PIKIT, North Cotabato -- Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. –Robert Frost.

In this Muslim-dominated region that has seen four wars since the late 1990s, thousands of homes in isolated villages await the return of their owners. For the moment at least, though fighting has flared up to the north of the region in Lanao Del Norte, the guns of war have fallen silent here.

These are nervous times in the wake of last week’s hostilities in North Cotabato and now too a deteriorating security situation that has followed the estimated killing of up to 50 civilians and soldiers after the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) forces overran a series of towns and villages west of Iligan City on Monday.

The uncertain security situation in North Cotabato has kept a quarter of Pikit’s 90,000 population cramped in 29 evacuation centers scattered across town.

In the village of Baliki in the neighboring town of Midsayap, the only sign of life found on Sunday amid a burnt house – one of 113 counted -- was a cat. Obviously abandoned –else forgotten -- by its owners in their rush to escape the fighting – it followed this writer and three colleagues around the village as if begging for both food and company.

Life in evacuation centers

But while the cat had it hard in Baliki where there seemed precious little to scavenge – evacuees from the village are finding it just as hard where they are.

“Many sleep in the cold pavement using only cartons,” said Mila Grace Nabos, a 33-year old mother of three school-aged children, at the gymnasium of the Pikit Catholic parish where about 250 families are seeking refuge and refuse to go home almost a week after the fighting here stopped.

Nabos came from war-torn Barangay (village) Tapodoc in the neighboring town of Aleosan, which along with Midsayap was hit by serious fighting that saw the Armed Forces of the Philippines employ heavy artillery, helicopters and fighter planes in a bid to force back the MILF insurgents who moved into Cotabato and started burning villages in the wake of the stalled peace deal.

The fighting in both North Cotabato and now Lanao del Norte erupted after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on the scheduled signing of a Memorandum of Agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF that would have delivered the Muslim separatist rebels an enlarged homeland.

Less than two weeks after it was due to be signed in Malaysia on August 5 in the presence of foreign dignitaries including the US Ambassador, the agreement is effectively dead after mounting public criticism and concern over the lack of public consultation.

Critics cite the agreement’s ambiguities and the fact the agreement itself was kept secret until being leaked to the press and published just days before the scheduled signing.

“We’re still terrified to go home,” said Nabos, a few feet from where a baby slept in a hammock while its mother made do with a concrete floor covered by cardboard.

“Aside from continued food assistance, what we really need are sleeping mats, mosquito nets and blankets,” Nabos added, lamenting they were only able to bring two sets of shirts for their children as they hastily left their village with the unexpected entry of MILF forces there.

Humanitarian aid

Aid, in the form of food and non-food items from several national and international groups and non-government organizations, have arrived in the affected towns of North Cotabato including the municipalities of Libungan and Pigkawayan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was one of the first organizations to respond rushing nearly a dozen foreign expatriates and supplies to the area

At the time of writing, the team had distributed food items to at least 6,700 families in the province, according to Juan Fuertes, ICRC head of the sub-delegation to Mindanao.

“It is not just about a person hit by a bullet, but those of deprived of their education because schools have been disrupted by the fighting. Conflict makes people suffer,” Fuertes told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

More than 100,000 individuals have been displaced at the height of the latest armed encounter between government and MILF forces but by August 15, it went down to 59,552 people or 12,415 families, according to the National Disaster Coordinating Council.

Fuertes added that internally displaced persons in evacuation centers now feared the outbreak of disease due to poor sanitation facilities.

“We are building water reservoirs and distributing hygiene kits, aside from mattresses and mosquito nets,” he said.

The World Food Program of the United Nations has meantime so far provided 400 tons of rice for the evacuees. Each family has been given 25 kilograms to last them a month.

No aid for some evacuees

But not all evacuees have received the help or supplies they need.

Alex Mantawil, 29, a father of six from Macabual village in Pikit and staying at the unfinished Buisan warehouse evacuation center in Pikit, confirmed that many refugees have not received sleeping mats, mosquito nets and blankets.

“This despite our names on the list,” he complained, adding that he remained afraid to try and head home because of the security situation.

Outside the Buisan warehouse, a “tent city” has sprung up: chickens, goats, carabaos, cows and horses brought by the evacuees wander and feed off the neighboring grasslands.

Home right now for Samira Abas, 20, a mother of three, is a cart covered by a tarpaulin.

“We bought the tent at the market so the children and our belongings would not get wet when there would be rains. My husband would sleep outside our covered cart because it could not longer accommodate him,” Abas said.

“We are really very pitiful. We really want to go home but we are afraid because the situation is still dangerous,” she said, almost in tears.

In response to the complaints of the evacuees that some did not receive assistance, Yusop Usman, a Pikit social worker at the Buisan evacuation center, maintained that aid workers merely asked for a master list of evacuees from local social welfare officials.

“They run the relief operations themselves,” he said.

There is no immediate sign of the refugee centers closing down or emptying of people and the August 18 fighting North of here that left a reported 40 civilians dead will only heighten concerns that the fighting is far from over.

Before the latest fighting, Senior Inspector Elias Dandan, the local police chief told a local congregation celebrating mass on Sunday that it was “already safe to return home.”

Clad in fatigue uniform, he also apologized to residents for their being affected by “a small conflict that resulted in a massive evacuation.”

And yet like others, Nancy Macagba, from the village of Kolambog, does not want to take any risks regardless of any assurances by Dandan.

“Our four-hectare farm of corn and coconuts is waiting but our village is a hot spot. We are still afraid to go home,” the 39-year old mother said.

“How I wish peace will reign in our midst. We are tired of being displaced,” said Macagba. Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

(The author is a Mindanao journalist and a correspondent for the daily BusinessWorld. He also reports for a string of Mindanao-based news outfits.)