The Moro conflict (1968–2019) was a long-running conflict in the Philippines fought over a range of religious, political and ethnic issues. The roots of it stretch back centuries to when the island of Mindanao, the second largest island of the archipelago, in the south of the country, saw widespread conversion to Islam during the Islamisation of the East Indies. Conversely, the northern island of Luzon became a stronghold of Roman Catholicism under Spanish colonial rule. This led to a conflict between the colonial regime and the Moors or Moros (a Spanish word for Muslims) of Mindanao, one which still had not been fully resolved by the time the United States became the colonial power in 1898 and even when the Philippines acquired its independence following the Second World War. The conflict was reignited in the late 1960s by the Philippine government during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Snr. and dragged on with varying degrees of intensity for half a century. A tenuous peace process is now in place. During the conflict hundreds of thousands of Muslim Moros fled from Mindanao, primarily to Malaysia.[1]
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Moro conflict chronology of events
The roots of the Moro conflict which erupted at the end of the 1960s lie much further back in time. They are related to religion. The East Indies are thousands of kilometers away from Arabia and the two regions are separated by land and sea. Therefore it took centuries after the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the Arab Conquests for Islam to begin reaching the region, yet eventually it did as Arab, Persian and Indian traders brought the faith to the islands of Java and Sumatra in what is now western Indonesia. From there it expanded further east organically and through missionary activity. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the various ethnic groups on the island of Mindanao, the second largest island of the Philippine archipelago, began to convert to Islam in large numbers. However, the Tagalog and other groups of the Visayas (Middle Philippines) and Luzon (the largest and northernmost island of the archipelago) did not.[2]
When the Spanish arrived to the Philippines and began their efforts to colonize the islands in the 1560s they soon began referring to the inhabitants of Mindanao as Moors, a word which had developed in medieval times to refer to the Muslims of southern Spain during the Spanish Reconquista. Over times the 'Moors' became 'Moros' in Spanish lexicon in the Philippines. While Spanish colonial rule was quickly developed on Luzon in the north, the Spanish would fight a protracted war throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to try and reduce the Moros of Mindanao to their colonial rule. Incredibly this process was still not fully complete when the United States took control of the Philippines from the Spanish during the short Spanish-American War of 1898. The US made some further considerable inroads in pacifying the southern island, but tensions remained.[3]
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The modern Moro conflict constituted a re-emergence of these long-standing clashes between the central government in Manila on the island of Luzon in the north, which after a time was viewed as both broadly colonial and Christian, and the regional Moros of Mindanao in the south, who had a very strong regional identity centered around their Islamic faith. The conflict exploded again at the end of the 1960s after the dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Snr., sought to try and secure control over the Sabah region of northern Borneo, which was controlled by Malaysia, by training some 180 Moro recruits for a clandestine mission to Sabah. When news of the plan was leaked he ordered the elimination of the unit in an incident known as the Jabidah Massacre. When details of the murder of 180 Moros became public it caused outrage amongst the Moros of Mindanao and sparked a renewed conflict between Muslim separatists and the central government.[4]
The Moro conflict would rage for the next half a century, but it went through different stages. It was at its most intense in the final years of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was formed in 1972 to lead the fight against the Philippine government. An estimated 50,000 people were killed down to 1976 and half a million people or more were displaced. In 1977 negotiations commenced to find a peaceful conclusion to the fighting. These failed and renewed fighting erupted in the late 1970s, lasting down to the fall of the Marcos regime in 1986. Fighting flared from time to time into the early 2000s, with the Moros often supported by the government of Malaysia.[5]
In the 2000s the conflict became more complex as the MNLF moderated its stance, instead calling for regional autonomy for the Moros of Mindanao, where previously they had fought for their own independent country. This led to the emergence of more radical Islamist groups. Eventually in the mid-2010s the government and the MNLF moved towards peace and reached an agreement whereby the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao would be established in the western provinces of the island where the Muslim population is most concentrated. This has formed the basis of a tentative peace since 2019, but it is tenuous, with some Islamic groups that emerged during the long-running conflict being opposed to the peace terms.[6]
Extent of migration during the Moro conflict
The Moro conflict has led to significant displacement of Muslim Moros from Mindanao, particularly from the western side of the island, since the late 1960s. This refugee crisis was at its most extreme in the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s when the conflict was particularly intense. Many people were displaced internally, while an estimated 100,000 Moros fled Mindanao and the Philippines altogether. Most headed to the nearest place of safety, across the Sulu Sea to Sabah, a province of Malaysia on the northern side of the island of Borneo.[7] The migration slowed over the period that followed, but it still continued at a reduced rate. Some studies estimate that upwards of 200,000 Moros from Mindanao had migrated to Sabah and Sarawak, the Malaysian provinces on Borneo, by the middle of the 1980s. The migration slowed considerably thereafter, though it has accelerated again at intervals as the conflict has flared from time to time in recent decades. Some studies place the level of migration at upwards of one million, though this is debated.[8]
Demographic impact of the Moro conflict
The more tangible impact of the Moro conflict is that it has led to the deaths of in excess of 100,000 people over a long half a century of fighting.[9] A disproportionate number of these deaths occurred in the first ten years of the conflict, but it still remained a bloody conflict down to the establishment of a roadmap for peace at the end of the 2010s. Beyond this the major demographic impact has been in the shape of a large spike in the population of the Malaysian province of Sabah in northern Borneo. The population of Sabah was only around 650,000 in the late 1960s when the modern Moro conflict was just beginning. It reached one million people in the early 1980s, a spike that was partly caused by Muslim migration from Mindanao. Today the population of Sabah is roughly three and a half million strong. It would not have reached this high were it not for the Moro conflict and the migration across the Sulu Sea to Sabah which it led to.[10]
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See also
Explore more about the Moro conflict
- Philippines, Births and Baptisms, 1642-1994 records collection on MyHeritage
- Philippines, Marriages, 1723-1957 records collection on MyHeritage
- Philippines Deaths and Burials, 1726-1957 records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ Nicholas P. Cushner, Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution (Quezon City, 1977).
- ↑ G. E. Marrison, ‘The Coming of Islam to the East Indies’, in Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 24, No. 1 (February, 1951), pp. 28–37.
- ↑ https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-philippines-an-overview-of-the-colonial-era/
- ↑ Rommel A. Curaming and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, ‘Social Memory and State–Civil Society Relations in the Philippines: Forgetting and Remembering the Jabidah massacre’, in Time & Society, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2012), pp. 89–103.
- ↑ https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/research-projects/dadm-project/asiapacific-region/philippinesmoro-national-liberation-front-1968-present/
- ↑ https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/philippines/331-southern-philippines-making-peace-stick-bangsamoro
- ↑ Aslam Abd Jalil and Gerhard Hoffstaedter, ‘Refugee Registration Schemes in Malaysia: Governing Refugees by Maintaining the Status Quo and Reinforcing Borders’, in Migration and Society, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2024), pp. 46–61.
- ↑ https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/research-projects/dadm-project/asiapacific-region/philippinesmoro-national-liberation-front-1968-present/
- ↑ https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/02/25/Philippinesmm_Mindanao.pdf
- ↑ Sina Frank, ‘Project Mahathir: ‘Extraordinary’ Population Growth in Sabah’, in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 5 (2006), pp. 71–80.