CIAO DATE: 04/2011
March 2011
Peace talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are back on track, with one round of talks in Kuala Lumpur in February 2011 and another scheduled for late April. The obstacles to achieving a final peace are huge, but the administration of President Benigno S. "Noynoy" Aquino III has at least brought some fresh air to the process. A new government peace panel seems determined to find a way out of a negotiator's nightmare: multiple parties engaged in parallel and sometimes contradictory talks; powerful potential spoilers; and ethnic divisions, feuding clans and divergent political interests among the Bangsamoro - the Muslims of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago - that make unity within the MILF's own constituency elusive.
Resource link: The Philippines: Back to the Table, Warily, in Mindanao [PDF] - 645K