Recently, senators questioned the alleged "discrepancy" in the quantity of weapons that former fighters for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had surrendered as part of the peace agreement that the government and the separatist rebels had made. Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who was presiding over a Senate national defense committee meeting, gave Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. instructions to submit a report on the progress of the MILF's armed wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), deactivation process.
Sen. Imee Marcos made the observation that, since the government and MILF signed the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro in 2014, which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in 2019, only 12,000 of the approximately 40,000 BIAF fighters had been rendered inactive.
The decommissioning of the BIAF started following the establishment of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, the BARMM's temporary governing body made up primarily of former MILF officials.
However, Marcos stated that she observed that 26,132 former BIAF fighters only turned in 4,625 firearms overall, receiving P100,000 in cash assistance in exchange for giving up their weapons.
In addition, "some of those who surrendered looked too old to be combatants," according to Marcos. Sen. Raffy Tulfo claimed that discrepancies in the quantity of weapons turned in and disarmed by MILF rebels demonstrated anomalies in the decommissioning procedure carried out by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity.
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