Multiple transcripts as political strategy: social media and conflicting identities of the Moro liberation movement in the Philippines

The Moro people’s struggle for self-determination

The Moro people’s struggle is historical, dynamic and multi-dimensional, and it has multiple roots and consequences (Abinales, 2000; Tuminez, 2008). At the same time, the approach of the community can be differentiated, as some seek full assimilation (as Muslim Filipinos), while others advocate a separate state (Bangsamoro) or take intermediate positions. The territorial and economic roots of the Moro grievances are intertwined with their minority status in Mindanao, which began during Spanish colonization, continued under American rule and further intensified in an independent, Christian-dominated Philippines (Tuminez, 2008: 2). The Moros resent the failure to recognize their entitlement to land and livelihood resources, which they have lost through the transmigration of Christians to Mindanao and the establishment of multinational companies in the region. This resettlement policy minoritized the Muslims in the region which they formerly dominated, reducing them from about 75 per cent of Mindanao’s population in the 1900s to 25 per cent in the late 1960s (Quimpo, 2001: 274; Rodil, 1994). Besides the dispossession of land and state-driven minoritization of Muslims in Mindanao, the situation of resentment against the Philippine state is caused by the relative poverty of the Muslim dominated provinces vis-a-vis other provinces in the country. These areas, ironically, are rich in arable land, marine life and mineral deposits, including oil and gas (Tuminez, 2008). Further, decades of sporadic clashes between the rebel groups and the government military have also devastated the Moro-dominated communities, causing deterioration in health and living conditions, and discouraging infrastructure investments in these areas. It is against this backdrop of deprivation and discontent that it becomes important to explore the Moro agitation and its media strategies, which involve the negotiation of identity, the harnessing of political support and legitimation.

Luwaran.com: MILF online

The MILF set up its first website, Luwaran.com in 1998. According to its leaders, the website was built primarily to reach out to an external, international audience, provide an alternative platform to communicate the real history of marginalization of the Moros, and solicit support that will help strengthen its capacity and realize its goals. The MILF maintains four websites, (1) www.luwaran.com; (2) www.luwaran.net, its mirror website; (3) an Arabic Luwaran, http://www.luwaran.net/arabic/, and (iv) ‘The Moro Chronicles’, http://www.tmchronicles.com/. These three other websites all have direct links from the home page of the main website, Luwaran.com.

All four websites are self-managed by the MILF with the help of about seven members based in Mindanao and overseas. The MILF sent its members for website management training in the Middle East, and some of those maintaining the websites are now based in Saudi Arabia (MILF web team, personal communication, 23 May 2010). The web team shared system-generated reports about the website readership through website analytics, which implies that the organization conducts active monitoring of the visitors of their online spaces. For the month of April 2010, Luwaran.com received 2,018,213 hits and 67,336 total visits. It gets an average of about 2,100 visits daily, and in our log of visits to the website, it would always have more than 50 guests online at any time.

‘Luwaran’ is a Maguindanaoan ² term for ‘Code of Laws’. When the MILF planned the website they wanted a name that would conceal their ownership of it, to avoid security attacks while communicating the struggle to a broader audience. The term ‘luwaran’ was deemed appropriate because it is symbolic for the Moros and cannot be easily construed as an MILF-owned website. Initially ambivalent about the benefits and risks, the group began with an apprehensive outlook about the use of the internet to communicate the struggle. However, as the MILF gained more prominence in the mid-2000s as the organization leading the Moro struggle (Coronel-Ferrer, 2011), the website began to be used as the official communication platform for publicizing the struggle and reaching out to a broader international audience. Their online spaces, according to MILF leaders, now serve as the MILF’s central media outlet for self-representation and seek to draw the attention of mainstream media. Luwaran.com has emerged as the most prominent online space communicating the Moro struggle and is followed as a source of news content by local and foreign organizations, including Moro historians, bloggers and the mainstream media (A. Mawalil, R. Rodil and J. Abbas, personal communication, May 2010, June 2011).

Luwaran.com was originally hosted by a server located in Mindanao, but security attacks have compelled them to invest in a secure server based in the United States. This security investment was deemed ‘extremely expensive’, ‘but worth the money’ because it allows the hosting of up to four websites with ‘practically no attacks’ (MILF web team, personal communication, 23 May 2010).

Engagement and estrangement

When the MILF started negotiations with the government formally in 1997, it framed its claims on the basis of an independent Islamic state (Bangsamoro) marked by political and economic self-reliance and ‘self-governance’ according to Islamic ways of life. While the website reports the peace negotiations with government and its shifting stance in its claims, a slogan on the Luwaran website also expresses its original aim. Animated to attract attention, the website slogan reads:

Moro is a Nation

No to Integration

No to Unitary State

Uphold moro right to self-determination

This contradicts the position of political conciliation which the MILF has taken in the recent peace negotiations, representing a move towards integration as a ‘substate’ and not an independent state. Interestingly, this slogan used to be placed on the home page, but has now been relocated and is embedded in the pages linked to the site. The retention of the slogan, despite shifts in actual claims during political settlement discussions, highlights the organization’s ultimate aim, which is to establish a state independent from the Philippine government. The ability to send divergent messages is made possible by embedding multiple articulations within the website, accessible by clicking through the linked pages.

One of its websites, ‘The Moro Chronicles’ (TMC), is laid out as an online magazine and is not explicitly identified as belonging to the MILF. Identifying marks, such as ‘About us’, photos of previous leaders, and members’ publications are embedded inside the postings, rather than taking prominent spots on the home page, as in the official Luwaran website. And yet it contains content very similar to that of Luwaran, organized according to themes (e.g. Editorial, History, Peace Agreements, Documents). Publications on the Bangsamoro struggle by its leaders are presented under ‘History’, and provide the reader with a good background to the historical roots of the struggle.

The attempt to mask the Moro revolutionary identity in some of its online spaces seems consistent with the way the MILF engages non-Moros to write for the website, arguing that: ‘when Moros speak for themselves, it may appear as propaganda. But when non-Moros speak for the struggle, they tend to be more credible’ (MILF leader, personal communication, 22 May 2010). This can also be viewed as a strategy to establish credibility and gain wider understanding from the non-Moro community. The strategy of seeking non-Moro support can be seen in the MILF efforts to run non-governmental organizations whose MILF roots are often concealed from public attention (MILF leader, personal communication, 22 May 2010).

We may construe the Moro strategy figuratively as that of Marranos. Marranos were former Jews from Spain and Portugal who converted to Christianity under coercion (Yovel, 2009: ix). Coined as ‘the other within’, they live under a superficial mask of Christianity to cover their faithful Jewish religious practice in the backstage. In Aporias, Derrida (1993: 79–81) referred to the Marranos as ‘that which lives without having a name … anyone who remains faithful to a secret … in the very place where he stays without saying no but without identifying himself as belonging to …’. Concealment of identity is engaged by the MILF not because revealing ownership of such spaces and institutions would threaten their existence. Unlike the Marranos, the Moros are not coerced to convert or assimilate to the mainstream. Given the hegemony of overarching non-Moro cultural norms in the larger Philippine society, the strategy of removing Moro identifiers from some of the online spaces and institutions, along with the effort to invite non-Moros to speak for the struggle, appears to be based on the MILF’s experience that ‘being non-Moro’ tends to enhance the credibility and acceptability of pro-Moro views and positions that some non-Moros prominently uphold. In practice, the MILF’s strategy of masking the distinctive Moro presence in some of their online spaces and initiatives looks strikingly similar to the process of mediating a Marrano identity, with its cautious emphasis on the concealment of Moro identifiers, leading, in part, to a symbolic compliance to the dominant norms and concerns of the cultural majority.

Strategic uses of websites and Facebook

During the first set of website reviews conducted in March to May, 2010, a banner was seen at the bottom of the website’s home page (www.luwaran.com) stating:

No to Terrorism!

This website support(s)

(the) Peace Process in

Mindanao, Philippines

The MILF web team explained that this was a tactical move to allay all suspicions of them as a terrorist organization. The emphasis on their participation in the peace process despite ten years of failed negotiations, as highlighted in the banner, was important, as the peace process was overseen by international actors and monitored by an International Monitoring Team composed of non-government institutions in Asia and in the European Union. Most discourses in the Philippines tend to show Moro rebels as having a homogeneous identity and do not differentiate the MILF from the militant separatist group Abu Sayyaf. The website, arguably, helps in correcting the mistaken perception that all Islamic revolutionary groups are terrorist organizations. The MILF conducts meetings with international organizations and posts documentation and photographs of these meetings in the website. They note that if they were considered terrorists, international parties would not agree to meet them.

With the prodding of its younger members, the MILF began to take on social networking. It runs two active Facebook pages, Luwaran Marshland and Luwaran, ³ and a Twitter page and MySpace which as of July 2011, have no content. Being on Facebook allows them to see the opinion of younger members of the organization, ‘without having to answer for it’. They also argue that ‘this allows us to present the organization soft and hard’, and explained that while they are often projected as violent, backward and terrorists, they can also project themselves as ‘humans’, modern, and capable of articulating themselves both in diplomatic and informal ways (MILF web team, personal communication, May 2010).

The website is used strategically to narrate their version of the history of the Moro struggle, present a detailed account of the Moro political ideology, differentiate the MILF from terrorist organizations and assert their unique identity in relation to ‘Filipinos’. This assertion of ‘a unique Moro identity that is not Filipino and not terrorist’ is crucial as it forms the fundamental basis of the Moro struggle for self-determination and self-governance. The website also allows the group to emphasize its diplomatic position by highlighting its participation in peace talks. The same group’s Facebook page (linked to its official website), on the other hand, presents a completely different picture. Run by those claiming to be the ‘youth leaders and members of the organization’, it provides space to advocate open hatred of Muslim youth towards the government, the government military and the Christian settler community in Mindanao, and openly support the cause of armed struggle. For example, while the website highlights its participation in the peace process and its ‘non-terrorist’ stance, several postings on the Facebook page reflect frustration over the peace process, imploring the leadership to stop the peace talks and move on to war. For example:

We must stop the peace talks with enemy. We should go to war, 12 year of peace process is a wasting time. Let us try it without peace talks, we will wage guerrilla warfare, hit and run attack, destroy all enemy power resources … (Mars Basco, some words translated from Filipino, 7 November 2010)

Interestingly, such calls for dropping peace negotiations and a move towards an armed struggle are accompanied by street mass actions in Mindanao organized by Moro youth and civil society organizations (IRINAsia, 2011). A collection of posts from the Luwaran Facebook page from March 2010 (when the Facebook page was started) to July 2011 shows that the online space is being used to mobilize the Moros to express their anger over the military and the Philippine government, and their frustration over the MILF leadership’s continued participation in peace talks. Such posts obtain reinforcement through the Facebook support system of ‘Like’, presenting an image of an articulation that is well-supported by the community of users. Several of these posts also express hate towards the Christian settlers in Mindanao, counter-attacked by those who express severe prejudice towards the Moros:

Fellow young mujahideen, our ultimate targets must be the settlers who [are] still occupying our lands in Mindanao. If we only attack the military camps, there is little impact… but if we attack the settlers, we burn and massacre, this will fast track the negotiations between the Philippines and Bangsamoro. (Mars Basco, 13 July 2011, translated from a mix of English-Filipino-Visayan)

The messages seek to spread hatred and violence and provoke the members to break civil norms without respect for humanitarian conventions. The posts also project ‘a method of combat in which random or symbolic victims serve as an instrumental target of violence’, which can be classified as a terrorist strategy (Schmid and Jongman, 1988: 1). Such posts ignite an exchange of violent threats, as those claiming to be anti-Moro also retaliate with expletives. As a result, members have begun to express concern, ‘Why are we always talking about war here? This is making the Bangsamoro look like barbarians’ (Jay Galura, Facebook posting, 15 July 2011). As one camp posts to attack the other, the other camp retaliates, and the Facebook wall is chequered by violent exchanges between the warring camps, albeit from ambiguous identities marked by the use of pseudonyms. Some participants are suspected of having been planted by the enemy to spread radicalism in order to tarnish the image of the Moros. There are threads where the members suggest that the administrators block the non-Moros and ‘fake posters’ who propagate a terrorist image of the organization, and yet the same posters remain active on the page.

We know that this page is a worldwide page that can be read by all people of this planet and the plan of this [sic] people who promote mass destruction under the umbrella of the Moro struggle is to show to the world that Moro people is no more but an extremist, fanatic and backward minded terrorist … the enemy of Islam will be very happy to see the Muslim ummah to become a more backward mentality terrorist, I wish to say that we are not one of that idiot used by the enemy to destroy our own religion. (Helton Lamb, 23 January 2011)

The exchange of contested identities and postings creates multiple and divergent representations depending on when one views the page. It also confuses the reader regarding the true identity of the posters. The posts expressing radicalization by those claiming to represent Moro youth are also countered by those who argue that terrorism and civil war are against the tenets of Islam and the MILF.

Seeking international support

Although Luwaran.com and Luwaran.net have the capacity for translating the content into various languages, the MILF deemed it important to publish a website catering to an Arabic/Islamic audience for financial and moral support. A team of MILF members and supporters maintain the Arabic website and translate the local content from English into Arabic, although unique content is also generated for the Arabic website. Apparently, the Moro leaders are able to find an audience among, and sympathy and financial support from Muslim activists, intelligentsia, philanthropists and supporters from the Middle East and other parts of the world – both reformists and extremists. Political Islam is not homogeneous, thus it is important to differentiate within global Islam as organizations seek international support. The MILF team discussed some of the challenges of reaching out to the Islamic community that has contrasting beliefs and ideology. They narrated that some ‘hardliners’, in response to their online spaces, question their continued participation in the peace talks and pledge to offer support for more aggressive operations to achieve their political goals:

they would say, don’t you see that your enemy is viciously waging war against you? Because of that sometimes they don’t want to help.… That is the backlash, they would say, this MILF is engaging in the peace process. Just go to war … (MILF leader, personal communication, 23 May 2010, some words translated from Filipino).

Besides potential Islamic supporters, the organization’s website also targets the members of the International Monitoring Team, onlookers in neighbouring countries in Asia, and the United States. Based on website analytics, the MILF has become aware that several institutions based in the United States are actively monitoring the situation. They emphasized the importance of protecting MILF–US relations in the hope that this can help ‘rectify historical wrongs connected to the annexation of Moro communities to Philippine territory’ during the grant of Philippine independence in 1946, in which the US played a key role. They interpret the increased attention from American institutions towards the struggle as a possible route to pressuring the Philippine government into taking the peace negotiations more seriously. However, the MILF leadership also recognizes the realities of US relations with the Philippine government, which have recently included joint efforts towards counterterrorism cooperation (MILF leaders, personal communication, 22–3 May 2010).

From the examples above, we see that the aspirations of reaching out to multiple international entities are channelled through use of multiple media platforms negotiating an evolving balance between radicalism and diplomacy. It can be seen that Moros use certain platforms to assert religious identity and reticently uphold radical postures but at the same time certain other platforms are used to negotiate alliances with potential supporters with a different ethico-ideological vision. It is for this reason that the MILF raised the issue of the difficulty in finding the right people and writers who ‘fully understand the MILF’s political ideology and strategies’. The leaders shared that the experience of managing several online spaces has helped in determining which members imbibe the ideology and complexity of MILF’s operations and relations.

Online divergent transcripts as infrapolitical

The multiple online spaces used by the MILF represent a mediation of multiple identities, constant movement of owning and disowning of online spaces, debunking and accepting representations, and marking and unmarking articulations. The flexibility afforded by social media allows them to oscillate across multiple representations depending on what may suit its purposes. The multiple online spaces engaged by the MILF unveil several playful transcripts that tend to reverse the positions that the movement publicly takes in its official website. The use of online strategies where the message and messenger are made ambiguous through techniques of disguise and concealment, also facilitate open criticism and contestation as well as uninhibited expressions. Although the MILF’s website has direct links to the Facebook page and TMC online magazine, the multiplicity and ambiguity of possible authors provide a protective cover, and thus there is no clear author to round up or investigate, and no official manifestos to denounce. This is an infrapolitical form of political action designed to obscure intentions or to take cover behind an apparent meaning or author (Scott, 1990: 200). Precisely because infrapolitical strategies make the message or identity ambiguous, they often escape notice and yet such strategies represent truthful transcripts of grudges and aspirations that serve as the foundation for vengeful dreams, resistant subcultures and elaborate, open and institutional forms of resistance. The MILF’s online spaces, as components of its broader political communication strategy, serve as their platform for mobilization, reaching out to a broader, global audience, present discourses alternative to those offered by government, and complement its own ‘official’ press releases. Catering to multiple audiences, we see this use of divergent online transcripts as a strategic appropriation of technology. The online initiatives represent careful planning, especially as the group negotiates technological, state, military, and international relations and controls. The MILF leaders explained that the international exposure received by the website has helped the organization tremendously in expanding the reach of the struggle and in gaining prominence as an organization at the forefront of the struggle. The international linkages help them in enhancing their bargaining capacity with the government.

However, internationalizing the struggle online also presents lived dilemmas of using the internet for a Muslim minority group. First, while the group strategizes its online engagement to broaden support towards the struggle, the nature of the online space imposes material requirements that challenge genuine representation from its conflict-affected and poverty-stricken Moro communities without access to the internet and the necessary skills. Second, while the leaders believe that the website’s return on investment is ‘tremendous’ in terms of gaining attention from the international community that it seeks to reach, there is no effective gauge as to how such ‘international linkages and connections’ can contribute to a resolution of the struggle in the way envisioned by the group. Third, the maintenance of a Facebook page where antagonists and members challenge the identity and position that it seeks to build on the website can also work to distort this identity. Although the disowning of radical postings is already occurring, the reach and interpretations of online messages are unpredictable, and the posts can be used by antagonists to reinforce anti-Moro prejudices and nullify the seriousness of its demands. Fourth, these findings present dilemmas as to the dynamics of participation in the online space. The publicly accessible Facebook page allows the organization to solicit the comments and alternative perspectives of its young members and an external audience, possibly as a space for dialogue which it does not have in its website, but also makes possible the entry of ‘enemies’ who aim to use their online spaces against them. At the same time, the uncontrolled exchanges expose the organization’s competing ideologies, covert operations, internal conflicts and membership of extremist inclinations, which may cast a shadow of doubt over the organization’s capacity to speak for and manage the rest of its community (an aspect which they note is important to their international supporters). These experiences manifest the challenges of venturing into the virtual realm, the difficulties of maintaining control over organizational image, the challenge of finding capable and articulate ideologues, and the importance of both pre-determined and emergent strategies of appropriation.

Conclusion

As the new media are not homogeneous in terms of configurations, users can create multiple, divergent representations across online spaces. The online strategies of the MILF explored in this article show that the internet technology enables the formulation of divergent transcripts which organizations can use to articulate a wide spectrum of conflicting social and political claims as a strategy of negotiating with multiple agencies, including the state, national and international media, grassroots activists, supporters, fellow travellers and funders. We find that MILF – enabled by hybrid features of online media outlets – used multiple transcripts that target diverse audiences and oscillate across multiple, fleeting representations, narratives and articulations. The politics of disguise and concealment that lies between public and hidden transcripts of subordinate groups becomes crucial in understanding online dissent. We have seen that these new strategies of political discourse foregrounding infrapolitics help minority groups to circumvent traditional barriers of political communication and alter the quality of debate between minorities, state and the international community, and challenge national limits and boundaries.