Water war in MOA-AD territory

“Bawat harvest harasan.” Thus said Barangay Councilor Mando of Rangaban, an interior barangay in Midsayap, North Cotabato, describing the ongoing land conflict between Christian settlers and native Muslims in the area. Lives, houses, properties had been lost to this long-running feud which implicates politicos with landed interests in the area.

One such violent conflict happened in 2004, when a landed settler brought in tenant farmers from the provinces of Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato to harvest his crop. They were confronted by Moro armed men who told them that the land does not belong to them but to the Moro natives. The Ilonggo farm laborers fled and reported to their relatives in the paramilitary groups. The CVOs arrived a couple of days later brandishing their arms. A violent exchange of fire ensued.

True, it is the settlers who were responsible for developing the agricultural lands in Rangaban, said Councilor Mando. It was them who introduced the irrigation system that now regulates the supply of water into the rice paddies. That’s why their crops are flooded all the time and during months of infrequent rain irrigation water cannot reach the Muslims' farms, other farmers butted in. “The Christian farmers capture the water all to themselves.”

The Moro farmers’ fields are in the low-lying areas, he said, so while the settlers get good harvests, the Muslims get damaged crops all the time. “If not from drought, from too much water.”

So every harvest, gantihan, harasan.

Most of the Moro farmers in Rangaban also cannot afford the P2,300.00 irrigation fee they have to pay every cropping season. Besides, they quite cannot get used to the idea that one should be paying, in thousands of pesos at that, just for using water that is just there in the ground? It is like being taxed for walking in one’s yard.

And it helped some more the misunderstanding that the irrigation administration is also overseen by Christians, who in the heat of the ongoing conflict, display a good bias in favor of settler farmers.

So armed hostilities were a daily show. Christian farmers on their way to harvest would be blocked by Moro armed men. And if the CVOs were around, skirmishes would follow. Civilians, both Muslims and Christians, would get out of the vicinity. This conflict had reached such level of violence that it once necessitated the intervention of the Provincial Government, the military, church leaders and non-government organizations. A Joint Military Action Team (JMAT) composed of Bantay Ceasefire volunteers, Malaysian deputees, MILF and MNLF representatives and soldiers from the 7^th IB was set up. This team made up the barangay’s peacebuilding force. It monitored people’s movements, ensuring that civilians, both Muslims and Christians, could go on with their everyday work, sometimes accompanying them to their farms. Still, cases of harassment continued.

One such incident involved an Ilonggo farmer who was strafed by an unidentified assailant while replanting. The farmer was patching bad yellow growths with green ones when bullets started whizzing by his ears. The farmer crawled through the mud and went running in a zigzag even tumbling through the paddies while his assailant had fun shooting at him without really hitting him. He reached the JMAT headquarters in one piece, though, looking like he woke up in a carabao wallow. His newly patched rice paddy was all the worse damaged. It was found out that he was working on borrowed land which was owned by a Muslim neighbor who was his friend. The neighbor, seeing him as dirt poor, let him borrow his small parcel. He did not know the assassin, of course.

“Nagtumbling-tumbling siya,” the Moro farmers recalling the incident said. Laughter lighting the white fires of anger in their eyes.