RPG-wielding assassins
The scene seemed straight out of an action movie: Two men pop out of a white minivan, then one of them drops to a knee and aims a long, heavy firearm. On the opposite side of the road, a black vehicle moving slowly suddenly heaves, smoke and fire rising from beneath it. The vehicle manages to speed away, while the two assailants scamper back into their van and escape.
The incident was a brazen daytime ambush on Akmad Ampatuan, mayor of the town of Shariff Aguak in the province of Maguindanao del Sur, who was aboard the black SUV targeted by the assailants.
According to the mayor’s office, Ampatuan had survived three previous attempts on his life—in 2010, 2014, and 2019—and was wounded in the last two. Thus, he had taken to riding an armored vehicle, which in this case proved its worth by withstanding the attack on its principal occupant.
It was no ordinary attack. As seen in footage that immediately went viral before a horrified nation, an assailant had fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at Akmad’s vehicle, while another attacker fired shots with a rifle.
While Ampatuan did survive unscathed, two of his security escorts were injured.
Police eventually pursued the attackers and killed three of them. More high-powered firearms were reportedly recovered from their vehicle.
Maguindanao massacre
Political violence and outright assassinations are hardly rare occurrences in the Philippine political landscape. Maguindanao itself is now forever tied up with the gruesome Maguindanao massacre of 2009, in which 58 civilians—among them 34 journalists—were summarily killed and buried in three mass graves.
That incident still stands as the deadliest single attack on journalists in world history, according to Reporters Without Borders, and it was perpetrated by the brothers Andal Ampatuan Jr. and Zaldy Ampatuan, members of the Ampatuan political clan that had long dominated the province. The massacre was triggered by the Ampatuans’ feud with their political opponents, the Mangudadatus, a number of whom perished in the mass killing.
The Ampatuan brothers were convicted of 57 counts of murder and sentenced to reclusion perpetua without parole in 2019 for carrying out the Maguindanao massacre, now also known as the Ampatuan massacre. Some 43 others were also found guilty of complicity in the crime.
That Shariff Aguak’s mayor is still an Ampatuan—Akmad is the grandson of the late Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., father of Andal Jr. and Zaldy—is no surprise. It testifies to the extraordinary tenacity of political dynasties to endure and slough off even the most spine-chilling transgressions attached to their names, and continue to wield power over their fiefdoms.
Military-grade weapons
And that Akmad Ampatuan was protected from no less than an RPG attack by a fortified, bulletproof Toyota Land Cruiser has triggered the usual Filipino gallows humor. Whoever reinforced the vehicle, quipped some, has now hit the jackpot, with many more fearful politicians surely lining up to have their service vehicles buttressed the same way.
But the most startling element of this story is not the identity of the target, or the miracle car that saved him, but the weapon used. Ampatuan himself noted in an interview following the incident: “I didn’t expect them to use such large firearms. An RPG is not a weapon an ordinary person would use. This was a professional crime.”
That’s vastly understating it. The fact that attackers now wield military-grade weapons in assassination attempts—done in broad daylight, in a busy part of town with vendors and bystanders all around—should raise the gravest red flag among authorities. Where previously vigilantes and hired hands had relied on guns, they have now upped the ante with even more fearsome firearms capable of wreaking widespread destruction on civilians.
Dangerous infighting
This escalation in violence and impunity is playing out against the backdrop of the first-ever Bangsamoro Parliament election, set to be held before March 31 but which the Commission on Elections on Wednesday postponed again. The polls are crucial to providing stability and ballast to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which has been wracked by dangerous infighting and tensions.
While it remains unclear whether Ampatuan was targeted for specifically political reasons, the ground situation in BARMM is too fraught and volatile at this point for mayhem of this magnitude to be left unaddressed. The Election watchdog Boto Bangsamoro has already rung the alarm bells on a “worrying spike” in violent incidents in Maguindanao del Sur—and the attack on Ampatuan is but the latest demonstration of this intensifying trend.
The Marcos administration and law enforcement authorities cannot afford to be complacent in restoring peace and order as BARMM takes its first steps from transitional authority toward permanent self-government.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Peace, so long a dream for Muslim Mindanao, risks unraveling if violence is left unchecked.
