A timely evaluation whether the MILF Group in the Philippines remains to be a political party or a terrorist group.
"Davao City airport is bombed!" These were the very words of my mother. No way! After hearing this news, I started to become panicky. Who would not be when my relatives and friends are in Davao City? Before coming over to Japan, I was very confident that they were all living in a safe haven. I have reasons for believing so. After all, there is Davao's tough Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. At the same time, the MILF group promised to exclude Davao from their aggression.

But the bombing incident at the Davao International Airport on March 4, killing 19 civilians (including an American missionary) and wounding 144 others, resurrected in me the fears that Davao is once again shaken. Decades ago, I personally experienced how to live in the middle of atrocity, reminiscing the dark days of the Communist Party of Philippines-New Peoples' Army (CPP-NPA) insurgents in Mindanao. Just imagine to be wakened up by the sounds of the guns in the middle of your sleep. Sometimes, Communist insurgents would barge inside your house asking for shelter and food. With all of these things coming back to my memories, I could not help but become very anxious. Years before the bombing, while Davao's neighboring areas and provinces suffered from the atrocities brought about by the presence of the Abu Sayyaf bandit and secessionist groups in Mindanao, it had been spared.

I could not help but ask, how come the Philippines recognized the MILF as a political group, when the latter was presumed violent attacks to both military and civilians in the country? With this, I started to become curious about the founding principle, origin and cause of the MILF group as a political party? I was intrigued whether theories and accounts of political party violence could ever justify their cause? To sum it up, what is the MILF actually?

While I was trying to pool my sources to check the origins, objectives and means of the MILF, I was beginning to question, how come the Philippine government considers the group to be a political party of the country. Is the government only trying to apply diplomatic tactic on the group towards some peace negotiation by initially acknowledging it as a political party operating in the Philippines, as it did to the MNLF? Or, is it plainly because the Philippine government has no clear-cut definitions as to the real meaning of a political party operating in the Philippines?

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front started as a factional group after Hashim Salamat, its founding chairman, denounced the ways its mother group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) made a bargain to create an Autonomous Region for Moslem Mindanao (ARMM) in 1996. More so, when Nur Misuari, his contemporary official in the MNLF, became the governor of the region, Salamat started to create his own party, the MILF. Under the MILF, the call for the "Islamic State in Mindanao" was resurrected. Salamat outlined the group