What do we learn from Pulwam Attack?
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In the early hours of the morning of January 25, 2015, an attack took place on the Special Action Forces, members of the Philippine police. They were in Mamasapano, in the province of Mindanao, in the Southern Philippines. The police were there as part of an operation to capture a wanted Malaysian terrorist and bomb maker. They were, however, ambushed and encircled, and 44 Special Action Forces were killed in the ensuing attack.
Eighteen members of the opposing fighters, part of the Moro Islamic Liberation Force (MILF) and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, were killed, as well as five civilians.
Mindanao conflict
The massacre took place at a particularly sensitive moment – in the context of a peace process that was decades in the making and finally at an advanced stage.
The conflict in the southern province of mainly Muslim Mindanao has been categorised as possibly the second oldest conflict in the world. Its roots lie in the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines in the 1500s, to the advent of American colonisation, to eventually an armed secessionist movement.
Particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the self-determination movement took on an increasing intensity and the conflict escalated. Eventually, the declaration of martial law in 1972 by President Marcos, purportedly to deal with the conflict, was the turning point for a descent into an all-out conflict.