Going home: youth and aspirations in postconflict Marawi, Philippines

ABSTRACT

It has been years but the reconstruction of Marawi leaves much to be desired. In 2017, a battle between the government and ISIL-affiliated elements destroyed the city. This article turns attention to the youth who have been affected by this conflict. In a postconfict context in which reconstruction has yet to be seen, do the youth aspire to anything? If so, what are their aspirations? Drawing on interviews, we argue that their main aspiration is to ‘go home’. We unpack it in two respects: transparent and people-centered reconstruction and the reassertion of Marawi’s Islamic identity. These aspirations are not only couched in a positive language. Underlying them is a critique of the state of affairs: technocratic but inefficient rehabilitation and the moral and religious condition of the community prior to the conflict. By foregrounding the role of aspirations, this article advances the scholarship on young people’s participation in postconflict settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Aspirations
• youth
• postconflict reconstruction
• Marawi
• Philippines

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Reemar Alonsagay for his contributions to the study as a research assistant.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In the past decades, such factors as radicalization, access to weapons, and training by foreign elements all provided an ‘enabling environment’ for violent extremism to take root in Mindanao (Ramakrishna 2020, 8). But observers also contend that the Marawi siege was ‘a long time in the making’, a result of longstanding marginalization of the Moro people, dating back to the colonial period and to the early twentieth century when land titling favored Christian settlers to own property in Mindanao (Ramakrishna 2020, 5). In the 1960s, the Bangsamoro as a secessionist movement was led by the Moro Independence Movement, the Moro National Liberation Front, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The work of Francisco Lara (2016) and Schoofs and Lara (2013) are also instructive in making sense of the longstanding conflict in Mindanao. The persistence of the informal economy involving informal land markets, illicit gun trade, and kidnapping for ransom points to the power of local strongmen and clan institutions in controlling these operations. In many cases local businessmen and law enforcers are also involved in these activities. Violent conflict ensues whenever the state steps in as formal institutions threaten the power of local strongmen.

2 In fact, the construction of permanent shelters is being funded by national and international agencies (Umel 2021). And for more than a year, the ‘most affected area’, which covers residences, religious sites, and the market, was off limits because of unexploded ordnances according to the military.

3 MSU is a university system with campuses all over Mindanao. The main campus is in Marawi.

4 The Maute Group occupied Dansalan College until government forces secured it on July 4, 2017 (Cahiles 2017).

5 In fact, this is the case for young people growing up in many parts of Mindanao (Huesca 2019).

6 But our interlocutors also criticize the response of the government, particularly the counterattack of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. They strongly condemn the airstrikes. For Mawi, whose family used to own a property in the central area, ‘the way the government responded to the attacks was too much. There must have been other ways to prevent the loss of our properties and livelihoods’. Indeed, the airstrikes contributed to the massive displacement as well as the loss of lives of people who were trapped inside the battle area. For Rufa Guiam (2020) a retired professor of anthropology at the General Santos campus of Mindanao State University, ‘Within five months, it destroyed what took the Meranaw decades and generations of their people to build and nurture. Indeed, making war is easier than waging peace’.

7 Sadam, who received text messages that the city would be attacked, validates this claim: ‘I thought it was fake news. For me, it was unthinkable because the members of the Maute Group were Maranaos. I thought Marawi would be spared’. But that did not turn out to be true.

8 These are involvements we intend to pursue in the next phase of our project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Science and Technology, Republic of the Philippines.