Camp Abubakar: From war zone to economic zone

The Manila Times 03/07/2006

Matanog, Maguindanao: Barely six ears after its fall, traces of the once impregnable Camp Abubakar, the site of many clashes between government forces and Moro rebels, are nowhere to be found.

Sensibly, the camp, once a home to some 15,000 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), rebels has been transformed into a plantation for various crops such as vegetables, fruits, rice, corn, coconut, coffee, marang, watermelons, banana, pumpkins, radish, string beans and tomatoes.

Camp Duma Sinsuat

The 32,000 hectare land between the towns of Buldon and Barira is now an epitome of development in Central Mindanao where people can freely roam.

With a new name “Camp Duma Sinsuat,” the former MILF sanctuary shelters the 603rd Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army and its support contingent, the 54th Engineering Battallion.

The camp’s sprawling terraian, previously creeping with MILF fighters, has in its place thousands of farmers harvesting their crops all-year round.

Thriving community

Barangay Sarmiento, once dubbed the gateway to the vast Camp Abubakar, is now also a thriving community lined with trading shops and houses built near coconut farms.

School children walking toward a nearby school are teeming along the roadsides as motorists honk their way while driving the 15-kilometer stretch of the Narciso Ramos highway.

Indeed, the atmosphere of peace prevails in the area.

“Everything is normal now,” said Mayor Nasser Imam of Matanog.

Government forces hoisted the Philippine flag at the vanquished camp on July 8, 2000, after a two-week gun battle with Moro fighters, signaling its reversion to government control from being the nerve center of MILF guerilla forces in Mindanao the past three decades.

Economic zone

With a 10-point development agenda, the Arroyo government waged an “all-out peace” peace campaign in the area, starting with the resumption of peace talks with the MILF.

Presently, the government converted the camp into an economic zone, pumping in a P100-million development fund.

As a result, the fall of Abubakar paved the way for stabilized relations between the government and the MILF over relief and rehabilitation undertakings in the war-torn area.

The project also led to the forging of a ceasefire between the government and the MILF in 2003.

Since then, local folk, most of them MILF supporters, have returned home and begun life anew as ordinary citizens.

“We are now living as peaceful farmers.” Said onetime rebel and current local farming cooperative leader Huron Maslog in the Maguindanao dialect.

‘A-soil’

“We have also accepted the presence of Camp Duma Sinsuat here and we see no problem with that, because it contributed much to the improvement of our place in terms of peace and security,” he added.

Matanog is blessed with an “A-soil,” according to experts from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“You see, any seed you throw to the ground here grows by itself unattended,” Maslog said.