Years of experience in conflict areas have taught us some solid lessons to chart a road map in peacebuilding.

The lessons do not have chronological order neither do these come in sequence.

Most often, they all come together as if they undergird each other in the concrete community peacebuilding.

Each lesson provides a direction in an on-going journey and it is, definitely, not a finished enterprise.

The first lesson is the process of establishing a good relation with the neighbors. The word “neighbors” refers to members of the concrete neighborhood without exception.

The Parable of a Good Samaritan comes handy in understanding this lesson. There are two ways to establish a good neighborhood relationship.

One is to approach it through the leaders of the neighborhood that also includes religious like pastors, parish priests, ulamas, and babaylans.

Once good relations among leaders are established, it is easily replicated among their constituents.

The other approach is a simple house to house or family to family good relation, which is actually the real meaning of good neighborhood relation.

There are simple expressions of this relation.

A sharing of salt and rice as people eke their living becomes a powerful symbol of a shared life.

Good neighborliness is, also, expressed in the natural capacity to celebrate together festivals and feast days like Christmas, Easter, Idul-Fitr, Idul Adha, etc.

The meals shared during the celebrations of weddings, rites of initiation, graduation, career promotion, and deaths are few examples of solidarity in action that goes beyond the borders and frontiers of religions and ethnicities.

The second lesson is the process of building a partnership based on common “stakeholdership” between and among members of the neighborhood.

This partnership bears fruit in common actions for the benefits of the community.

This type of partnership is, clearly, demonstrated in common actions like building farm to market roads, involvement in local infrastructures – repair of local schools, waste disposal, and management of potable water and health facilities.

The leadership in the local community is crucial in building the needed cohesion of members to undertake these local infrastructures.

The second leads to the third lesson that requires the development of capacities in the neighborhood.

Usually this takes training towards common undertakings like community firefighters, carpentry and masonry in local public works or building temporary shelters for refugees/displaced.

There is the need for training to capacitate local leaders, especially religious and civic leaders as MEDIATORS and HEALERS.

The local parish priest, pastor, Imam, school principal and community officials are natural mediators and healers.

Often, it is a question of recognizing and harnessing this “occupational” quality in peacebuilding and peacemaking at the grass roots.

The fourth lesson is the need for ‘sacred’ place.

The local churches, mosques, convents, madaris and schools can be ‘sacred’ places of healing and reconciliation.

These institutions can provide ‘sanctuaries’ for the victims.

They are natural fora for the shared stories and they can, also, ritualize forgiveness and healing in the neighborhood.

There is so much talk on the theme of trauma healing and yet there are few stories that tell of ‘wounded’ and ‘scarred’ people exchanging their tragedies to empower them to ‘pick up the pieces’ and move forward.

The wounds remain fresh and the bitterness hardens the hearts. They “lick their wounds, bury their dead” and they try to move forward, often, in pains and bitterness.

The fifth lesson in peacemaking is the capacity to mobilize the stakeholders, particularly the religious and civic leaders, to become active participants in peacemaking and peace building.

Often, the stakeholders’ call for cessation of hostilities serves as real pressure on warring parties to go back to the negotiating table.

They can also soften “hardened” positions in order to advance the peace process.

The active involvement of religious and civic leaders, often, provides the ‘glue’ in social cohesion that is absolutely necessary in peacemaking and peacebuilding.

No doubt, religions, at times, are the causes of divisions; yet they are also very potent sources in building consensus for any peace agreement or political settlement.

The sixth lesson is the need to build local institutions/mechanisms (Councils, Committees and Task Forces) that empower local communities for continuing active participation and actions towards peace making and peace building.

The warring parties may sign peace agreements and political settlements.

But peace agreement does not always lead to peace! Peace panels come and go. And peace panels are no guarantee also.

Ultimately, the true test of any peace agreement is a good neighborhood is established where people live not only side by side but a real community of friends that guarantees good relationship and partnership notwithstanding differences.

There are several questions people ask about the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM. They wonder why the whole experiment on self-governance seemingly does not work.

The five component provinces (Basilan, Lanao Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi) remain the poorest in the country.

The region is a place where good local governance is, in fact, almost an ‘oxymoron.’ It would be worse if the region is measured by the standards of ‘autonomy.’ In fact, the provinces within the ARMM feel and believe that they are less autonomous as compared to the provinces outside of the ARMM.

It is high time for all — the government and the Bangsamoro — to call the experiment a ‘failure’ in self-governance and development.

No doubt, there are one thousand and one reasons for the failure. And there will be no end to finger pointing to who was responsible for the failed governance within the ARMM.

The 2010 elections of new sets of national leaders may pave the way towards the ‘abolition’ of the ARMM.

The year 2010 may, in fact, be a golden opportunity to go back to the drawing board and‘re-invent’ our paradigm of autonomy and governance in Southern Mindanao.

With the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the GRP and the MNLF and the seeming substantial consensus points between the GRP and the MILF negotiations, we have good elements to shape a transitional structure that is all inclusive of all stakeholders in the area regardless of minority or majority status of inhabitants.

The ARMM as it stands is exclusive, by design and operations, of the Muslims. This is, perhaps, one of the major reasons why the Christian majority provinces or territory averred even the thought of ‘integration’ into the said political geography.

The history of ‘partition’ of the empire province of Cotabato in the 50s was premised on a separate province/territory for Muslims and Christians.

In many ways this was a concept that is at work in the political ideology behind the concept of apartheid (separate development and governance).

The same reason was at work when the powers that be ‘gerrymandered’ the then North Cotabato Province in 1971.

The re-drawing of the map of the then North Cotabato was based on the principle of putting together, with few exceptions, all Muslim dominated towns into one province that gave birth to Maguindanao.

Pikit was the exception, because the political elite then in Pikit Municipality was dominated by Christians hence the opposition to a possibility of inclusion to Maguindanao.

Thus Maguindanao became a Muslim Province, by design and operation!

Following the principle behind the said partition, the Muslims could do whatever they want in their area so long as they do NOT interfere in the Christian dominated provinces of the present North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.

Following the partition, Marcos appointed Col. Carlos Cajelo as the governor of North Cotabato, Col. Songco (later Gen. Benjamin Duque) as ‘governor-general’ of Sultan Kudarat and Simeon Datumanong as the governor of Maguindanao.

The Muslims, the Christians, and indigenous peoples began coming together, again, in an experimental government structures following the 1976 Tripoli Agreement between the GRP and the MNLF.

Marcos came out with a ‘transitional structure’ of self-governance akin to a ‘work in progress’ until the 1987 Constitution that mandates the establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM.

The first structure was the creation of two autonomous and coordinative ‘Commissions’ one for Region XII and another for Region IX.

Simeon Datumanong was appointed “Commissioner” for Region XII and Admiral Romulo Espaldon for Region IX.

The commission-type self-governance and development was supplanted by the creation of two autonomous regions with complete trappings of executive (Lupong Taga Pagpaganap or LTP) and legislature (Regional Legislative Assembly or RLA).

The two autonomous Regions (IX and XII) included eleven provinces and all cities therein out of the 14 provinces enumerated in the Tripoli Agreement (less Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, Palawan).

In 1989, of the 14 provinces subjected to a referendum, only four provinces (Lanao Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi) favored inclusion to the autonomous region under Republic Act 6734.

The ARMM has seen two Maguindanao Governors (Candao and Ampatuan), two Taosug Governors (Misuari and Husin), and two Maranao (Pangandaman and now acting Governor Adiong).

The ARMM has gone full circle in terms of “ethnic governance” by the dominant Muslim groups.

The experiments do NOT work! Regardless of reasons, the time has come to come up with a major revision both of the blueprint design and operations.

2010 is a new beginning not only for new sets of officials but also for the medium term development goals.

I thought, for a while, that the crisis in the ARMM and the province of Maguindanao would have given that “impetus” and courage to put an end to the ‘failed structure’ that would have paved the way for a new transitional mechanism that is inclusive of all stakeholders and truly accountable to all constituents of the region.