No BARMM black swans

Since the Islamic secessionist movements in the 1970s, the people of Muslim Mindanao have endured the highest levels of violence inflicted on the country. They have suffered from the fighting not only between the government and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) insurgents and their respective allies but also from feuding political dynasties and radical Islamic jihadists. The Ampatuan massacre (2009), a case of election-related violence (ERV), resulted in 58 casualties. The Zamboanga siege (2013) took the lives of some 200 combatants and collateral victims and displaced over 120,000 people. The botched Mamasapano operation (2015), which was meant to capture one jihadist terrorist, wiped out 44 PNP Special Action Force troops. The five-month Marawi siege (2017) caused about 1,200 deaths, destroyed the city’s central area, and turned more than 350,000 residents into refugees.

The 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) and the consequent creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) promised to reduce regional violence. The International Crisis Group reported ERV cases of around 40 in 2016 and 20 in 2019, while the PNP confirmed only 14 in 2022. The 2023 BARMM barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections broke the trend. Climate Conflict Action Asia recorded over 700 ERV incidents leading to at least 242 deaths. Analysts agree that the 2025 midterm elections proceeded peacefully. BARMM was an exception, exceeding its 2022 count at 438 ERV incidents and 165 deaths. The surge in BARMM ERV got little notice from the national government, most politicians, and mainstream media. For most people, even in geographically nearby communities, BARMM was a distant place, whose history, politics, and culture were complex, unfamiliar, and uninteresting. The country also appeared to accept in BARMM a higher threshold of violence, as well as lower levels of development as normal conditions that could be safely ignored—until communal frustrations boiled over into national crises demanding a military response, like what happened in the 1970s.

The relative peace in BARMM before 2022 coincided with the term of the Bangsamoro Transition Administration (BTA), an unelected body effectively controlled by the MILF. The CAB gave the BTA the governance of BARMM until the 2022 election of the parliament, to which it would yield its powers. COVID-19 and the sheer magnitude of its work brought the BTA a second, unelected term, postponing elections to 2025. The extension of MILF dominance over BARMM reportedly provoked the 2023 and 2025 ERV spikes. The pot still simmers on the stove. BARMM still has to conduct parliamentary elections on Oct.13. To be clear, the postponement of the parliamentary elections was justifiable. But so was the concern over the continued rule of a transitional agency that did not derive its mandate from voters, and who could demand accountability for possible abuse of authority. The problem of elections did not center on who should govern BARMM. The voters can make this decision, as they do in the rest of the country. The MILF must appeal to the electorate, as do other political groups, to exercise power. In the 2025 elections, the MILF fielded its own United Bangsamoro Justice Party.

But beyond the administration of BARMM, the MILF rightly claims the responsibility and the duty to secure the goals for which it has fought for half a century. Accepted in the CAB, their implementation remains incomplete. The framework for “transitional justice and reconciliation” to address the root causes of the secessionist movement, including a system to validate claims for reparations for war victims, is unfinished. So is the basic “normalization process” to provide MILF troops livelihood opportunities as they demobilize and disarm. Over 30 percent of some 40,000 fighters have kept their weapons. About 50 private armed groups, which can offer alternative employment to disaffected rebels, remain in the field.

Completing the CAB will not be done before parliamentary elections and must continue beyond them. The MILF has pledged to continue implementing the peace settlement terms, regardless of electoral results. But the CAB provisions cannot be fulfilled without national government action. This raises two questions: 1) how have the Duterte and Marcos administrations supported the CAB; 2) how effectively can the MILF collaborate with the government, should elections reduce their official positions in BARMM.

The stakes are high. The MILF still commands mandate, means, and legitimacy to secure for its followers the expected peace settlement dividends. But the CAB’s success will benefit, just as its failure will endanger, the entire country. Renewed conflict in BARMM will compromise economic prospects and complicate national security efforts to focus on external threats that can escalate. BARMM may yet escape the recurrence of widespread violence. Inshallah. But the government cannot excuse its resurgence as a black swan event.

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