Over 120,000 People Remain Displaced 3 Years After Philippines’ Marawi Battle

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Zaqqir Ali Pacasum, 13, and Nawaz K. Lucman, 28 — Mustapha Alauya L. Pacasum’s son and cousin, respectively — stand outside their destroyed ancestral home in Marawi City earlier this year.

Mustapha Alauya L. Pacasum

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Mustapha Alauya L. Pacasum

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A general view shows destroyed buildings in Marawi on the southern island of Mindanao last year.

Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

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Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

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Pacasum donated land to the government, which built 109 structures with red tin roofs to house displaced people.

Mustapha Alauya L. Pacasum

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Mustapha Alauya L. Pacasum

Source: Philippine Statistics Authority: 2015 Census of Population; Humanitarian Data Exchange

Credit: Nick Underwood and Alyson Hurt/NPR

Marawi is a cultural hub in the predominantly Muslim south of the Philippines, which is over 92% Christian overall. In 2017, hundreds of militants swearing allegiance to ISIS launched a surprise takeover of the city. Philippine security forces fought back, waging ground and air assaults, with military support from the United States, Australia and China, in what became the country’s largest battle since World War II.

President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law on the island of Mindanao, and did not lift it until December 2019 — more than a year after he declared Marawi «liberated.»

Estimates vary as to how many people are still displaced across Lanao del Sur province, where Marawi is the capital, and the surrounding areas. Last month, the government said nearly 37,500 families remained displaced by the fighting, while the United Nations refugee agency counted a little over 25,300 families — almost 127,000 individuals.

Many displacement camps lack basic necessities such as water, electricity and sanitation, says Dahlia Simangan, an assistant professor at the University of Hiroshima who studies peace rebuilding. She visited Marawi last year.

The pandemic has made life even more difficult. The strict coronavirus lockdown in the province, suspended public transportation, imposed a curfew and only allows certain people to leave the home for essentials and work, making it difficult especially for displaced people to find employment, she says. While the Philippines has recorded more than 360,000 confirmed coronavirus cases overall — the second-highest in Southeast Asia — northern Mindanao has only registered 4,876.

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Displaced Marawi residents huddle under shade inside a makeshift tent shelter area in 2018.

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He says steps such as clearing the unexploded ordnance and getting permission from landowners to demolish unsafe properties had to be completed before reconstruction could begin. He also notes that the pandemic is slowing down progress.

«Right now we’re focused on the infrastructure projects inside the most affected area,» he says, which includes buildings such as school houses, barangay (neighborhood) halls, police stations, fire houses as well as roads and water and electrical systems. Meanwhile, more than 120 permanent houses of the 3,055 the task force plans to build are also under construction. And Castro says the task force has already identified many of the displaced who will receive one of these homes.

Castro says that while the task force «would have wanted to build faster,» it is «still hoping that we make it on target of 2021 — if not, maybe a little over 2022, maybe first quarter of 2022.»

Outside observers say funding and coordination problems, land disputes and issues with contracts are other reasons the construction is taking so long.

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Soldiers on a military truck drive past destroyed buildings in Marawi last year.

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The Philippines’ Marawi City Remains Wrecked Nearly 2 Years After ISIS War

But the government is «running against time,» Jose Antonio Custodio, a Philippines-based military historian and defense analyst, says. People who feel marginalized following violence may be quick to embrace alternative forms of authority, which Custodio says will lead to the resiliency of terrorist and extremist groups. There are fears Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group, two ISIS-connected militant groups involved in the siege, could be regrouping.

Containing and ultimately defeating Islamist insurgents in the Philippines is not just important domestically, Custodio says, but to also «prevent the Philippines from being a staging ground for Islamic militancy to other adjacent countries in the majority Muslim countries in Southeast Asia.»

The history of terrorist plots hatched in the Philippines is a concern to the United States, too, he notes. U.S. special forces have been engaged in the southern part of the country since the early 2000s.

So, making sure rehabilitation of Marawi is done correctly is important to all Filipinos because «it’s not just the battle of Marawi,» says Simangan. «It’s also about the whole peace process of the southern Philippines.»

• The Philippines
• Marawi