FILIPINO MUSLIMS IN THE VILLAGE OF BANUCAGON, who recently inaugurated a new mosque, hope to be included in an expanded self-governing homeland for Muslims on the main southern island of Mindanao. Christian villagers, on the other hand, fear their land may become part of the new self-governing Islamist homeland. -- PHOTO: S�BASTIEN FARCIS FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

'People won't move out, this is our land,' she said over the loud clicking of cicadas. 'Maybe we will become the rebels.'

Along with the other Christian villagers in North Manuangan, she became afraid when she heard that the government in Manila and Muslim rebels over the hill had reached an agreement on an expanded Islamist homeland.

Her forebears settled in this lush corner of the southern Philippines several decades ago. 'We have been very worried about that, we don't want their governance.' Touching my arm, she added: 'Please don't write my name.'

Just behind a clump of hillocks a few kilometres from the village is the main camp of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Milf), the country's largest Muslim rebel group.

Its armed struggle is off boil and peace talks are being pursued to end a long-running separatist insurgency which has cost over 120,000 lives and ruined much of the economy on the main southern island of Mindanao.

Earlier this month, the government and rebels agreed on the Muslim-majority communities lying outside an existing so-called Autonomous Region for Muslims in Mindanao, or Armm, to be included in a new self-governing homeland. It has been a contentious process for both sides.

Just over the autonomous region in North Cotabato, which has some of the country's most fertile farm land, are both Muslim and Christian communities, as well as mixed ones.

Christians, as well as indigenous tribal people called Lumads, will inevitably find themselves in the new Muslim homeland. And though they usually live in peace with their Muslim neighbours, many fear losing their land and political rights.

A pragmatic Moro Islamic Liberation Front leadership has promised this will not happen. But rumours about the peace process and village-pump politics are creating a climate of uncertainty.

In the bucolic jungle village of North Manuangan, people worry that its proximity to the autonomous region's border - not to mention the Front - means it will be included in the expanded homeland.

The list of communities is expected to be released when formal talks on a peace accord start in the new year.

The homeland's rickety foundation is a worry. Its core is the 1990-created autonomous region - a byword for Filipinos of all faiths for rampant corruption, poor governance and financial mismanagement.

Public workers here complain their salaries are not paid on time, and sometimes delayed for months. Most of the region's six provinces are among the country's poorest.

Outside a newly built mosque in the village of Banucagon, just a few kilometres inside North Cotabato, community leader Mascod Manaba, 54, told me the village strongly opposes becoming part of a failing autonomous region. But like many Muslims eager to see the creation of a more autonomous Islamist homeland, he was optimistic new leaders could put the autonomous region's house in order.

That will be a hard sell for others. Gerry, a 34-year-old Christian teacher living in North Manuangan and working in a Muslim secondary school in the autonomous region, complained: 'My salary has been delayed again; I haven't been paid for two months.

'We don't want Muslims ruling Christians and dictating the economy.' He requested that his surname not be used.

In fact, Muslims have long been a minority in Mindanao, where they make up less than a fifth of the population.

Under government settlement programmes, Christians from the north migrated here in large numbers from the 1930s, shouldering out Muslims from land they call their 'ancestral domain'.

Some anxious Christians now worry they may lose their land if it becomes part of the so-called Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), as the new homeland is cumbersomely called. The Front insists this will not happen.

'Non-Muslims will be treated equally and have the same political rights as Muslims in the BJE,' its vice-chairman for political affairs Ghadzali Jaafar told The Sunday Times in an interview at the Front's Camp Darapanan headquarters last week.

He stressed: 'There is not an iota of intention to suppress the rights of these people.'

The message is not getting through - and part of the reason seems to be that there is little knowledge about the peace process among ordinary folk.

In the majority Christian village of Salunayan in North Cotabato, rumours - completely false ones, as I later verified - were swirling that it was to become part of a new municipality of nearby Muslim communities.

Some of the villagers claim to be the descendents of 37 families, Illocanos from the north, who came here in 1919 as Salunayan's first settlers.

'We think we may become part of the expanded territory; if that happens, there will be chaos,' said farmer Ranulto Pascual, a Christian. He refused to elaborate. Another villager said: 'We don't want to say what kind of problem there will be, but I think you understand.'

It wasn't hard to guess. The region is awash with illegal firearms - and a readiness to use them to settle differences.

In the early 1970s, Christian vigilantes called Illagas went on a rampage of murder and arson in Muslim villages. Muslim thugs called Blackshirts and Barracudas retaliated against Christians.

The separatist insurgency was in part born out of those horrors. But in close to 40 years of struggle, which saw the bloodiest fighting in the Philippines since World Warn II, sectarian violence never flared again.

When trouble breaks out, land disputes between families and clans, not religious differences, are the cause.

Ask Christians in the south if they get on with their Muslim neighbours and the answer is practically always yes.

Even so, the legacy of the insurgency and attacks by Islamist extremists since the mid-1990s, coupled with violent clan feuds and crime, kindle fear, suspicion and inevitably perpetuate negative stereotypes about Muslims.

'The church and the government are not doing enough to correct this negative image; they should be doing more,' said Prof Abhoud Syed Lingga, director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies.

The Front's Mr Jaafar is optimistic that with greater autonomy - and the ability to raise taxes and exploit the region's abundant natural resources - the BJE will become a going concern. 'We want to see to it that the present shortcomings are avoided.'

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