Lakma Kalidatu was having dinner with her six grandchildren when they were interrupted by a burst of automatic gunfire.
In an instant, she spirited away the children to a nearby Islamic school, leaving behind everything.
"We're still afraid to return to our village," Kalidatu, 60, said as she washed clothes outside the school where about 300 other refugees have been staying since early January.
They have every reason to be concerned about their safety.
Since December 2003, the villages around the marshy area in Maguindao province on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao have seen frequent and bloody battles between soldiers and rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Military and local officials blame a small and radical MILF faction for the violence, which they say is an attempt to sabotage peace talks aimed at ending a 36-year separatist insurgency that has claimed at least 120,000 lives.
"They are the enemy of the people, the enemy of development," said Hadji Yasan Ampatuan, a member of the provincial legislative council and a nephew of Maguindanao governor Datu Andal Ampatuan.
The military said splits have emerged in the MILF, dividing it along ideological, political and economic lines. It said there could be as many as seven groups jostling for control.
Major-General Raul Rellano, the army's regional commander, said the rogue MILF faction posed a "real threat" to the talks that have been brokered by Malaysia since 2001.
"There is a rift among them," Rellano told Reuters, saying the peace process would be moving at a much faster pace if the MILF were a solid organization.
Citing army intelligence estimates, Rellano said about 30 percent of the MILF's 11,000 fighters belonged to radical forces that refuse to halt their war for a separate Islamic state in the southern third of this mainly Roman Catholic country. The Muslim people of Mindanao call themselves Bangsamoro.
The military said the radicals, headed by leaders with deep religious backgrounds, have active links with foreign militants from Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and the homegrown groups Abu Sayyaf and Abu Sofia.
Rellano said the MILF renegades were behind the attack on an army base in Kalidatu's village that broke a shaky 17-month cease-fire in January.
Silvestre Afable, the government's chief peace negotiator and communications director for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has warned that hardcore militants might step up attacks as talks inched toward a final peace agreement.
"Terrorism is one of the challenges we are facing -- not only as a threat to law and order but as a threat to peace in Mindanao," he told a recent briefing for foreign media.
Rebel leaders dispute reports of splits in the movement, saying the violence in some parts of central Mindanao was rooted in intense local politics and ancient blood feuds.
Eid Kabalu, a rebel spokesman, said the MILF was dragged into the conflicts among rival local politicians only because some had sought help from relatives within the guerrilla group.
"Blood is thicker than water," Kabalu said. "This bloody cycle of vendetta killing, known among locals as 'rido', is often seen as truce violations because some MILF members and militiamen find themselves on opposite fences."
Kabalu said there were hundreds of unresolved killings in Muslim areas of the South due to political rivalries, land disputes and even petty quarrels among neighbors.
The military says the involvement of MILF elements in the violence had exposed the leadership's weak control over its forces as it struggles to win support from some guerrilla forces influenced and led by Islamic clerics.
"They are hiding behind 'rido'," said an army intelligence official. "Based on our sources on the ground, there's really a group, opposed to the talks, that is out to embarrass the MILF leadership."
He said some MILF members also were resentful because the peace process not only restrained criminal activities to raise funds but forced them to run after their own comrades engaged in kidnappings, robberies and extortion.
"Those are perceptions," Mohaqher Iqbal, the chief MILF peace negotiator, told Reuters, saying the movement allowed for healthy debate among its members. "But, at the end of the day, it is always the central committee that decides."
Iqbal said factionalism was not an issue at the moment but could become one if the peace deal is not acceptable to the vast majority of Muslims in the Philippines.
"We will never break that vicious cycle of endless violence and bloody struggles," he said. "New groups will emerge to fight for the rights of the Bangsamoro people." |
At least six breakaway Muslim 
Manila - The Philippine government has postponed the scheduled resumption of peace talks with Muslim secessionist rebels in Malaysia due to its failure to decide on how to move forward in the negotiations, a guerrilla spokesman said Tuesday. 
A reign of terror and savagery continued in the troubled southern island of Basilan yesterday, with unknown gunmen murdering and decapitating another Muslim preacher. The military said the same group that mutilated the corpses 10 Marine soldiers killed in a gunbattle on July 10 could also be behind the death of the imam, whose name was withheld.