Clan feuds fuel separatist violence in Philippines, study shows

In The New York Times
By Carlos H. Conde
Published: Friday, October 26, 2007

MANILA — Clan violence has contributed greatly to bloodshed in the southern Philippines, with government forces and Islamic separatists often drawn into the violence unnecessarily, complicating the decade-long search for peace there, a new study shows.

The study released Wednesday by the Asia Foundation said that the peace process in Mindanao, the region in the southern Philippines where Islamic separatists have been fighting for self-determination since the 1970s, would have a better chance of succeeding if clan violence - called "rido" by Filipino Muslims - were addressed.

The study said "rido" is a "type of conflict characterized by sporadic outbursts of retaliatory violence between families and kinship groups as well as between communities. It can occur in areas where government or a central authority is weak and in areas where there is a perceived lack of justice and security." Two common causes of this type of conflict are political disputes and quarrels over land.

The project's researchers, which included Islamic scholars and anthropologists, found that, from the 1930s to 2005, there had been 1,266 cases of clan violence in Mindanao, in which 5,500 people were killed and thousands were displaced. Of these cases, 64 percent have not been solved, the perpetrators never identified nor brought to justice.

While clan conflict is common in many societies around the world, "rido" is unique in that it has, according to the study, "wider implications for conflict in Mindanao, primarily because it tends to interact in unfortunate ways with separatist conflict and other forms of armed violence."

The government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Islamic separatist group, have been engaged in peace negotiations since 1997 but no substantial agreement has been reached.

According to the study, half of the clan violence documented occurred between 2000 and 2004. During this period, the cease-fire between the government and the Islamic front was broken many times by fighting caused by clan feuds.

"Most of the hostilities during this period were complicated by 'rido,' " said Teresita Quintos-Deles, who was President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's presidential adviser on the peace process from 2003 to 2005. In fact, Deles said Wednesday, fighting between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front decreased in 2004 and 2005 and most of the hostilities during that period were triggered by clan violence.

Typically, according to the study, two warring families would petition either the Islamic front or the military for help. In many instances, feuding families were also members of the front or had connections with the military.

"At times, local conflicts trigger large-scale armed confrontations between government and rebel forces," said the study, which cited several incidents of such confrontations. "In these events, parties to localized conflicts are able to exploit, deliberately or not, the military resources of both forces."

Clan violence in Mindanao, it said, has caused death and suffering, destroying of property, crippling the local economy, displacing communities, and sowing fear among communities.

Gutierrez Mangansakan 2nd, a Muslim Filipino film maker, knows only too well the impact of clan violence: his family battled another for years. He was only eight in 1985 when his family and the other clan began a conflict that lasted for more than two decades. He said he saw shootings in his village that triggered it, and the situation worsened, he said, until family was forced to leave.

The Asia Foundation intends to use its study to try to resolve more cases of clan violence and deal with it constructively.

"The Asia Foundation published this book to empower communities to break the cycle of violence," said Wilfredo Torres, who coordinated the research and edited the book. In doing the study, he said, "we have already seen the positive results of fresh, constructive dialogue through a better understanding of 'rido.' "