Claiming that displaced persons are in possession of power may be viewed as naive and presumptuous. I invite you, however, to a reflection on the discourse of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) as I offer a description of repeated forced migrations, and on the persistence of displaced communities in creating and recreating
their communities through the years of continuing armed conflicts in Mindanao. In the process, I will take a critical assessment of the horrendous cost of the armed conflicts and its resulting displacements without losing sight of the historical capacity of displaced communities to deal with their condition.
To start with, this paper will tackle the discourse of the bakwits, the Mindanao Idiom closely resembling the IDP category. I will comment on some views that project the bakwits as if they are people without history by following the 32-year experience of repeated evacuations, returns, and rebuilding of the bakwits from Buliok and its surrounding communities in Central Mindanao.
The paper will also take a glimpse of new movements undertaken by displaced persons, such as the establishment of “space for peace,” mass mobilizations that unleashed the “bakwit power,” and the bakwit’s involvement in the monitoring of ceasefire agreements signed by armed groups. Finally the paper argues for  a re-understanding of the dominant images of the bakwits, and suggest the idea of solidarity  over aid and the possibilities of harnessing the power of the displaced in peace advocacy. I highlight the capacities of the displaced in recording their lives as an integral component in understanding the patterns of displacements and in the discussion of security issues. These capacities are often undermined, ignored, and forgotten from the time aid groups start with the distribution of first bags of relief goods to the design and construction of houses an community facilities.

I. The Bakwits
In many areas of Mindanao, IDP takes the idiom “bakwit,” a; category for persons displaced by calamities and armed conflicts. The, bakwit, as pronounced by different linguistic background, appropriates  the English verb “evacuate.” Dictionaries of Philippine dialects note that the term bakwit (with spelling variations bakwit and bakwit) refers, to “evacuees, refugees” (Sullivan 1986, 76; Almario 2001, 81) and is used both as a verb and a noun. The term bakwit does not distinguish an IDP from the refugees defined in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the United Nations Guidelines on Internally Displaced Persons (UNGPID). For this paper, I take the bakwit in reference to persons displaced by calamities and armed conflicts in Mindanao.

I frame this paper in the context of the armed conflicts and’ displacements over a thirty-year period as viewed by the bakwits, civil society and aid groups, and some of the war’s protagonists including members of government-backed paramilitary forces, former members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Army field commanders and some leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and 4 the literatures on the “Mindanao conflict.” The bakwits shared with 1, me their stories and photographs, their pains and joys in the course of I my seven-month fieldwork for an ethnography of the bakwits in certain evacuation sites and villages in the provinces of Maguindanao and North Cotabato.

As If A People Without History

Government and civil society literatures refer to the bakwits as people “denied of their rights to make choices and decisions for themselves and their community” due to the “recurring patterns of violence, deprivation and coercion” (Mindanao Peoples Caucus brochure). Some studies conclude that the displaced are “poor and uneducated” and that their “living conditions had further worsened and rendered dim their prospects of achieving better futures or, at least, regaining the kind of life and the pride and self-respect they used to have” (Notre Dame University with the Commission on Population January 2004, 54).

To address the bakwit situation, calls were issued for “human rights defenders, service providers, peace advocates, and the stakeholders themselves to take the main role in reclaiming the rights and dignity of the IDPs” (BALAY Primer on UNGPID), by “empowering communities through capacity building” (Tabang Mindanaw or Help Mindanao brochure; National Anti-Poverty Commission 2003 Report, 19-26; MEDCO, ARMM, UNDP, EC, September 2004).

Descriptions of the patterns of displacements in Mindanao tend to focus on forced migration events surrounding the major armed confrontations between the government and Morn rebel forces in 2000 and 2003, and were limited to the implications on women and children, needs assessments, governance and better means of conducting aid, rehabilitation, peace and development programs (Notre Dame University with the Commission on Population 2004; Daguino, Kamlian, et al. 2004, 3; Oxfam Great Britain November 2000; Accion Contra el Hambre June 2004). These assessments offer a generalized description of displacement patterns that highlight the helplessness of the displaced, the necessity of continued assistance, their crossing the threshold of food insecurity and on to an even bleaker future, as if the bakwits are a people without history.

II. Evacuations, Returns, and Rebuildings
Movements and Persistence

I believe that it is meaningful to view the patterns of displacements within the thirty-year time frame, and not to be limited to the bakwits’ situation and movements in the wars of 2000 and 2003. I also take note of the cultural diversity and complexities of Mindanao’s eighteen million people who are organized, but not exclusively, along ethno-linguistic, political, and even class lines.

In understanding displacement patterns, I keep track of the events when communities evacuate and the sites where they evacuated, the period when they start the process of returning and rebuilding their villages, and the time they are displaced again. Experiences of evacuations, returns and rebuildings are not limited to stories of helplessness and sufferings but are also about persistence and capabilities.

Evacuations

For this paper, evacuation means the time communities are displaced when residents migrate elsewhere to avoid being caught in the war. Being “caught in the war” has two meanings for some of the bakwits in Central Mindanao. First, it means exposing oneself or family to danger, and second, it means the mobilization of an individual, families, and clans to join the fighting. During the evacuation period, not all displaced families run far away from their villages and farms. Some stay and hide along river banks, forested areas, behind tall grasses or in dry portions of the swamps, as in the case of the experiences of the villagers across the Liguasan Marsh.4 In recent armed confrontations, particularly in 1997, 2000, and 2003, most displaced residents would flee to evacuation centers or camps.
Returns

I also distinguish returns from rebuildings because the bakwits go through distinct experiences in both events. They keep watch, especially of patrolling soldiers, and take the first opportunity of returning to their farms or fishing grounds at the marsh and rivers once the soldiers withdraw. After working their farms, fishing, or scouring for food from the field, they return to their refuge. The bakwits in the evacuation camps at times venture to their farms for a day or a few days. In the process of return, the bakwits do not immediately re-occupy the lands where their houses and farms used to be. Returning families group together in certain areas where they build temporary shelters even as they work their farms, either collectively or individually. In other cases, only the men return to the village to farm while the women, children, and the elderly stay in the evacuation sites. The reason for these arrangements is that they do not feel secure during the first few months of return when government soldiers continue to conduct patrol operations and are deployed near or within their farmlands. They know that after every battle, rebel forces would simply break into smaller groups but often stay near the village. These villages are also the homes of some of the rebels the government have been fighting with. Some of these rebels are the sons, husbands, brothers, in-laws, and cousins of the displaced. Civilians think that chances of getting caught in the crossfire are high because the warring forces are in their village.

Rebuildings

Rebuilding refers to the period when displaced communities start re-establishing or have already completed reconstruction of structures, materials resources, common and individual facilities, houses, and farms. Rebuilding, however, does not necessarily mean the return of all the bakwits. Some stay away from their original village for some time. Others return home periodically to farm and tend to other properties like farm animals and tools. I associate rebuilding to that period when the communities start the designing and the reconstruction of community resources and facilities like schools, houses, places of worship, traditional communal and multi-purpose halls, health centers, the continuation of planting cycles and abundance of harvest, purchase of farm tools, holding of elections, observance of rituals, the practice of worship, gathering of families and of the community, holding weddings, celebration of births, beautification of abandoned and bombed out burial ground, and the functioning of everyday life.

I think these criteria I set forth echo suggestions in setting the “bare minimum” of human capabilities so we can say clearly “what would be a humanly good way of countering limitation” (Nussbaum 1995, 80). Nussbaum offered a working list that evaluates human capabilities that includes perceiving, imagining, thinking, humor, sex, having intimate family, personal, and social relations, being imaginative, emotional and intellectual.

I checked these capabilities from the experience of the evacuees from Buliok and I find them amazingly animated. The narratives I am presenting were told to me by Buliok residents, who are still in the evacuation centers, have already returned to their village, or have gone elsewhere. Some of those who went not far away from their places of origin continue to tend their farms.
The Buliok Experience

In police and military parlance, Buliok is known as “Buliok Complex,” apparently intended to highlight the area’s strategic value as a military target. The law MILF chair Salamat Hashim established a base n this sprawling village after their headquarters based in the hinterlands Matanog town in Maguindanao fell during government offensives in 2000. For Buliok residents, their village is a barangay, the smallest and territorial unit of the Philippine government. Before the war in. and 2003, Buliok had schools, farms, mosques, government halls, health centers, and a population of 4,260 persons who thrived  farming and fishing. It was not the only time Buliok was attacked, community and other residents from adjacent areas had gone t terrifying experiences of repeated armed conflicts since 1972.

Based on the narratives of Buliok, I trace the process of displa return, and rebuilding (see table below). I re-appropriate their s in terms of lines and curves. The diagonal lines represent the p of displacement, broken lines signify the bakwits’ efforts in re to their villages, and the solid lines highlight the displaced p initiatives in rebuilding their communities.

A quick glance at the table suggests that Buliok villagers through at least two long term displacements in 1972 and late 1974. they began returning in early 1974, fresh fighting erupted, result a six-year displacement between 1975 to 1981. Buliok bakwits st returning in the second half of 1981 and rebuilt their communities. until they were displaced again eight years later, in 1989. The bakwits started returning in 1991 and went on rebuilding their community until displaced again around the summer of 1997. The bakwits returned end of 1997 but were displaced again during the 2000 war. By the third quarter of 2000, a stream of evacuees gradually returned to Buliok only to be displaced in February 2003. In December 2003, the bakwits started returning up until the time this paper is being written.

The persistence of the Buliok community in returning and rebuilding is worth highlighting because their experience signifies the capabilities of the community that refuses to remain victims or be broken by displacements.
Buliok Before the Displacements

Menandang Mamolindas, 36 years old, a village councilor in the predominantly Muslim community of Buliok and chair of the bakwits association called Suara Kalilintad in Pikit and Pagalungan towns, recalls that before the 1972 displacements, Buliok was a thriving, self-sustaining community complete with three rice mills, several corn milling equipment, large houses with okir designs and high roofed houses on stilts, a madrasah, three mosques, wide swaths of tobacco, coconut, rice, and corn farms, fleet of motorized and non-motorized boats for fishing and transporting of farm produce to Cotabato City, fertile farmlands, and rows of stores. “A Story of Barangay Buliok” which Menandang wrote by long hand describes their place in the decade of 1960 to 1970 as masagana (abundant) because they had “several sources of income” (Mamolindas 2004).
Evacuations. 1972

Menandang wrote, that with the occurrence of communal violence in many parts of Cotabato in the early 1970s, cases of criminality in their community also went up and that their village was in turmoil following the formation of the fanatical, armed anti-Muslim group called Ilaga. The residents of Buliok and the surrounding communities actually prepared for the Raga attack by organizing and arming their men. In other accounts, the armed Maguindanawons were known as the Blackshirts and Barracuda who were reportedly linked to Maguindanao and Meranao politicians (McKenna 1998, 153, Che Man 1990, 75). For Menandang, they were defending their land as members of the community and of their clans. Armed members of the community and clans later re-organized and were transformed into nation revolutionaries with the formation of the MNLF (Jubair 1999, 148-1 As the MNLF gathered strength, government responded by dept massive troops, equipment and launching artillery and aerial attack The combined military firepower caused the large-scale displacement in the 1970s and in subsequent decades.
Classifying  bombs

Menandang’s neighbors says that Buliok, its surrounding village and the marshes were pounded by artillery from army bases and bombs dropped by helicopters, Tora-tora aircraft, and later, by OV-10 bombs  aircraft. The bombings were so intense that they developed idiom for the different bombs based on the size of the craters caused by bomb. A bomb crater big enough for a person to fit in is a “cutting bomb.” A bomb leaving a crater that fits a six-wheeler truck is called the “national bomb” while one that leaves a crater bigger than that left by a”national bomb” is referred to as an “international bomb.” The bombs and operations from ground troops destroyed t village. The residents fled to various parts of the vast Liguasan M During their stay in the marsh, they would fish and cook at night ensure that the soldiers and the planes would not see the smoke from fire and attack them. They heard that in some areas of the marsh, whelk families were bombed and wiped out for making the mistake of cook’ at daytime. There were no aid agencies or civil society extending he They relied on one another and the clan structures while in the marsh.
Trading and Feasting in Evacuation Sites

When the military aerial and pursuit operations stopped after a f* months, the bakwits tried farming the dry fertile lands of the mat or fishing in its waterways and swamps. A few members of the fa would slip through soldiers and paramilitary forces covering the points from the marsh and then sell their fish catch and harvest to II markets in Pikit or Cotabato City.

A few months after the displacements, traders, several of whom Christians and ethnic Chinese from Cotabato City, Pikit, and other a sailed to the marshlands peddling merchandise like biscuits, c a nThe4 goods, clothes, veils, kerosene gas, kitchen wares, blades for farmingand other basic household amenities. The traders, in turn, purchased the bakwits’ farm products and fish catch, and sold them back to Pikit or Cotabato City_. Life was not as easy compared to their life in Buliok before the war but they managed to hold kanduli or celebrations for weddings, births, remembering the dead, important Islamic rites, and other cultural events. They even managed to wear their best clothes in special rites while in the marsh. Clothes are among the priority items they carry during the evacuation.
Return, 1974 and Displacement, 1976

As the conflicts subsided, a few bakwits returned to their village around 1974 to work on their farms. Two years later, they fled again.9 Military ground assaults and aerial bombings continued, forcing families to break up and scatter across the Liguasan Marsh. Evacuees I interviewed claimed a significant level of civilian casualties in the massive air raids in 1978 and 1979. The bakwits thought the marsh was impenetrable from ground attacks but that belief was shattered with the landing of hundreds of soldiers in Dalgan and its surroundings in 1979. The bakwits abandoned the marsh and sought refuge in town centers.

Menandang slipped out of the Liguasan Marsh before the air strikes. He said some MNLF guerrilla leaders who are his relatives but who defected to the government warned him and other clan members of a planned massive air attack. He heeded the warning but other clan members and neighbors did not. They remained in the marsh for fear of a harsher life in the town center. Menandang and his family fled to Pikit but he kept a low profile doing menial jobs because some of his relatives who were former local MNLF commanders turned government military field officers suspected him of being with the rebels.
Return, 1981

When the guns fell silent in late 1981, a few displaced families returned to Buliok, They returned with guarded optimism, building huts close to one another. In each hut, two or three families lived together to ensure that everybody was within reach and could easily be warned in case they had to run. After a few more months without ground attacks and bombardments, the families started dispersing and rebuilding sturdier homes. Around 1983, the community was again teeming with life. They built two mosques and gradually acquired f animals, tools, and fishing equipment. Later on, they rebuilt one of three rice mills destroyed in the 1970s.

Evacuations, 1990

All these, however, were destroyed six years later when another engulfed their village. Buliok villagers stayed away, returning only around 1991. They started rebuilding about two years later in 1993. They set-more stable houses, re-cultivated their abandoned tobacco, corn and lands, installed corn mills, and purchased motorboats. As a barangay the community managed to press the government to construct public elementary and high schools, village halls, and other facilities. All these, however, went to naught in 1997 when military attack targeted Rajah Muda village in Pikit, a short three kilometers from Buliok. Government soldiers announced that the attack was meant “flush out” kidnap-for-ransom gangs and criminal to have slipped into Rajah Muda. Artillery and aerial bombings a groups report fighting spread towards the Liguasan Marsh, forcing Buliok resident and other villages in Pikit and Pagalungan to flee. From

Marsh to Camps

The 1997 displacements marked a shift in the destinations of t bakwits. By this time, more evacuees sought refuge in elementary school the madrasah, mahad, gymnasium, warehouses, plaza, old cinema house and other parts of the central part of Pikit town. At least 30,000 family I evacuated to Pikit at that time (MindaNews video documentary). In the town center, aid from government, humanitarian institutions, churches, Islamic associations, and civil society groups poured in. To access the bakwits signed survey sheets prepared by aid agencies and waiting for the process of verification attesting that they were, indeed, evacuees Upon verification, they were given coupons required to be shown aid workers distributing relief goods. These goods usually include fi to ten kilos of rice, cans of sardines, noodles, soap, detergent bars, a other household needs, among others.

Samira Usman, a twenty-seven year old evacuee from a village called Kudal near Buliok, said never had she felt so humiliated as when she lined up for food from aid agencies. Though life was more difficult in their evacuation sites in the Liguasan Marsh and other safer fields in Pikit and Pagalungan towns, they were not made to line up for relief goods.

Imaging the “Helpless” Bakwits

The images of the bakwits helplessly lining up for aid with hands stretching out for food, eves in tears, staring aimlessly at nothingness, and their children wearing torn clothes and holding empty tin plates are beamed on television news and splashed across the pages of the newspapers. I think these images of helplessness set the discourse of the bakwits as a people who do not know their rights, are poor, uneducated, powerless, and in need of continuing assistance and lectures on livelihood and empowerment.

When the tensions in Rajah Muda eased, residents started returning around 1998 and went back to farming and producing goods, a reality that is far from the images frozen by television and newspaper photographs at one point of their lives as bakwits. Two years later, the chance of rebuilding dissipated because Buliok residents fled again when then President Joseph Estrada launched an “all-out-war” against the MILF in the summer of 2000.

The MILF’s main base in the hinterlands of Matanog, Maguindanao Province fell following massive air strikes and military assaults. Mosques, houses. stores, schools, and communities were destroyed. The war expanded to the provinces of Lanao del Sur. Lanao del None, Bukidnon, Sultan Kudarat, Zamboanga del Sur, and North Cotabato. Government placed the number of displaced persons at between seven hundred thousand and one million persons (Notre Dame University with the Commission on Population 2004, 9).

The Problem with Aid

Aid agencies, civil society members, churches, and other groups loured relief goods to Pikit, Pagalungan, and other conflict-affected areas, but sometimes relief distribution created conflicts.Some aid agencies claim that non-bakwits or people who were not displaced took advantage of relief goods by signing up among the displaced.

Some evacuees also listed their children’s names so they could get more food aid. Other evacuees sold their supplies and certain traditional :enders kept the relief goods in their homes.

Samira says the aid agencies do not know the whole story. She says that while some of those who had their names listed for relief were not evacuees of the 2000 war, they were the bakwits of earlier wars who failed to return home and had difficulty surmounting economic difficulties. Evacuees who listed the names of their children and even long dead relatives did so because they were not certain when the next supplies would be coming. Some sold their aid goods because they found the items less needed. They used the money to purchase what they felt was more needed or what they preferred. For instance, a relief agency distributed mongo beans thinking that it is a good source of protein but some evacuees especially those suffering from arthritis would not eat them believing that these have high uric acid content and could trigger chemical reactions that could cause more body pains. The money they earned from selling the beans were used to buy fish, still a source of protein that better suits their taste and health. Certain traditional leaders in host communities demanded a share of relief goods because that has been the practice in the area.

The problem with aid in the context of Samira’s story is that it does not match the displaced community’s expectations. Aid agencies rise above the “helpless bakwits” who are at the receiving end of “humanitarian assistance.” Aid agencies take the vantage position of power as they tend to set the ethics and morality of receiving aid. They frown on people who list more names to get more aid, scoff at traditional leaders who demand a share of relief goods, and decide who qualify to be bakwits on the basis of the year they were displaced. In certain situations, like in Samira’s story, the issue is not the ethics and morality of claiming aid, but an understanding and appreciation of the complexities and problems of life in refugee camps, or in evacuation centers as they are known in Mindanao.
Life in Evacuation Centers

Most of the refugees lived in cramped blue plastic tents that became oven-hot in the morning to mid-afternoon. The poor layout and facilities of the camp added to the desperation of the evacuees and made them look, feel, and think helpless. The camps are also fields of contestations and of power centers. Since the camps are set up in lands claimed by traditional clan and community leaders of host communities, the evacuees have to bow to the rules that the leader set, like the practice of sharing goods, be it relief, trade products, or government resources.

Other evacuees refused to be overwhelmed by desperation. Samira and her husband purchased the parcel of the land they had been occupying, using the money saved from their last harvest. Some fifty other families also brought parcel of lands adjacent to the lot bought by Samira and her husband. They raised the money from the sale of their harvest, loans, and support sent by their children working as domestic helpers abroad. Others set up cooling stations near the town hall selling snacks, drinks, and lunch to police personnel and town hall employees. There were evacuees who worked as hired hands and did other menial jobs. Still, many of the evacuees returned to their farms, braving the dangers of getting caught in the crossfire between warring government and rebel forces.

Displaced persons in other evacuation centers also had more to share than stories of sufferings and deprivations. To celebrate the breaking of the fast in the Holy Month of the Ramadan in November 2001, a family of Muslim bakwits in one of Pikit’s evacuation centers managed to share probably the last of what they had with a Catholic priest who has been their friend and ally in the endless cycle of war and peace. The priest, Roberto Layson of the Pikit Parish, was humbled by the encounter and thought of the bakwits’ action as an expression of “human greatness” and “capability” despite being caught in an extremely difficult situation. He writes in his reflection:

As I started eating, I could hardly swallow the food. I looked at the sardines and the rice before me. It gave me a feeling of guilt. ‘This could have been another meal for the family,’ I kept telling myself. I felt ashamed because here I was inside the tent, with my bloated Christian ego, feeling great for being the famous Fr. Bert, the priest in town who gives rice. Until the evacuees inside the tent showed me what was real greatness.

I thought that because the evacuees were starving they would keep everything for themselves, and be no longer capable of showing generosity to fellow human beings like me. I was terribly wrong. I underestimated the evacuees because I overestimated myself.

The evacuees inside the tent showed me that they were, in fact, larger than themselves, that they were more real than what I think I am.

While I shared from the abundance of what I have, they shared from the little of what they have and gave probably the last food left in their possession (Layson 2004).

 The Continuing Saga of Evacuations, Returns, Evacuations and Returns

When President Estrada was ousted in January 2001, a ceasefire Was called by his successor, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Government and MILF peace negotiations resumed with the aim of rehabilitating war-affected areas.10 Buliok residents started the process of return in late 2001. This time, however, MILF chair Salamat Hashim transferred his base to Buliok. Buliok residents claimed they were aware of the MILF presence but they continued to go about their everyday life knowing that some of their relatives are also members of the MILF. Buliok residents trace common descent with Hashim as a Bagoingeden, a cultural and inter-clan grouping within the Maguindanao ethnolinguistic group occupying Buliok and its surrounding areas.

Three years after the 2000 conflicts, another war dispersed the residents of Buliok. But even before the government assault, several residents had started fleeing Buliok. The signs of an impending war were evident with the continued arrival of military troops and equipment in Pikit. Local government officials also advised Buliok residents, most of them their relatives, to leave. The defense department claimed that the campaign targeted “terrorists” who reportedly slipped into Buliok.

On 11 February 2003, a few civilians, including women and children, remained in Buliok thinking that the soldiers would not attack on sacred day of the Eid’l Adha, one of the holiest rites in the Islamic religion. Mike Luay, a Buliok resident, tells me that a few civilians 3nri MILF religious and fighters were gathered in and around a mosque reciting the Al Fatiha, the opening words in the Holy Q’uran, when the first volley of artillery fires hit parts of Buliok. The community fell and houses were leveled. Soldiers captured and took over the MIL F’s Islamic Center. As the military scored points, the social cost of -he war was staggering. Records from the Department of Social Welfare try. and Development (DSWD) noted that the number of the bakwits  reached 411,004 (MindaNews, November 2003). Those in Pikit wire distributed in sixty-five evacuation centers (Notre Dame University a lei Commission on Population 2004, 9).

The first of the bakwits returned in about four months, in ju 2003. In October 2004, more evacuees returned to Buliok followi 11.; the pull-out of military forces from the Islamic Center and several oth et farmlands in the area. Thus continued the saga of evacuations, returns, and hopeful rebuildings.
III. New Bakwit Movements
Since the war in 2000, the evacuees in Buliok as well as in other parts of Central Mindanao have adopted new strategies and explored other fields of movements instead of confining their places of refuge in the Liguasan Marsh and its surrounding areas. These fields included asserting a “space” within their community that would be spared from any hostility by all warring groups, and networking with peace advocacy groups who can lobby right at the seat of government power in Metro Manila and before the Central Committee of the MILF.
The Space for Peace

In another part of Pikit town, multi-ethnic villagers of Nalapaan partnered with aid and church groups to set up delegations who communicated with the leadership of the military and the MILF to respect their places as off limits to armed encounters. Nalapaan residents in the village also went through the endless cycle of evacuation, return, and rebuilding every time bombing raids and armed encounters flare up in Buliok and surrounding areas. The village is a strategic point for both the military and the rebels.12 On 1 February 2001, Nalapaan residents declared their village a “space for peace.” Government forces, 1+.1I1,F, local and provincial government officials, and civil society groups committed support to the declaration. The following year, residents of the adjacent village of Panicupan also followed and worked for the declaration of their place as space for peace. The declarations were tested at the height of the Buliok attack in February 2003. MILF and military forces entered the villages the villages of Nalapaan and Panicupan at the time of the fighting. Villagers abandoned their homes but re-grouped and stayed put in a space within the “space for peace” instead of fleeing to the evacuation sites at the Pikit town center several kilometers away. Village leaders and church groups supporting the declaration in 2001 and 2002 reminded the government and MILF leadership of their commitment to respect the spaces for peace. The military and the MILF subsequently avoided engaging each other in the space for peace areas.

The space for peace is for all concerned — the bakwits, village officials, civil society groups, local government, and the military and rebels — to respect each other’s positions, views, ideologies, and including the decision to bear arms. But each one will try to reach out and dialogue about security concerns and issues in the community.

Staff and volunteers including Muslims affiliated with the Roman Catholic’s Immaculate Conception Parish in Pikit worked closely with the Nalapaan residents in building the space for peace. At the slightest sign of misunderstanding between neighbors, residents and the Pikit parish staff worked together to figure out the roots of the conflict and tap existing conflict resolution mechanisms in the community to deal with the issues. Through the space for peace, the residents and the parish staff collectively accessed from government and aid agencies the entitlements due the evacuees. Implementation of these interventions was managed as components of peace-building programs. The building of community facilities like tube wells, multipurpose halls and even the distribution of houses and farm inputs were harnessed by the residents as opportunities in healing the divisions wrought by repeated wars. These intervention projects, if not managed along peace and relationship building lines, can sow more divisions and animosities in the community and complicate peace efforts.

After the 2003 war, in partnership with the Pikit parish staff and other civil society groups, residents and officials from five other villages in Pikit began working for the inclusion of their areas in the “spaces for peace,” effectively expanding the space off limits to war from two to seven villages. Government and MILF forces have extended their commitment to respect these areas as spaces for peace. On 29 November, residents, village officials and their partners in civil society celebrated the declaration of all seven villages as an expanded space for peace. They invited representatives from both government and the MILF, the Malaysian-led international ceasefire monitoring team, and other groups and community leaders from across Mindanao to celebrate with them.

Significantly, contributing to the success of the space for peace is the dynamic composition of the staff in the Pikit parish. They understood fully well the dynamics of evacuations and the capacities of the bakwits. One factor for such a nuanced understanding of the evacuation experience is that they are residents in the area and that many of them also went through the difficult saga of evacuations, returns, and rebuildings.
Harnessing the Power of the Bakwits

Popular support for the war in February 2003 prompted some groups in civil society to soul search and even question if peace advocacy in Mindanao really has constituents. Members of the Mindanao People’s Caucus (MPC), a multi-cultural peace advocacy group, thought of holding consultations and asking the evacuees in Pikit and Pagalungan of their view of the war, and of possibly mobilizing them in demanding from both the government and the MILF to observe their ceasefire agreements.

In late May 2003, several evacuees and MPC volunteers gathered in a school in Pagalungan not to line up for food but to discuss what they can do about the war. In the end, the group decided that they would organize a rally and indefinitely block the national highway in Pagalungan that connects the cities of Davao and Cotabato, two major and strategic urban centers in Mindanao, until the government and the MILF heed their demands for a ceasefire. Some members of the MPC agreed to the holding of a mass action but opposed the blocking of the highway fearing that such move will provoke government authorities and that the situation could turn even more bloody. The plan was debated. They finally agreed not to block the highway but continue with two days of mass actions.
Unleashing the Bakwit Power

On 24 June 2003, an estimated 7,000 evacuees formed a kilometer-long line stretching from the Pikit town center to Pagalungan along the national highway. The evacuees carried signboards and streamers proclaiming “Ceasefire Now!” and the symbolic name of the event: “Bakwit Power.”

The bakwits, joined by civil society groups, did unleash their power as they attracted government and rebel attention. Secretary Teresita Deles, a member of the cabinet then heading the National Anti-Poverty Commission, was sent by President Macapagal Arroyo to Pagalungan and spoke before the gathering of bakwits and civil society groups at the town plaza. Deles read aloud the Bakwit Power manifesto and assured the residents that the government would work on their demands.

Following the Bakwit Power,’ the bakwits and some of civil society staff met again and reflected on their next move. They decided to organize an association that will continue the spirit of the Bakwit Power. They named the group Suara Kalilintad or Voice of Peace. Suara Kalilintad is steered by a “Board of Directors” and an executive committee composed of bakwits. They partnered with civil society groups working in Pikit and Pagalungan for the construction of twenty houses for returning evacuees. The MPC raised the funds by holding a peace concert in relatively more affluent Davao City and by soliciting from other civil society groups. Suara Kalilintad, as of this time, faces challenges from , within its leadership. The board of directors disagreed with the way some of their projects were implemented. Others raised issues of lack of transparency in identifying beneficiaries of their projects.

Bantay Ceasefire: Winning the Peace

While the Suara directors are in disagreement on some issues, they continue to work together in a formation called the Bantay Ceasefire, a civil society-led ceasefire monitor organized in October 2001, with networks from among peace advocates in various parts of Mindanao and in Metro Manila, the media, the academe, churches, and evacuees in the evacuation camps or those who have already returned to their village.

The joint ceasefire committees of the government and MILF peace panels acknowledged the critical and effective role of Bantay Ceasefire in independently monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire accords.” Recently, the evacuees in the Bantay Ceasefire network played a critical role calling immediate public attention to prevent an armed conflict. In March 2004, returning evacuees in Buliok were alarmed by the movements of the MILF and government troops. An evacuee who is also a Bantay Ceasefire member sent an SMS from a mobile phone describing government troops and MILF movements and the fresh wave of evacuations in early March. The evacuee noted in the message that the soldiers and MILF guerrillas were within shooting distance from each other and that a slightest provocation could lead to a gun battle and ultimately into a war.

The Bantay Ceasefire coordinator who is based in Davao City received the bakwit’s message in his mobile .phone and immediately alerted the Government-MILF ceasefire committees, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, military commanders, and the Bantay Ceasefire network of the situation on the ground. The information went through and down the military and MILF chains of command which restrained their forces on the field. The joint ceasefire committee also visited Buliok and adjacent villages and learned that the MILF’s movements were due to a miscommunication over a date of a meeting with the visiting Advance Survey Team of the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team on the ceasefire accords. The Malaysian team met with MILF forces in Buliok on 28 March 2004.

Here, we see the mobile phone as a useful tool in monitoring the ceasefire and displacement events before and as they happen. The mobile phone is also effective in alerting the public regarding guerrilla and government troop movements. The alert was relayed to the military and MILF chains of command that, in turn, called the field commanders to exercise restraint and defuse the tense situation.

Evacuees from Buliok and nearby villages are at present representing the Bantay Ceasefire in the joint ceasefire monitoring outpost established by the Government-MILF ceasefire committees in the village of Bagoinged in Pikit and the Islamic Center in Buliok. The outposts were designed by joint ceasefire committees to effectively monitor conflicts in strife-torn areas.

At the outpost, the evacuees find themselves on equal ground with the foot soldiers of both the government and the MILF. They eat, share stories, talk about dreams, and trade jokes with members of the army and MILF guerrillas at the outpost, instead of running away from them-

IV. Solidarity

The experience of the bakwits in Buliok and other parts of Pikit, when seen in a time continuum, is not all about desperation, helplessness, and victimization. A good part of it is about persistence as shown by the dignified way with which they conducted themselves in the course of the different evacuations and in engaging other spheres of movements such as the Bantay Ceasefire and the Spaces for Peace. I think these are significant indications of human agency, unlike the generalized description of the displaced as people who went through a “transition from independence to being dependent on government,

NGOs, or individuals” and of being overwhelmed with feeling:; of “fear, hopelessness, lack of power, and anger” (CFSI June 2003, 5).
Re-understanding the Bakwit Image 

Viewing the bakwits from a narrow frame of displaced people fleeing from wars with heavy loads on their way to cramped evacuation centers may have shaped the assessment of the “helpless bakwits.” Because of the discourse of the bakwit as weak and vulnerable, some aid agencies asked them their needs through needs assessment studies, facilitated their return to their communities, provided them the “foundation for peace building and sustainable development,” offered them training to increase individual capability and community capacity to address different concerns (CFSI June 2003, 10. Tabang Mindanaw brochure).

It is quite absurd to lecture on capacity and capability building to a.group of people who carried themselves with remarkable capabilities and capacities in the course of evacuations, returns, and rebuildings in the past thirty years.
Solidarity and Beyond Aid

At this point, the real challenge for all concerned is to stop treating the displaced as the receiving end of aid and interventions. Ethics and decency demand that we learn. from the displaced on how they managed to persist in difficult circumstances. Capacities could be the basis of relationships in addressing situations of evacuation, the return and the rebuilding of war-affected communities. Finally, I think the urgent call is to work in solidarity with the bakwits instead of “helping” them and acting as their “service providers.” The issue of repeated displacements is not all about the bakwits. It is about armed conflict, an issue of importance to every resident of Mindanao the Philippines and even of Southeast Asia because we all stand to lose if the armed conflicts keep on repeating.

On 19 April 2002, two years after the 2000 all-out-war and less than a year before the massive offensive in Buliok on 11 February 2003, Presidential Consultant for Mindanao Paul Dominguez told a civil society round table forum on “The Costs of Mindanao Conflict and their Implications on the Budget,” that based on a “very preliminary” findings from a then—ongoing World Bank Study, “the present value of the ‘economic cost of a never-ending conflict would be at least USD2 billion over the next ten years” (Arguillas 2003):

The Power of the Displaced: A Force for Peace Advocacy

The tasks of ending the conflicts and the ensuing displacements is enormous, beckoning everybody to lend a hand. To echo a Bantay Ceasefire report: “If peace in Mindanao is going to be forged, thew it should not only be by two dozen or more people who compose the official peace panels and their technical committees, advisers and working groups, but by the millions of stakeholders living in what we hope would be former battlegrounds in the future” (Bantay Ceasefire 2003, 7).

I think, the bakwits are an enormous force that spring right from the war-ravaged areas. If the bakwit force is tapped in peace advocacy, they can unleash the energy, power, and network that could nip conflicts even before they can escalate. The bakwits in Buliok did just that and I’m confident that it can be done elsewhere and in the future.