Zambo must Rise from Ashes

It will take a long time to clean up the mess left by the Zamboanga incident. And to be able to know how to effectively do this, one must understand that the siege was not done solely to create trouble. Or to burn and bleed Zamboanga City. Or to kill.

When those Moro fighters, mostly Tausugs from Sulu, decided to launch their defiant stand against the government, they were ready to die. To the hard core, it was a jihad. I was even informed that when the MNLF forces secretly landed in the coasts of Zamboanga City by boats in different waves before Sept. 9, the group close to Ustadz Habier Malik even “disabled” their boats to signal to the rest that they had no intention of returning back to Sulu; that they were ready to die fighting.

After the smoke clears, it is important to pinpoint responsibility and accountability on those who have “blood in their hands”.

But the difficult part is how to help Zamboanga and its people rise from the ashes. Rebuilding destroyed structures and homes can be done but at considerable cost and effort. Grieving for the dead and nurturing the wounded will also take some time. Then rebuilding social cohesion and healing amongst us Mindanaoans will necessarily follow — although this one is difficult to do. And hard to measure.

I refer to the anger, hatred, animosity that break the social bond that tie us with and amongst the other diverse peoples of our island region. We have to heal the social wounds between and amongst Muslims and non-Muslims, Christians and indigenous peoples.

Mindanao has diverse ethnic, cultural, even religious groupings. How to have social cohesion in the midst of this diversity, not to mention incidents such as this one in Zamboanga, is a big challenge. But we have no other alternative but to pursue harmony even in diversity. That will truly define Mindanao and its people.