In Philippines, Abandoned Deal Reignites Rebel War

In 2005, the MILF helped American-backed Philippine forces expel Abu Sayyaf leaders from Mindanao. Although some MILF commanders have sheltered Abu Sayyaf fighters and foreign jihad fighters in recent years, Kenney said the U.S. government does not regard the MILF as a terrorist group and acknowledges that it has substantial popular support.

But on the eve of the signing ceremony in Malaysia, the Supreme Court of the Philippines questioned the constitutionality of granting a large measure of autonomy to the MILF. The court stopped the government from signing the deal, pending legal review. Since then, as fury has grown among Christians, the government has gone out of its way to denounce the deal it had been crafting for years.

On a recent Sunday in Lapayan, Rita Lapi wandered on the charred ground where her house used to be. She had lived here with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren -- until Muslim rebels doused the house with gasoline and set it ablaze. She and her family, along with hundreds of other terrified Christians, fled the village for the nearby seashore amid gunfire in the early hours of Aug. 18.

Lapi, 64, has lived with Muslims in this village all her life. They made up about 10 percent of the population. But they have all fled now and are living in displaced people's centers or with relatives.

She said Muslims will never be allowed to come back. She welcomes the return of the Ilaga, the armed Christian vigilantes who have begun to patrol Lapayan at night. "We don't want to have these Muslims as neighbors," she said.

About six miles from this village, in the courtyard of a small Islamic school that has become a makeshift center for 85 displaced Muslims, Latifah Carain, 22, was in her ninth month of pregnancy a few days ago. Her village, too, was attacked in mid-August by MILF rebels. She and other Muslims in the area had been quietly told in advance to get out. Two weeks after she fled, she said, Christians burned down her house.

Her husband has since gone back to the village to tend cows and cornfields, but she and her three young children have stayed behind in the Muslim school, where they are living on international aid. After she has had her baby, she said, she might go home. But there is no house to sleep in, and she is afraid of her neighbors.

"I don't know what to do," she said.

Special correspondent Carmela Cruz contributed to this report.