The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) officially ended four decades of armed struggle in the Philippines on March 27, when it formally signed a pact with the government on regional autonomy that had been agreed on in 2012. Under the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, the MILF drops its claims for a separate state in the southern region of Mindanao and agrees to parliamentary self-rule in the new Bangsamoro autonomous region, to be established by 2016. A local police force will assume law enforcement functions from the Philippine police and military. The region will not be under an officially secular government. Sharia law will apply only to Muslims and only for civil cases, not for criminal offences. The MILF, with some 10,000 armed followers, will "gradually" decommission its forces and put the weapons "beyond use." The Bangsamoro, or Moro Nation, will replace another autonomous government that was brokered in the 1990s with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). (AFP, March 27; Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 26)
MILF
