In Philippines, Abandoned Deal Reignites Rebel War

In early August, after years of negotiations, the rebels were on the brink of securing an autonomous zone in Mindanao. Now they are furious that the agreement was abandoned and are refusing to hand over anyone to the government.

"It was out of frustration that the commanders did what they did, and it is unfortunate," Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF's chief peace negotiator, said in a telephone interview. He said his group will investigate the commanders' actions and use "due process" before it considers disciplinary action.

In the meantime, Iqbal said, the military should halt the shelling and displacement of Muslims civilians. "We are heading toward a situation where the peace process has no future," he said. "With the use of arms, everyone is a loser. The MILF cannot be defeated by force of arms; we have proven that."

Muslims had established themselves on Mindanao long before Spaniards arrived in the 16th century to colonize the Philippines and convert its people to Catholicism.

But the Spanish never really controlled Mindanao, which is the southernmost major island in the Philippine chain. Americans, who booted out the Spanish at the turn of the 20th century, won control of the island after a lengthy military campaign, but resentment and some conflict continued.

The bad blood got much worse in the 1960s, when the Manila government encouraged hundreds of thousands of Christians to settle in Mindanao. As the Christian population mushroomed -- it is now about 80 percent of the population of 18 million -- historical Muslim claims to the land were stepped on by settlers and by outside logging and mining interests.

As they became second-class citizens in what they regarded as their homeland, Muslims organized armies and began to fight back. The conflict approached full-scale war in the 1970s.

Still, most parties to the conflict have acknowledged for decades that fighting can never resolve Mindanao's problem. In 1996, a peace deal creating a small autonomous zone for a Muslim rebel group was signed. But elsewhere on the island, conflicts continued. In 2000, the government again tried all-out war to stamp out the MILF. It failed.

Since 2003, negotiations to create a larger, more autonomous zone for the Muslims had been the priority of insurgents and the government -- until last month.

"There was supposed to be no more discussion, and we were supposed to have settled every issue," said Iqbal, the MILF negotiator.

Indeed, the government had invited dignitaries, including U.S. Ambassador Kristie A. Kenney, to a signing ceremony Aug. 5 in Malaysia, which had helped broker the agreement.

The United States supports a negotiated settlement with the MILF, Kenney said in an interview. U.S. military operations in the Philippines since 2002 have focused almost exclusively on a much smaller and more violent Muslim group called Abu Sayyaf, which has links to al-Qaeda. It specializes in kidnapping, extortion and bombings, and has little popular support.