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view: The trouble with tribes —Rafia Zakaria

Both Pakistan and the Philippines have relatively weak central governments beset with a host of structural issues, Islamist groups that seek to channel territorial grievances into jihadist ones, and tribal identities that have never given way to a national identity

Mindanao province in the southern Philippines has been the site of much political upheaval in recent years. It is a Muslim majority province in an otherwise largely Christian and Catholic country. Economic depression, political disenfranchisement and religious extremism have cumulatively ravaged the geographically remote province. This past Monday, a convoy of journalists and supporters of a would-be candidate for the governor in the province of Maguindanao were attacked and brutally murdered as they headed to an election office to register candidacy papers. Included in the dead were the wife and two sisters of the candidate, Ismael Mangudadatu, who is currently Mayor of a small town, Buluan in Maguindanao province, and had planned on contesting elections for the governor of the province. His decision apparently angered the local Ampatuan clan, who has been in control of the province for the past several decades. The suspect accused of the killings was Datu Andal Ampatuan, a clan leader who was threatened by the Mangudadatu efforts to gain electoral control of the province. The group that had set off to register the election papers consisted of nearly 50 people. Of the 50, nearly 18 and maybe more are reported to be journalists making this the largest collective killing of media personnel in Filipino history. The International Press Freedom Group has called the killing “an incomprehensible bloodbath” and asked the administration of President Gloria Arroyo to conduct an inquiry into the matter.

The complex interplay of clan rivalry, exchange of political favour with the Centre and various dynastic alliances were all to blame in the Philippines massacre. The Muslim province of Maguindanao, along with the other Mindanao provinces, have tenuous relationships with the Philippines central government. The latter in turn has sought to exploit rivalries between existing clans through the grant of electoral favour to gain support of some clans while alienating others. In the current case, the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu were obviously competing over control of the province. Recent developments in Mindanao’s struggle for sovereignty have made the stakes in electoral competitions even higher. In August of last year, the Supreme Court of the country threw out an agreement that would have given the province some semblance of regional sovereignty on grounds of unconstitutionality. The court argued that the Philippines Constitution did not permit such a grant of sovereignty. This decision came amidst the backdrop of rumour that President Arroyo and her party may support an amendment to the Constitution that would allow both for her to contest another term and also allow for sovereignty for Mindanao province. For those like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who had fought for sovereignty for a while, agreeing to such a proposition may have been a devil’s bargain where they ratified the personal political aims of a particular political figure in exchange for their long-standing demands. Speculations of such a coalition were put to rest when President Arroyo’s party declared that Gilberto Teodoro would be their candidate in May 10, 2010. With sovereignty off the table, stakes in existing parliamentary structures as well as the governorship of the embattled provinces has become even more crucial. The result, a bitter battle and barbaric massacre in which clans are pitched against each other for control over a province with meagre resources and growing political unrest. The current massacre illustrates this very bloody dynamic; the particular Ampatuan leader who has accepted responsibility for the attack and was turned in by other clan leaders in General Santos city, was supposedly promised the post by his uncle who is the current governor of the province.

The most notable dynamic of the situation in the Philippines is its similarity with the tribal areas of Pakistan. Both Pakistan and the Philippines have relatively weak central governments beset with a host of structural issues, Islamist groups that seek to channel territorial grievances into jihadist ones, and tribal identities that have never given way to a national identity. Just as in the Philippines, many of the long standing grievances of the tribes in Pakistan have been dealt with through piecemeal rewards given to tribes willing to cooperate with the government. In both cases, local tribes command militias or local armies of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. The result has been an empowerment of local tribes and warlords leaving the local population completely helpless at their hands. The security consequences of such an arrangement have been that these same tribes and warlords control the security in the region. This same dynamic was seen in the current massacre where no police or government official was able to prevent the mass killing of scores of people or the dumping of their bodies in mass graves.

Both Mindanao and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have seen military operations to quell the increasing control by Islamist guerrillas, the militant elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Mindanao and the Taliban in Pakistan. In order to quell the increasing popularity and growing insurgency, both the governments are and continue to look at further empowering local tribes and warlords to fight the Islamist insurgency. On a global level, the dynamic demonstrates how Islamist groups have been able to hijack local territorial grievances to their global agenda. Given all of these similarities; the current massacre in the Philippines should provide a cautionary tale to all those who think that empowering tribes and warlords is a panacea for the growing unrest in these regions. It also demonstrates how democratic institutions have been unable to dislocate these tribal structures and really provide the people of these areas some modicum of self-representation.

The attraction of Islamist rhetoric, whether it be the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines or the Taliban in Pakistan, is as much a product of the deals struck between tribes, warlords and the central governments and the consequent superficiality of democratic institutions as of anything else. Like the Philippines, the current army operation in Waziristan pivots on providing even more power to local tribes and warlords. This strategy has been endorsed and promoted also by the US that sees the tribes as a way to fill the power vacuum left by the elimination of the Taliban. The comparison of the Pakistani and Filipino cases reveals the potential cost of what is troublingly seen as the magic solution to an intractable problem.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

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