June 7, 2002, The Philippine Star, Camp Ebrahim Sema now "a zone of peace",

June 7, 2002, The Philippine Star, Camp Ebrahim Sema now "a zone of peace",

DATU ODIN SINSUAT, Maguindanao — Peace and sustainable development have started to creep in Camp Ebrahim Sema, a vast enclave here of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), now a "zone of peace" and fast becoming a bustling agricultural spot through the efforts of former rebels and foreign donors. 

The MNLF signed a peace pact with the government on Sept. 2, 1996 and various international entities, including the United Nations, have since been helping promote the assimilation of members of the front and their dependents into the political and economic mainstream. 

The area covered by the camp, more than 5,000 hectares of arable lands with slightly rolling terrain, have equitably been distributed to former MNLF guerrillas, now equipped with basic farming tools and draft animals needed in tilling their farms. 

"Now you can leave your cattle and plow outside of your house without losing them to burglars. People here now leave peacefully and are trying their best to create the community as a model for still hostile areas occupied by armed groups," said MNLF’s secretary-general Muslimin Sema, the incumbent mayor of Cotabato City. Sema’s men, led by Zaide Taup, the camp commander here, have just started reforesting the surroundings of a spring located at a high ground overlooking their farms as part of the effort to transform it into an irrigation facility and as an additional source of drinking water for local residents. 

Among the organizations that came in to help rebuild Camp Ebrahim Sema from the devastations wrought by the MNLF uprising, which started in the early 70s, were the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) the Joint Swiss and Spanish-funded International Labor Organization and different branches of the United Nations. 

Local farmers have produced more than a hundred tons of corn in the last two years alone, according to MNLF sources.