October 25, 2007:
MILF and government negotiators have overcome some basic disagreements
and resumed peace talks. The hang up was over how much southern territory,
which now contains a lot of Christian inhabitants, would be considered part of
the new "Moslem territory" for the three million Moslems in the
south. Christians have been migrating to the Moslem south for decades, and have
changed the ethnic and religious make up of once purely Moslem districts. But
there's another factor that is slowing down a peace deal with the Islamic
separatists; clan feuds. The clans have long provided more government than the
government. The clans back up their authority with armed militias. These gunmen
have also provided recruits for separatist movements like the MILF, and
terrorist groups like Abu Sayyaf. It's
estimated that, in the last 80 years, there have been over 1,200 clan feuds.
Most have been more smoke than fire, with only about 5,000 people killed in all
that time. But the violence shuts down traffic and commerce, and off causes
hundreds, or thousands, of people to flee their homes. Disarming the clans is
going to be more difficult than negotiating peace deals with outfits like the
MILF.
October 19, 2007: A large explosion hit a shopping
mall near the capital. Eleven were killed and over a hundred injured. At first
it was believed to be a gas explosion, but then investigators thought they had
found chemical evidence of a bomb. Eventually, it was determined to be a gas
explosion. The physical profile of a gas explosion is much different than that
of a bomb (which uses much faster moving, or "high", explosives.) American and Australian
investigators joined the investigation, and agreed that it looked like a gas
leak and explosion in the basement of the mall. The mall owner is fighting this
finding, because if it is a gas explosion, and not a terrorist bomb, the mall
owner is subject to lawsuits from the victims.
