25/01/2026
The Bangsamoro Struggle: What the World Should Know About One of Asia's Longest Quests for Self-Determination
Let me be direct: most people outside Southeast Asia have never heard of the Bangsamoro. Yet their struggle for self-determination represents one of the most consequential—and instructive—peace processes of our time. It is a story of colonial dispossession, decades of armed conflict, and the fragile architecture of peace that is still being built today.
If you care about how communities emerge from conflict, how agreements translate (or fail to translate) into lasting peace, and what happens when historical grievances are left to metastasize across generations, then you need to understand what's happening in the southern Philippines.
Who Are the Bangsamoro?
The Bangsamoro—literally "Moro Nation" are the Muslim peoples of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan in the southern Philippines. They comprise thirteen ethnolinguistic groups, including the Maguindanaon, Maranao, Tausug, Sama, and Yakan, among others. Together, they number around five million people in a predominantly Catholic nation of over 110 million.
Their ancestors established sultanates centuries before the Spanish arrived in 1565. These were not primitive tribal societies. The Sultanate of Sulu conducted trade and diplomacy across Southeast Asia. The Sultanate of Maguindanao controlled vast territories in Mindanao. Islam arrived in the 14th century, well before Christianity came to the northern islands with the colonizers.
Here's what the reports don't capture: the Bangsamoro never consented to being part of the Philippines. When Spain ceded the archipelago to the United States in 1898 through the Treaty of Paris, it sold territories it never fully controlled. The Moro resistance that had held off Spanish colonizers for over 300 years continued against American forces, culminating in massacres like Bud Dajo in 1906, where American troops killed over 900 Moro men, women, and children.
This history matters. When Bangsamoro leaders speak of self-determination today, they are not inventing grievances. They are pointing to a continuous thread of resistance that stretches back centuries.
The Making of a Conflict
When the Philippines became independent in 1946, the new republic inherited the colonial assumption that the Bangsamoro lands were simply part of the nation-state. What followed was a systematic process of marginalization.
The Philippine government encouraged Christian settlers from the Visayas and Luzon to migrate to Mindanao. In 1903, Muslims comprised over 75% of Mindanao's population. By the 1970s, they had become a minority in their ancestral lands—roughly 20%. Land that had belonged to Moro families for generations was titled to newcomers. Traditional governance structures were dismantled. The message was clear: integrate or be displaced.
The violence that erupted in the late 1960s was not born from nowhere. It was the inevitable consequence of dispossession. The Jabidah massacre of 1968, in which Philippine soldiers killed dozens of young Moro recruits during a covert operation, became a catalyzing moment. Armed resistance movements emerged—first the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and later, in 1977, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (M**F).
The M**F, led initially by the Islamic scholar Salamat Hashim, broke from the MNLF over questions of both tactics and ultimate goals. Where the MNLF eventually accepted autonomy within the Philippine state, the M**F maintained that the Bangsamoro had a right to self-determination—including, in principle, the right to independence.
The Long Road of the M**F
For decades, the M**F fought the Philippine government in a conflict that claimed over 120,000 lives and displaced millions. Their base camps in central Mindanao—particularly Camp Abubakar—became symbols of an alternative order, places where Bangsamoro governance, law, and identity could be practiced away from Manila's reach.
But the M**F was never merely a military organization. Understanding this is critical. From its founding, it pursued a two-track strategy: armed struggle and political negotiation. The goal was never violence for its own sake. It was leverage—the means to force the Philippine government to negotiate seriously about Bangsamoro self-governance.
Formal peace talks began in the late 1990s and continued through multiple administrations, with Malaysian facilitation and international monitoring. The process was agonizing. Ceasefires were declared and broken. Draft agreements were rejected by Philippine courts. In 2008, a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain was struck down by the Supreme Court, triggering a return to hostilities that displaced hundreds of thousands.
And yet the M**F stayed at the table. This wasn't naivety. It was strategy—and, perhaps, faith. "We are not fighting for ourselves," one M**F commander told me years ago. "We are fighting for our grandchildren. We can be patient."
The Comprehensive Agreement and the Bangsamoro Organic Law
The breakthrough came in 2014 with the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). This was not a simple ceasefire. It was an architecture for a new political entity—the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)—with genuine legislative powers, fiscal autonomy, and its own parliamentary system.
The CAB addressed the core demands: recognition of Bangsamoro identity, a defined territory, and the mechanisms for self-governance. It created a normalization track for decommissioning M**F combatants and a transitional justice framework to address historical injustices.
But agreements are only as good as their implementation.
The Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), which would enact the CAB, languished in the Philippine Congress. It took until 2019 for the BARMM to be formally established, following ratification by plebiscite. The M**F's political wing, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), assumed leadership of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority—the interim government tasked with building the institutions of the new region.
Think about what this means: former insurgents becoming administrators. Fighters becoming legislators. A revolutionary movement transforming itself into a governing party. This is the bet that the M**F made—that political power, achieved through negotiation, could deliver what armed struggle alone could not.
The Fragility of Transition
Here's the kicker: transitions are when peace processes are most vulnerable.
The BARMM has secured significant resources. The national government has allocated hundreds of billions of pesos for the region. International donors have committed substantial support. On paper, the peace dividends are flowing.
But on the ground, the picture is more complicated. Governance capacity remains thin. The new bureaucracy is being built while simultaneously managing the expectations of a population that has waited decades for change. Traditional political clans—some of which fought the M**F for years—are maneuvering for position. Elections scheduled for 2025 will be the first real test of whether Bangsamoro democracy can take root. And on top of this, intra-M**F rivalries are emerging.
Add to this the normalization process. Over 26,000 M**F combatants are to be decommissioned—meaning they surrender their weapons, receive socioeconomic support, and transition to civilian life. This is painstaking work. Men and women who have defined themselves as fighters for decades must now become farmers, entrepreneurs, civil servants. The decommissioning benefits—cash grants, livelihood packages, community support—are meaningful but not sufficient to transform lives overnight.
Meanwhile, violence hasn't disappeared. Clan conflicts, political feuds, and the presence of other armed groups (including factions that rejected the peace process) continue to claim lives. In some areas, the peace is more concept than reality.
Why This Matters Beyond the Philippines
The Bangsamoro struggle offers lessons that extend far beyond Mindanao.
First, historical grievances don't expire. The dispossession that began under colonial rule and continued through state policy created wounds that are still open. No amount of development assistance will substitute for addressing the fundamental questions of identity, recognition, and justice. This is true in Mindanao. It is true in Kashmir, in Palestine, in Myanmar, and in countless other places where communities seek self-determination.
Second, peace processes are not events—they are processes. The CAB was a milestone, not a finish line. The real work of peacebuilding happens in the years after the cameras leave, when the hard slog of institution-building and reconciliation confronts the realities of limited resources, political resistance, and human impatience. International attention tends to peak at signing ceremonies and fade precisely when sustained support is most needed.
Third, former combatants can become legitimate political actors. The M**F's transformation from armed movement to a social movement and a political party is not without tensions and contradictions. But it demonstrates that with the right conditions—genuine political space, meaningful power-sharing, international support—insurgent organizations can choose politics over violence. This should inform how the world approaches other armed movements.
Fourth, implementation is where peace dies or lives. The gap between what agreements promise and what they deliver is the graveyard of peace processes. The Bangsamoro process is now in the implementation phase. Every broken promise, every delayed benefit, every sign that the national government is not serious about autonomy becomes evidence that the negotiated path was a mistake. The M**F's credibility—and the future of peace in Mindanao—depends on whether the commitments made in 2014 and 2019 are honored in the years ahead.
The Stakes
Let me be clear about what failure would mean.
Displaced, jobless, traumatized populations concentrated in areas where state presence is weak? That's exactly the environment where violent extremist groups find their recruits. The siege of Marawi in 2017—when ISIS-linked fighters seized a major city and held it for five months—was a preview of what happens when grievances are left unaddressed and alternative narratives gain traction.
The M**F has kept faith with the peace process even when elements within its ranks questioned whether Manila could be trusted. Chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim and the M**F leadership have staked everything on the proposition that the Bangsamoro can achieve genuine self-determination through political means. If the process fails—if the promised autonomy is hollowed out, if the resources don't reach communities, if the elections are captured by the old politics—then the argument for peaceful struggle collapses.
And then? Perhaps a return to war. Perhaps the splintering of the M**F into factions that no longer believe in negotiation. Perhaps the further expansion of groups that reject the state altogether. Perhaps another generation of Bangsamoro children growing up with violence as their only inheritance.
This isn't alarmism. This is the logic of conflict recurrence. We know how these patterns work.
A Path Forward
The Bangsamoro story is not finished. It could still become one of the great peacebuilding successes of our era—a model for how long-standing conflicts rooted in identity and self-determination can be resolved through negotiation and political transformation.
But that outcome requires action.
The Philippine government must fulfill its commitments under the CAB and BOL—not as a favor to the Bangsamoro, but as an obligation to its own laws and international agreements. The block grants must flow. The normalization process must be completed. The territory and powers guaranteed to the BARMM must be respected. Any attempt to claw back autonomy or manipulate the upcoming elections will undermine everything that has been built.
The international community—donors, diplomatic partners, international financial institutions—must stay engaged. The Bangsamoro needs not just resources but technical expertise, institutional support, and the sustained attention that keeps the Philippine government accountable. Peace processes don't fail because the world is watching. They fail when the world looks away.
And the Bangsamoro leadership must govern well. This is the hardest part. After decades of fighting for power, they must now exercise it responsibly—delivering services, managing expectations, building institutions that outlast any individual administration. The transition from revolutionary movement to governing party is treacherous terrain. They will make mistakes. The question is whether they learn from them.
The Invitation
For those encountering the Bangsamoro struggle for the first time, I offer this invitation: pay attention.
This is a story of a people who have refused, across centuries, to accept that their identity and self-governance should be erased. It is a story of armed resistance that chose to lay down its weapons and take up the tools of politics. It is a story that is still being written, in government offices and village halls and the daily decisions of millions of people who want nothing more than to live in peace.
The Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination is not a distant conflict in a remote corner of Asia. It is a test case for whether the international order can accommodate the aspirations of peoples who don't fit neatly within the borders they inherited. It is a mirror held up to every society grappling with questions of minority rights, historical justice, and the meaning of self-rule.
May the Bangsamoro find peace. And may we have the wisdom to support them in building it.
