On Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 seven year old Kisha Jel Navarro was walking with her mother Elsie Navarro having just left their home in the municipality of Pikit's Barangay Poblacion in North Cotabato Province on the way to Kisha's school, Pikit Central Pilot Elementary School after their lunch as was their daily routine. On Mindanao "daily routines" can wreck lives and so it was that day as the mother and daughter passed the town's Pikit National Highschool and then turned down Feneral Street. Two men riding tandem on a red Yamaha DT motorcycle approached at a fairly high rate of speed before skidding to a stop next to the terrified mother. The man on the rear quickly got off of the bike and told Ms.Navarro bluntly that her daughter was being kidnapped and to expect a communication shortly.
Grabbing the little girl and forcing her onto the motorcycle between himself and the driver, the man on the rear suddenly pointed a 45 caliber pistol at the shocked Ms.Navarro and warned her not to contact the authorities. The motorcycle then quickly roared off heading into the town's Barangay Gli-Gli before passing into the adjacent Barangay Balong, an MILF/BIAF controlled settlement bordering Liguasan Marsh. Perhaps trying to engage in a bit of damage control following the Luisita Galvez KFR, or Kidnap for Ransom, in which the common law wife of a Scottish expatriate was initially kidnapped by the BIAF, or Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces as the MILF's military wing is known, via their 113 Base Command before being sold to the Abu Sayyaf, the MILF contacted the BIAF Camp in Barangay Balong, belonging to the 105 Base Command under sub-Kumander Tungko "Bad Boy" Sawali Asim, as well as those in adjacent municipalities asking for their assistance in gaining the release of young Kisha Jel.
Although the mother, Elsie Navarro, is herself a public highschool teacher and therefore far from wealthy, Mr.Navarro is a deckhand aboard an oil tanker, or in Fil-English, a "seaman.' Seamen make a considerable wage, certainly by Filipino standards, and so her being Christian and being from what in Mindanao at least constitutes an upper-middleclass family, the young girl was an attractive KFR, or Kidnap for Ransom target for the MILF/BIAF. Though the MILF itself doesn't sanction such kidnappings it looks the other way in the case of the BIAF. Owing to a downturn in logistical and funding assistance from the MILF Central Committee some years ago certain BIAF Base Commands have resorted to criminal activity to fund their operations. KFR is the second most lucrative of these activities after commercial and municipal extortion.
With the MILF Central Committee trying to earn brownie points by seemingly getting tough on KFR the Navarro Kidnapping was more trouble than its worth for the kidnappers, even from the start, almost as bad as the Angelina Soken Chew Kidnapping across the border in Maguindanao's municipality of Datu Piang roughly two months ago when the MILF resorted to abducting family members of the kidnappers in a novel rendering of "an eye for eye." Then, when the wife of Pikit's Mayor Sumulong K.Sultan took it upon herself to informally handle negotiations by personally traveling to the Navarro home where she was able to intercept a hand delivered note containing a cellphone number for the kidnappers. Delia Sultan, no shrinking violet as her membership on the North Cotabato Provincial Board has proven, then nominated herself the kidnapping's unofficial negotiator, circumventing the official negotiator on the Crisis Management Committee quickly empaneled by her husband, the Mayor.
Communicating with the kidnappers via cellphone,
the kidnappers were more than willing to listen. Naturally Ms.Sultan offered the captors a decently sized "Room and Lodging Fee" as lowballed ransoms are popularly known in Mindanao. After an hour of talking in which Ms.Sultan also offered promises of largesse from future municipal projects in addition to the aforementioned fee, she departed for the town hall to await the kidnappers' decision, having been told that they would seriously consider all she had said and all she had to offer and then call her on her cellphone to let her know one way or the other.
At 10PM she received that much awaited phonecall in which the kidnappers informed Ms.Sultan that they would be releasing Kisha Jel in Barangay Balong momentarily, in Sitio Gawang near the border of Barangay Kabacan, IF the proffered Room and Lodging fee was delivered as she had offered. Mayor Sultan then dispatched a plain clothes police officer from the Pikit MPO, or Municipal Police Office. Twenty minutes later, the money having been delivered in Barangay Gil-Gil, Kisha Jel walked down a quiet street and into the arms of her relieved mother as she stood next to Mayor Sultan, his wife Delia, and a group of AFP, or Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers from the 7IB (Infantry Battalion). After a long 10 hours in Liguasan Marsh, Kisha Jel Navarro was reunited with her loved ones and as the adage goes, "All's well that ends well."
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