I work in a place a few hundred meters from where the car bomb exploded in Cotabato..I live in a City with thousands displaced and hundreds engaging in battles..I could choose to fly away as far as possible...or I could choose the uncomfortable way..a way where we overcome our fears .. a way where we seek to be part of the solution and dare to act..dare to help bring back peace and prosterity where we could actually imagine our children grow up and prosper. We pray for the early seccession of hostilities. An end to the sound of the guns. Let the leaders talk and spare the poor civilians and poor people with arms who are fighting each other but may not be clear as for whom, why and the end goal of this battle...in a few months..leaders and spokespersons may be back in 5 star hotels talking..while the foot soldiers of both sides mourn the fall of their comrades, children wonder where their fathers had gone, families at a lost as to how to rebuild their homes, children living their lives with this shocking memory of battles fought so close to home. Footsoldiers had fought hoping to give a better life for their family and children ramain unemployed and living a difficult life as no amount of peace agreement could employ people without necessary eligibilities. Even sustained livelihood in a warzone is like planting rice in the desert. Even after peace agreements, it will always be the educated ones who get the edge while the foot soldiers end up with minimal allowances to survive. They sacrifice their whole life and end up most disadvantaged in any government system. What kind of productive work could a person have if he had spent his whole life fighting? They end up doing what they know best - fighting for other peoples interests like politics, power, position, or business ...Leaders are like ship captains. They could boldly bring their people to a better place..or they could lead them into a shipwreck...17 yrs after a peace agreement had been signed and with the group taking over the regional governorship for 10 years and many of their members elected into office..how had the lives of the footsoldiers improved? The footsoldiers who were never educated even up to elementary grade or high school..will never see a sustained employment except for minimal employment based on patronage politics or contractuals/casuals of a few years the faucet of which shuts off by the end of the term of their leader or patrin..and so the foot soldiers whose lives have been gambled dozens of times..and whose family has been sacrificed for the cause..still see a bleak future. The problem is not the system nor are we under oppression. Realize that our greatest oppressor is our own ignorance, illiteracy, poverty and hatred. The surest way to ensure the freedom of our next generations is not by engaging in futile wars that destroy our communities and dislocate our children and leave a legacy of armaments, guns and bullets for our children to fight more battles..the surest way is to dare to sacrifice and work hard to support our next generation so they will be the most brilliant and most pious in their class..only the pens signed on paper seal agreements for prosperity..in this conceptual age of technology and information, our generations future could only be secured by battles of the mind. The debilitating economic and political systems that disadvantaged us are not the wars fought for 4 centuries..but the systems and laws passed in 4 decades. We were not outgunned. We were outsmarted. True liberation shall not be by the guns; but by the mind. The more we wreak havoc in our communities and disallow our children to study, the more we are making prosperity become far from them as they maneuver a world that is thousands of times more complex than a hundred years ago. Please. Let there be restraint in emotional calls for more violence when there seems to be no path out of this that except for the end goal of more talks in the most luxurious hotels in indonesia or OIC. If the end game is talk, then can we skip having hundreds of Muslims killed..and hundreds of soldiers killed..as well as thousands displaced. For many these may just be statistics. But for the orphans, its like their whole world has gone black and a whole new orphaned and disadvantaged generation is left to help themselves. I know that both sides have footsoldiers who have much courage and good in them. I plead to the leaders of both sides, let the lives of people who believe in their leadership be spared. Some times we ask..how many dead footsoldiers are required before leaders talk? How could leaders sleep soundly if for their right to talk or be heard, hundreds must die? How could there be a great leader when he brings most devastation and death to his own people and communities?
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:20:36 +0000
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