On Friday, September 30th, 2011, South Cotabato Province became the fifth Mindanowan province to be declared as "Insurgency Free." Of course just as with the other four:
1) Misamis Oriental
2) Surigao del Norte
3) Camiguin
4) Dinagat
the proclamation amounts to little more than political jockying. As I noted in the Spring of 2010 when Misamis Oriental and Surigao del Norte Provinces, and by relation, Dinagat which was then fighting in the Supreme Court to secede from Surigao del Norte, the Armed Forces of the Philippines' proud claims of having made those provinces "NPA Free" would amount to "famous last words." With no joy I was proved right and so much so that as I compose this entry on September 30th the AFP is tearing up much of the Zapanta Valley on the Surigao del Norte and Agusan del Norte Provincial borders, as the 30IB leads a major two week military blitz against the NPA's Front 19 of Northeast Mindanao Regional Committee, or NEMRC.
South Cotabato is home to three different insurgent organisations and occasionaly has had as many as five operating there at any given time:
1) NPA, Front 73 and Front 74, both of the FSMRC, or Far South Mindanao Regional Committee
2) MILF/BIAF, the 107 Base Command as well as occasionally playing host to the Bedis contingent of the 105 Base Command
3) Black Fighters, a B'laan Tribal group composed of former NPA cadres and guerillas that is usally referred to by the generic label, "Sipot." The word is Hilgaynon, the language of the Ilonggo, a Bisaya People who constitute the majority of Christian Filipinos in Central Mindanao. The word simply means, "Take All" because that is exactly what the Black Fighters do when they swoop down on the isolated mountain communities they target, taking even impovershed peasants' last piece of livestock. To complicate matters local government authorities in South Cotabato have also used the label "Sipot" to refer to Maguindanowan Tribesmen, Muslims, who ALSO target isolated mountain villages.
The declared "Pacification" is interesting for two reasins, both of them inter-related. In South Cotabato these days all roads lead to Tapamkan, a municipality near the meeting of the South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and Davao del Sur provincial borders. The town, not much to look at at first glance, is ground zero for the proposed open pit mine that will sit over what could be the world's second richest gold field. The project, split between four corporations:
1) SMI, or Sagittarius Mines Inc.
2) Xstrata
3) Indophil Resources Inc.
4) San Miguel Corporation, or SMC
aims to cover parts of three Mindanowan provinces:
1) South Cotabato
2) Sultan Kudarat
3) Davao del Sur
Naturally one of the world's most lucrative mining ventures would attract a significant amount of violence and mayhem were it located anyplace on the globe, how much more so seeing as how it is on Mindanao, the bloodiest part of an extremely violent country. Case in point, on the morning of September 16th, 2011, 53 year old Cristituto "Cris" Bual urged his wife Melanie to hurry up or they wouldn't have enough time to finish their regular morning run. These days Mr.Bual didn't get many opportunities to stretch his legs since getting a long awaited promotion at his job, in his employer's external operations facet. Promoted to Superintendent of Offsite Land Acquisition for SMI, or Sagittarius Mining Incorporated. As Melanie stepped outside in her trainers she saw that her husband was impatient as usual, almost at the front gate of their home in Davao City's Central Park Sub-division. Suddenly Melanie saw a man approach from outside the gate and before she could even register what was taking place, the man, dressed in combat fatigues and an orange baseball cap, raised his arm and fired three rounds from his 45 caliber pistol in quick succession. Each round was fired at point blank range and by the third bullet her husbands skull had been blown apart. Calmly walking to an idling black Honda Wave motorcycle the gunman slowly and calmly got on the rear of the motorcycle before it sped off and disappeared into the streets of the city's Bangkal District.
Immediately people theorised that the killing had been undertaken by the NPA since Bual worked for The Tampakan Project. It wasn't a theory without merit since the NPA has attacked the proposed mine at least four times since 2007. In fact, just this past March, 25th, 2011, a group of B'laan Tribesmen, including Black Fighters, had attacked a convoy of dumptrucks for a subcontractor on the Tampakan Project. In that attack as well, which killed one truck driver and two labourers- as well as critically wounding a third labourer- the NPA had been erroneously tagged as the party responsible.
On September 22nd, 2011 the NPA's Valentin Palamine Command of the Far South Mindanao Regional Committee, or FSMRC, released a statement in which it took great pains to claim that since Mr.Bual wasn't a senior employee of the Tampakan project his name had never been placed on the FSMRC Order of Battle. "Orders of Battle" are lists used by many militaries and paramilitaries in which personalities and other military objectives are priortised as to their importance.
Though the NPA adamantly opposes the Tampakan Project it is but one of literally dozens of very motivated opponents. Truth be told the NPA hasn't targetted executives or company officers since the early 1990s. In the many years since then the Maoists have instead latched onto highly symbolic targets like mining company's base camps or company equipment. It reserves executions for traitors to the movement or to intelligence assets. Laughably the NPA has suggested that it was SMI itself that killed Mr.Bual. According to the NPA Bual had recently been tasked with large land purchases in the municipality of Malalag in Davao del Sur Province. In three of that town's barangays along the shores of Malalag Bay the Tampakan Project aims to build a filtration facility, a dedicated port facility, and a 317 megawatt coal-fed energy plant to power the preceding two. The NPA says that Bual had failed to accomplish this task to the satisfaction of his employers and instead of demoting him, or even terminating his employment, they opted to terminate his life. If it wasn't such a deathly serious subject the NPA's ridiculous claim would be hilarious.
Now that I mentioned that March 25th ambush of a dumptruck convoy, accused triggerman Dagil Capion says that he is willing to surrender IF his brother Pilo Capion is released from the South Cotabato Provincial Jail in the provincial capital of Koronadal City where he is being held on a Rape charge. Dagil says that the Rape never took place but was contrived by SMI to payback his family for their strident, even violent opposition to the mining project. Things weren't always like this between SMI and the Capion Clan. Like a minority of his fellow B'laan Tribesmen Dagil had jumped at SMI's offer of steady employment.
Shortly after the project began to materielise in 2006 the company reached out to the municipality of Tampakan's strongest clans in a blatant attempt to curry favour and strengthen their hand. Dagil was hired as a Community Relations Officer on the company payroll. Things were fine for awhile but Dagil says he soon found himself sickened at SMI's dirty underhanded tricks and abuse of his fellow B'laan and the mountains they hold so sacred.
On the day in question, March 25th, Dagil Capion and several other men armed with M16s and M1s set out to get their message out for the umpteenth time. Travelling upcountry the men lined both sides of a new dirt road in Barangay Danlag's Sitio Datalbiao, stretching from Tampakan's Barangay Poblacion and the location of SMI's local offices up to a test site uphill from the aforementioned Barangay Danlag. When the convoy came within sight the men strafed the first dumptruck killing three men:
1) Osias Pizania, a driver
2) Rommel Vega, a labourer
3) Nelson Parasan, a labourer
and wounding another labourer:
1) Elmer Magdula
all three of whom were employed by SMI subcontractor LVE Construction. LVE happens to be owned by none other than Tampakan's Mayor, Leonardo V.Escobillos. Capion added a request that the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP's Task Force Kitamco withdraw from the town's upland barangays to stem abuse committed in support of the Tampakan Project. Just one month before, on February 22nd, 2011, that ambush a B'laan leader who was one of the project's biggest cheerleaders had been targetted as well; Datu Tonio Binuhay and his pregnant wife Rosanna had just sat down for supper in the lowland barangay of Santa Cruz. Two men riding tandem on a single motorcycle approached the Binuhay home in Sitio S'bangken, in Purok Quezon. The rear passenger hopped off, dressed in camoflauge fatigues and wearing a "bonnet" (baclava) over his face, kicked in the door before spraying the couple with his M16. In just a few seconds Datu Tonio, his wife Rosanna, and their unborn child lay dead on the floor. This carnage had also briefly been blamed on the NPA's Front 74.
Although the NPA does make a convenient whipping boy the AFP and PNP, or Philippine National Police had no choice in these two cases and came clean, absolving the Maoist guerillas.
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