For the people of Marawi City, the fateful date of May 23 not only reopens a lot wounds, but also inflames with even greater vigor their will to face the future, along with the peace and prosperity it may bring.
There were untold stories of daring escapes, rescue, and starvation, and the residents’ will to survive, and their tenacity found comfort in economic and social displacements.
It may be recalled that one vital component of the city’s defense from the terror siege six years ago was the communications base set up for the residents by Lanao del Sur Gov. Bombit Alonto Adiong Jr. at the provincial capitol building, and unaltered since Day One. This had kept Marawi City within the sphere of monitoring and information exchanges with the rest of the world.
The masked black-dressed extremists had occupied the Marawi City Hall and the functional uninterrupted radio and other communications systems helped authorities reach out to Marawi City Mayor Majul Bandambra at his office at the height of the siege.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo dared to enter Marawi City for the kindred and his wife Ross who was in the city on the first day of the siege on May 23. He recalled that residents fled the heavy fighting that lasted for weeks, escaping through the “backdoor” to reach peace and quiet within the mountain ranges of Kapai and Tagoloan townships northeast of strife-torn Marawi.
The Philippine Army Scout Rangers took the same route to reach Marawi and reinforce government troops already in the thick of the fighting on “Ground Zero.”
The augmentation units included the elite Marines of the Philippine Navy to buttress an assault force moving toward the Banggolo Bridge on the third day of the siege.
Sinarimbo now heads the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (MILG-BARMM)
But the memories and emotional scars of the that nightmarish weeks of siege of their beloved city lingered even as the people began picking up the pieces to rebuild their shattered lives after the last bullet was fired.
Even the womenfolk walked the extra mile to help in the reconstruction process.
Amir Sab Paisal Macatanong opened his family-owned two-hectare fertile agricultural land for the evacuees to grow vegetables in and sell their products to neighboring provinces to survive the famine and poverty that followed not much later.
Mariam Naik, the municipal agriculture officer of Saguiaran, Marilou Sopocado, provincial coordinator of the High-Value Crop Development Program, and Senior Agriculturist and Alfreda Telto—all women— helped develop a model self-reliant relocation site for the Marawi evacuees, hosted by residents of Barangay Pagalamatan in nearby Saguiaran town.
Efforts were heightened to effectively prevent all possibilities for the infamous siege to ever happen again.
Improving governance and security preparedness at community level in the neighboring villages is the key to sustainable recovery, says Minister Sinarimbo of the MILG- BARMM.
The MILG implements the BARMM counterpart of the Marawi Rehabilitation Program, allocated with a Special Development Fund Program for Marawi Rehabilitation (SDFPMR) under the Office of Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Al-Hadj Murad Ebrahim.
Lady Mayor Khalida Palao Sangila of Pagayawan said as a mother that she is, there is a soft spot in one’s heart. But as a leader a woman has to be firm and decisive on issues affecting her more than 6,000 constituents.
For one, Pagayawan has to withstand severe security concerns. The place lies on a valley terrain that made it the perfect route for extremists recruited on reported instant cash payouts from other places to Marawi days before the siege.
“The MILF is helping me secure this place from intrusion by the DI (Dawla Islamia),” Mayor Sangila said in Filipino. The masked black flag wielding men that placed Marawi under siege for at least six months had passed by Pagayawan from a thickly forested assembly area in one or two of the mountain ranges around the municipality.
Sangila said her town supposed to have the new PNP standard MPS building. But the building given by the national government was constructed instead on a lot that belongs to neighboring Bayang town.
She said this has caused the community the dilemma of having had no permanent station for police forces. Under this situation, police authorities could hardly deploy police forces to Pagayawan’s far, mountainous terrain.
But the lady mayor has transformed that challenge into broad sphere of security cooperation between her LGU and the PNP as well as the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
General Allan Nobreza, BARMM Police Regional Office chief, says the Bangsamoro government has completed and turned over seven MPS in several towns of BARMM. The MPS buildings were constructed on design and standards set by the Philippine National Police (PNP).
All three forces are helping mayor Sangila maintain law and order in the town: She and the Municipal Council had to decide on the imposition of a Municipal ID System to keep the list and profiles of 18 years old and above among more than 6,000 residents into a dedicated databank.
The municipal databank also keeps registered voters’ list which is being updated both on added new registrants and on reduction from previous list at instances of reported deaths from among the local voters. This Sangila vowed to thwart the dead from casting their votes.
There was neither a functional nor a physical presence of governance particularly at village level, Sinarimbo recalled.
Sinarimbo said the Office of BARMM Chief Minister Ebrahim has created the Bangsamoro Special Development Fund for Marawi Rehabilitation (BSDFMR) to sustain the socio-political and socioeconomic concerns that provided the platform for extremism and the recruitment of young men to the Marawi siege from neighboring areas in 2017.
The MILG chief said the implementation of the BSDFMR from the point of view of local governance should back-trace the socio-political and socio-economic issues that probably led to the formation of ISIS-fashioned young men and placed the city under siege six years ago.
Economically, BARMM supports the development of local economies at municipal level by helping local government units transform their inherent corporate powers into added functional economic component in local governance, pursuant to the 1991 Local Government Code. This, he said, allows local government units (LGUs) to establish and operationalize economic infrastructure support facilities like public market buildings.
Thus, the people’s socio-political well-being is served simultaneously, as the BARMM-MILG helps local government units build government centers at village and municipal levels.
For the residents’ socioeconomic welfare, the BARMM helps LGUs build modern marketplace building with a part in it that is potential for development of a storage section –in time for other aspects of development, like sufficient power supply, to set in.
Now, beyond the physical rehabilitation of Marawi City, the towns once occupied or were the pathways of terrorism, are slowly opening up to the public their showcase of development, far from the situation in 2017— and the will to sustain good governance in order to keep extremism at bay.
The BARMM government is supporting sustainable programs in Pagayawan town including conflict management, the town being the passage way of the ISIS-fashioned extremists to the Marawi siege in May 2017.
It can be recalled that the Marawi City siege in 2017 had snowballed from the takeover of Butig town.
Butig was prominently reported to have been occupied by the ISIS-fashioned Maute extremists. Roads have since been paved here since then, and its new municipal hall building being constructed by the BARMM government through the MILG, will soon be completed
To date, at least 27 barangay halls have been or are being built in at least 23 of the 36 municipalities of Lanao del Sur. These have been funded under the region’s 2021 budget. More will be constructed from out of funds unspent in 2022 and from current 2023 budget programs of the Special Development Fund (SDF).
Sinarimbo said. The SDF is provided by the national government in addition to the region’s P 40 Billion Block Grant, and in a 10-year period from 2020.
A BARMM development team last May 19 literally walked through the escape routes taken by residents fleeing the siege towards Kapai and Tagoloan, both being on an ascending terrain on high ground northeastward.
To recall, the Philippine Army Scout Rangers later took that backdoor route in reinforcement of other government troops, including the Marines unit of the Philippine Navy on an offensive move toward the Banggolo Bridge on the third day of the siege.
Today, BARMM has built a stretch of concrete road directly connecting the towns and Marawi City to Cagayan de Oro City. This will enable the government to set up blocks of national and regional security forces to protect Marawi and the neighboring provinces from any semblance of the 2017 offensives.
Indeed, the BARMM effectively keeps security threats off the provincial boundaries in Lanao del Sur by constructing the standard Philippine National Police municipal police station (MPS) buildings designed to withstand heavy fire discharges during attacks.
According to General Allan Nobreza, director of the BARMM Police Regional Office, eight more MPS buildings were being constructed and soon to be turned over to the PRO.
Sinarimbo said the MPS buildings each worth P 6.5 million were constructed on modern PNP standard design with the hard concrete walling to effectively repel attacks, essentially from the rooftop at the first instance.
Engineer Abibazar Sali, chief of the Project Management Development Division (PMDD) under Sinarimbo’s office, said similar projects under MILG’s Support to Local Moral Governance (SLMG) Program, have been funded since 2021. These include the construction of MPS buildings in Maimbung, Talipao, Northern Kabuntalan, Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi and Hadji Mohammad Ajul Basilan. Seven more will be built under the 2022 SLMG funds.
Lt Dan Ducot COP Gen Allan Nobreza chief of police of Amai Manabilang, Lanao del Sur, said the town “has positioned itself as one of the most peaceful towns,” adding that the residents—among them, “followers of traditional religions and the indigenous people’s coexist peacefully.”
Sinarimbo said the construction of security infrastructure facilities were designed to keep leftist forces off the borders of Bukidnon, Cotabato and Lanao Sur provinces.