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Development Projects Can Be Counter-insurgency Tool, MILF Says
26 June 2009
A senior official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has said that if development projects cannot be handled well and discriminately can be an effective tool for defeating an insurgency in a particular place including Mindanao. They soothe the heart and appease the mind of aggrieved people. This was the statement of Muhammad Ameen, chairperson of the MILF Secretariat, in an interview with www.luwaran.com/net today, in the wake of heightened relief and rehabilitation efforts from the European Union, Japan, and the various agencies of the United Nations. However, he said the MILF is perhaps the only revolutionary organization that welcomes development for its people. “This is unique among real revolutionary groups,” he commented, “but the MILF has a special reason for allowing these projects attached to its ideological line.” The MILF believes that the confrontation with the enemy involves all levels from ideological, political, economic or material, physical, and armed. It does not believe that if people are better off in life they will not strive for what is lofty, sacred, and what is right. There are countless evidences both in history and in the current struggles of peoples in the world to prove that people will only strive because they are poor. However, Ameen said that for these projects to be welcomed and implemented there is prior coordination with the MILF through its development arm, the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), and a joint need assessment will be undertaken first by the donor and the BDA that such projects are really needed by the people. “We cannot allow indiscriminate implementation of these projects including those that are clearly counter-insurgency tool, otherwise we are digging our own graves,” he clarified. He said that development projects coming even from the best-intentioned donors will still have the same effects on our people, and this is the reason, he added, why the MILF seeks concurrence first before any activity on the ground.
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