Nur Misuari 'We had to fight for it'

The former Moro National Liberation Front leader discusses the crisis in Sabah and peace in the southern Philippines.

"We have achieved something tremendous in our quest for peace in our homeland as well as of course enhancing the freedom of our people. We had to fight for it and in fact we have lost hundreds of thousands of lives just to be able to reach this point. The problem is that our homeland is so rich, not only in terms of history but [also] in terms of its resources, that's why so many people want to occupy this land. And they applied what they call the classical policy of divide and rule so that our people could not unite and fight as one nation to roll back all of these foreign aggressors."

- Nur Misuari, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front

But the implications here could be severe for the region.

At stake could be the peace deal between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) leader Ibrahim Murad. The deal was designed to bring peace to Mindanao and allow the fighters there to build a semi-autonomous Islamic state, to be called Bangsamoro.

The party that brokered the deal was Malaysia. Its Muslim-dominated government used its influence with the Islamic fighters in Mindanao to bring the parties together. But now, there are allegations that members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the original Islamic insurgency group, feels sidetracked and has allowed some of its men to fight the Malaysian government presence in Sabah.

Which brings us back to where the conflict in Mindanao started -  it is in places like this that the resistance against what they call Philippine colonialism was nursed.