malaysia then encouraged a split and supported the breakaway MILF group headed by their new stooge named Hashim Salamat who was succeeded after his death by Al Hadj Murad Ebrahim. The secessionist scheme concocted by Malaysia centered on creating an ancestral homeland cut from within our own territory. Malaysia had to drop the Tausug-dominated MNLF because of its evolving ideological framework of retracing the origin of their people, and for which historically they came from the land owned and ruled by their ancestral leader, the Sultan of Sulu.
The support for the MILF gained momentum soon after natural gas was discovered in the Liguasan Marsh, and other minerals such as oil and uranium found in Central Mindanao. Malaysia and the US together with the members of the EU hailed and attended the signing without this idiotic government thinking that the MILF of Al Haj Murad almost enjoyed diplomatic recognition because of their presence. That means this abnormal government was not aware the agreement it signed, brokered allegedly in the name of peace by Malaysia, was almost equivalent to giving it an independent status.
Should we stop them now from seceding, that could serve as the entry point for the US and its NATO allies to balkanize, or, to put it bluntly, cut us to pieces just like that they did in allowing Kosovo to secede from Serbia. The US and NATO bombed Serbia for which thousands of innocent civilians were killed. They had their President Slobodan Milosevic tried in their Kangaroo Court called International Criminal Court for which the US, which is not even a member, compelled us to join. President Milosevic died while in prison.
The US and NATO carried out their savage attack of that country in the name of wanting to prevent “ethnic cleansing” against those Albanians living in Kosovo in the absence of a UN resolution and in violation of international law. They wanted to slice Kosovo from Serbia because the bloody project was financed and supported by Saudi Arabia and other Arab States and for the fact that the Kosovars were Muslims, while the Serbians were Orthodox Christians.
The anomaly in the current framework of the so-called Bangsa Moro autonomous areas is it includes the Sulu Archipelago, which means the Sultan of Sulu now stands as subordinate to the Malaysian-US created stooge called MILF. The circumscribed powers given to the MILF would now estop it from legally claiming Sabah, it not having been included in the framework agreement.
The agreement entered into by the MILF and the GRP has the legal effect of abolishing the Royal Hashemite Sultanate of Sulu because it will be the new MILF overlords, mostly coming from Lanao, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindnao, who will decide the fate of the Sultanate whether to give him respect and authority, or to listen to his plea to recover his dominion, Sabah.
In other words, the MILF’s view of an ancestral homeland is confined and circumscribed only within and not outside the territory of the Philippines. Should the people within the autonomous Bangsa Moro region decide to secede, they would have every right to do so because they would only be bringing life to their right to self-determination.
It will no longer be a definition to recover a territory where the Tausug and the Sultan of Sulu and his followers originally came from, and for which historically and legally forms part of the dominion of the Sultan of Sulu, but a framework of an ancestral homeland to be carved out from within our own territory - a dangerous concept that would give a legal pretext for Malaysia, the US and the EU to intervene, as what they did in Serbia and in Sudan, should the Filipino people opt to fight to recover Sabah.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
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