Betrayal and hypocrisy (1)

Jeremy Simons

DUNEDIN, New Zealand–Last month, President Rodrigo Duterte criticized the Ombudsman for “selective justice,” threatened an Iloilo mayor whom he accuses of shielding drug lords, and lashed out at government agencies hiring overpriced contractors. But it would be good for the President to look in the mirror at his own version of selective justice and the hiring and shielding of Omar “Solitario” Ali, a Maranao leader who was on the President’s own drug lord watch list. He was hired by the Office of  the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) because, as a former Moro National Liberation Front commander and former mayor of Marawi city, he agreed to negotiate with the Maute group in the administration’s management, or should we say mismanagement, of the Marawi crisis.

“Marawi City has the unsavory reputation of being the lynchpin in Muslim Mindanao’s drug economy,” (p. 104) and is, “in the grip of narco-politicans” (p. 105) so states International Alert’s “Out of the Shadows: Violent Conflict and the Real Economy of Mindanao,” an in depth book of research on the various “shadow economies,” including the illegal drug trade of Mindanao published in 2013.

Drug trading reportedly worsened during the political dynasty of Solitario who was mayor of Marawi from 2001-2007, and reached a full-blown crisis under his half brother Fahad “Pre” Salic’s term as mayor of Marawi mayor from 2007-2016. Additionally, according to the aforementioned study, “an official with direct access to military intelligence stated that narco-politicians from Lanao del Sur are conniving with the Kuratong Baleleng” (p. 105), the supposed drug syndicate of the Parojinog clan in Ozamiz, who were recently killed in an anti-drug raid by the Philippine National Police.

A Manila Bulletin report said Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza admitted that Ali (a.k.a. “Solitario”) had contacted him by phone “even before the Marawi (strife) erupted,” warning ‘about possible (violent) incidents involving the Mautes’ as conveyed by Salic [Solitario’s half brother, aka “Pre”], uncle by affinity to radical brothers Omar and Abdullah Maute”.

In this report, “Dureza… confirmed that he had taken in  (Solitario) as an Opapp consultant way before the Marawi siege erupted.” This happened sometime after the Davao bombing in September 2016, and not long after Solitario, Pre, and Arafats’ names had been included in President Duterte’s drug watch list released in early August of 2016.

In Lanao, the underlying family relations surrounding these events should be understood as much as possible. Pre and Solitario, half-brothers, have the same father, of the Salic clan, while Solitario’s mother is of the Ali clan of Marawi and Baloi, by which Solitario took the last name of “Ali” as a revolutionary nom de guerre and MNLF commander.

Solitario’s son and Pre’s nephew is Arafat Salic, Marawi’s vice mayor, who retains the last name of his grandfather, Solitario’s and Pre’s father. Though Pre’s maternal line is of a different sub-clan that connects with the clan of the Maute, Solitario and Pre, according to some, trace both their maternal and paternal lineages back to one of the orginal 11 Datuships of Marawi, that being the Guimba and Buadi Sacayo, thus giving them the strategic social status of sultans in Lanao. These lineage complexities are vitally important as they serve as avenues of political alliance, even social reconciliation, as well as unseen fault lines of conflict, and the means by which risks are minimized and the rewards from involvement in both legal and illicit economies are distributed.

Pre and his nephew Arafat were widely believed to be directly involved not only in the drug trade, but also in kidnap-foransom (KFR) /extortion in Lanao, with alleged Philippine military collusion. Additionally, at various times they allied with, and competed against, the Maute family whom the government accused of organizing the siege of Marawi, and was allegedly behind the September 2016 Davao City bombing.

In October-November 2016, the military responded to the Davao bombing by attacking Butig, Lanao del Sur, supposedly driving the Maute group out and securing the area. However, the government must have known that they had not succeeded in eradicating the threat, according to the Inquirer, because they hired Solitario as a consultant, working with his half-brother Pre, to negotiate with the Maute group in late November 2016, “soon after… government troops… had overrun the Maute group’s lairs in several villages in Butig town”.

However, the government failed to woo the Isis-affiliated Matue clan through negotiations even after this military success, an indicator more of political incompetence. As one local  analyst noted, “political feud yan — a small war of political clans in Butig which escalated into full blown war.” Thus, in the lead up to the Marawi crisis, the government undrcut itself in its all out war against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu and military incursion into Butig, so that the same analyst noted that “while Jolo was bombarded and militarized, Abus moved in the mainland Mindanao and in Bohol. Hindi isang surprisa ang lahat. Nacomplicate lang lalo ang conflict nang pinasok ang gulo ng druga. (None of this was a surprise, it just became more complicated, esepcially with all the chaos caused by drugs).”

The complicated history of some of these clan politics illuminates the background to the violence in Lanao in the present. A local historian notes, “the leadership of Marawi City is hotly contested by two clan groups — the five Marawi Clans and the six Dansalan Clans. These clans belongs to the old Confederacy of the 11 clans of Marawi. The dividing line of the two groups is the Agus River.” These clan groups have been jockeying for influence in the areas around that dividing line since the American invasion in the late 1800s. The municipality was thus originally named “Dansalan” by the Americans, and only changed to “Marawi” in the 1950s when a politican from the Marawi group won the mayoralty.

Masked by the guise of the political developments of the Philippine state and the revolutionary movements of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)  and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), clan dynamics and affiliations remain fluid. At stake for the Maranao community in their 120 years of resisting, accommodation, and manipulating outsiders, is the political leverage needed to control access to the many resources of Lanao, initially timber, then the fertile agricultural land and aquatic resources of Lake Lanao, and more recently the production of shabu and other profits derived from shadow economies. Of equal, or perhaps greater importance, is the power to claim and assert Maranao cultural integrity, the defense of the family and clan, and honor of the people.

The key to this leverage rests at the pinnacle of political influence, which Solitario had achieved in a personal meeting with the President, assisted by Dureza, as mentioned in a Mindanews report, when Solitario “met with President Duterte early on and volunteered to help, I [Dureza] engaged him (in) Opapp with a consultancy.” Later Dureza added, “At one time, when the President was in Cagayan de Oro monitoring Marawi, I arranged his phone call with the President. The President told him over the phone that he instead should talk to me. So I continued handling him.”

In an Inquirer article, Solitario said the Maute negotiations were known at the presidential level, “(Solitario) told the Inquirer… that he took orders from Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza. ‘I am sure the President knew about my going to Butig.’” (to be continued)

(Jeremy Simons worked in Davao as a peace and restorative justice advocate from 2008 to 2017. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand and can be reached at kalinawsamindanao@gmail.com – Mindanews)