THERE are mixed reactions over the news that Hapilon and Maute are dead that ended the five-month-long battle in Marawi.
Over at social media, the virtual world was mostly filled with praises to soldiers and jeers to the two “terrorists”, as photos of the dead were shared. For the virtual world residents, who mostly come from the comfort of cities and gadgetry, the world is made safe and peaceful.
But over at the real world, in evacuation centers and the peripheries of Marawi, there is still uncertainty over those words “peace” and “safe”. Some 60,000 families and over 300,000 residents of Marawi are still uncertain as to how to move forward.
The irony that as President Duterte, the generals, and the president’s supporters raised victory and declared Marawi as “liberated”, no such words come the very people of Marawi.
Instead, as one looks and listen to the words and thoughts of Maranaos, residents of Marawi and Moro leaders, theirs is a voice of uncertainty, a mixture of relief and sadness over the things that happened to their land and home.
Robert Maulana Alonto from the peace panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rightfully states in an essay that there is no praise for the deaths of Hapilon and Maute. He contrasts this to the death of their founding leader Hashim Salamat, who was mourned by the Moro people as a revolutionary remembered who fought for the land and self-determination, a struggle not like the extreme and twisted ideas of Islam espoused by ISIS.
But there are more words of pain coming from Moro residents. From a story in Mindanews, a teacher mourns he lost memories of the home she built from her hard work. In video interviews from the Breakaway Media, a student of Mindanao State University (MSU) tries to resume his studies and dreams while thinking of how his family will ever return from the evacuation center. In another video, evacuees wonder what lies ahead.
These longings linger, as foreign aid comes in hundreds and millions of pesos, one wonders how do the political and emotional scars heal for the folks of Marawi. We know now that the Marawi we know is never the same. And so is our political landscape over peace and war, and a Martial Law that is still not lifted.
If you ask again what we feel about this, maybe a quote from novelist Agatha Christie speaks of the moment : “One is left with the horrible feeling that war settles nothing : that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."
*****
(tyvelez@gmail.com)
