OPINION | Syria and BARMM, a history of violence

March 19, 2025 , 04:00 PM

By Manny Mogato

(March 19, 2025) — More than seven years after the destruction of Marawi City’s business and commercial areas, the residents are still waiting for the government to rebuild the country’s only Islamic urban center.

Billions of pesos are needed to rehabilitate the city. However, local culture and land disputes continued to delay the re-development of the lakeside city.

Security experts fear the delays could again fuel unrest and the potential rise of Islamist militancy and radicalism.

Before the 2017 conflict, the Maute brothers teamed up with the Abu Sayyaf Group and other Islamic State-affiliated groups in Mindanao that brought destruction to Marawi.

There is so much anger, frustration, and disappointment from younger and more radicalized Muslim residents, influenced by watching too many social media posts from Islamist militant groups in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

During the past few years, violence started to rise in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, and the two Maguindanao provinces due to many factors, including local politics, land disputes, the shadow economy, and the proliferation of loose firearms despite the demobilization and disarmament process after a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2014.

Although most cases were triggered by horizontal forms of violence, there is a higher risk that vertical violence could erupt anytime because of Islamist radicalism.

Some Southeast Asian and foreign Islamist militants influenced by al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other terrorist groups remained in Mindanao, roaming the Liguasan marsh, the mountains in Butig, and remote villages on Basilan island.

Later this year, the 2025 midterm elections and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) could also be potent drivers of violence due to political rivalry and control of BARMM’s vast resources.

However, some external forces could also affect the peace and order situation in BARMM, and the government may have no control over it.

For instance, the situation in the Middle East, both in the Gaza Strip and Syria, could be an influencing factor for violence to spill over in the southern Muslim region.

The rapid collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government in December and the rise of Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) and other opposition groups, including the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) could pose a serious threat to the Middle East region and the world.

The United States and its allies played a significant role in Assad’s downfall and in the rise of HTS, a group declared as a terrorist organization by Western countries, including Russia, Japan, Argentina, and Indonesia.

HTS has been spreading across Syria, releasing prisoners, including IS and other terrorists.

US policy, supported by neighboring Turkey hastened the regime change in Syria. This policy of playing around with radical Islamist organizations aimed at overthrowing violently disagreeable regimes and providing its own interests could lead to uncontrolled chaos in the Middle East and the world.

At the same time, the US and its allies turned a blind eye to Islamist militant groups fighting the Assad government to hasten its collapse.

The US also occupied oil-producing areas in Syria. It also encouraged Turkey to limit water flow in the Euphrates River, shrinking Damascus’ GDP from $252 billion in 2010 to nearly $9 billion in 2022. It contributed to Assad’s collapse in 2024.

The continued destabilization of the situation in Syria, including Israel’s incursion and destruction of Syrian military infrastructure could undoubtedly lead to radicalization and revival of Islamist extremism in the region and the world.

It could also intensify the recruitment into extremist groups, like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, gradually strengthening terrorists’ positions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Southeast Asia, including in the volatile southern Mindanao, would be impacted by the situation in Syria.

In the past, Indonesian Islamist militants in Syria sent terrorist financing and material support to radical groups in Mindanao.

The Philippines must condemn the actions in Washington, Ankara, Brussels, and Jerusalem otherwise Islamist extremism could rise again and result in another Marawi conflict.

The recent decision of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to change the leadership of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, a sort of regime change, could potentially stoke unrest and violence in the south.

In power since 2019, Ebrahim Murad, the supreme leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), was replaced as BARMM chief minister by Sammy Gambar, MILF’s military wing top commander.

It’s too early to predict what will happen in BARMM but this is an uneasy period in the Muslim Mindanao region.

Marcos should watch out for violence. After all, this a region that saw conflict and violence for decades after the Philippines won its independence in 1946.

The views expressed by the columnist do not necessarily reflect that of the media organization.

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