SULTAN KUDARAT: Muslim militants in the mainly Catholic Philippines began handing over their guns to independent foreign monitors on Saturday, as part of a treaty aimed at ending a decades-long insurgency.

Just over a thousand militants in the country’s restive south were turning in 940 weapons in a single day, the start of a graduated decommissioning process that aims to turn the country’s largest rebel force into a regular political party.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters who were demobilised on Saturday represent a symbolic first step towards retiring what MILF says is a force of 40,000 in the coming years.

“The war is over... I have no firearms left,” Paisal Abdullah Bagundang, 56, a self-described veteran of more than 100 gunfights with government security forces since the 1970s, said.

But the disarmament will take time to make an impact in a place where violence is an almost-daily threat.

A bomb hidden in a parked motorcycle exploded near a market in Isulan town early on Saturday, just hours before President Rodrigo Duterte was to witness the decommissioning ceremony some 40 kilometres away in Sultan Kudarat.

Police said eight people were injured in the attack that was later claimed by the militant Islamic State group, according to SITE Intelligence, which monitors jihadist activities worldwide.

The decommissioning process “should not lead to expectations that it is going to result in a major deceleration in attacks”, said Francisco Lara, senior conflict adviser for Asia at watchdog International Alert, noting that the public in the region is also armed.

Acquiring a gun is “like buying fish in the market” in the south-western provinces where most of the Philippines’ Muslim minority live, MILF commander Murad Ebrahim told reporters.

But “if people no longer feel they need firearms to survive then they will easily give them up”, added Ebrahim, who is also chief minister of the area that has its own regional parliament, but no separate police force or military. About a third of MILF combatants and their weapons are to be initially retired over the coming eight months.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2019