Reconstruction begins late April or early May, so the government is already in talks with potential bidders for the Marawi rehabilitation. While thousands of Maranaos have yet to see what has become of their homes, potential investors have been allowed to see the most affected areas as early as November 2017.
A 10-hectare military camp worth P400 million will also be developed in Barangay Kapataran to make sure terrorists would not re-enter the Lanao del Sur capital. This is expected to rise in 2020, a year earlier than the target completion of reconstruction of structures in war-ravaged barangays.
Del Rosario assured the public that locals would be consulted every step of the way, but Maranao civil society organizations said these “consultations” made by the Task Force Bangon Marawi have not reached the grassroots.
“We were not consulted, especially those in the evacuation sites and even the civil society,” Sultan Abdul Hamidullah Atar, a member of civil society group “Sowara O Miyamagoyag” (Voice of the Evacuees), told ABS-CBN News.
“We are not demanding na maging Dubai ang Marawi. What we are demanding ay normalcy ng pamumuhay. Makabalik kami sa lupa namin . . . We are not dreaming like Manila. What we are dreaming ay normal ma buhay,” added Atar, who has been in constant talks with displaced Maranaos.
Normalcy is not just a dream of Maranaos, but also of the entire Mindanao, which has been plagued by more than 4 decades of conflict sparked by land disputes. “Didn’t the government learn from the land disposition problem in Mindanao? Now they will do that in Marawi?” Atar wondered.
Atar said the government must recognize that the Maranao identity is embedded in the land. He insisted that the city is an ancestral land inherited a long time ago from their forefathers and cannot just be taken away by the government.
Dr. Ansawil Ronsing
“That’s why Muslims in Mindanao, since the beginning, fight against the government—to exert their own rights,” echoed Dr. Ansawil Ronsing, the dean of the Mindanao State University’s King Faisal Center for Islamic, Arabic, and Asian Studies.
Ronsing said he fears that land ownership may even be an issue among the residents themselves, whose claims on properties might overlap. Locals said the government should seek help from the community elders and ulamas (Muslim scholars) to address this issue.
“Sila lang na may-ari diyan magka-conflict na sila. Halimbawa, 5 tayo magkakapatid. Dati, ikaw lang ang may bahay diyan. Ngayon nga, nasira. I-rebuild ko. Ako naman ang magpatayo ng bahay. E we are brothers. Dati, ikaw nagpatayo ng bahay, ako naman hindi ko nabigyan,” he said.
(Conflict may arise between owners. For example we’re 5 brothers. Before you have a house there but, because it’s destroyed now, I’ll rebuild it. It’s my turn to build a house. We’re brothers. You built one before, and I wasn’t given anything.)
How locals and the national government view reconstruction work may even lead to a worse problem -- radicalism -- said researcher Steven Rood, a former University of the Philippines Baguio professor who has done studies on the Moro conflict both for the Social Weather Stations and the Asia Foundation.
According to Rood, while the leaders of the Maute terrorists have been killed, the idea propagated by violent extremists, particularly the Islamic State, remains. He said government response to the needs of the displaced Maranaos will have a major impact in the continuing tug-of-war with fundamentalists for the “hearts and minds” of civilians.
"The worst thing you can do to an angry public is keep them in the dark and that's what's happening," Rood said in a forum titled “The Marawi Struggle,” where he presented a 2017 study of the Asia Foundation on the decades-old Mindanao problem.
“What it does is it immediately plays into the narrative of the Maute or the ISIS, that says, ‘This is what happens in Muslims in the Philippines and we need a caliphate,’ ” Rood said, adding that the government must go beyond military tactics in addressing the problem of violent extremism.
(The owners will decide what to do with their land. If you want, construct a building, build a mall, grocery store, whatever you like. It’s yours.)