Chinese cash, American muscle, and Marawi’s discontents

Outsiders jostle for space in war-ravaged Philippine city while its own languish on the margins waiting for the government to rebuild it anew

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A Marawi resident stands on top of piles of rubble, the remains of her house, as she tries to salvage personal items. The city was destroyed by months of conflict between Islamic militants and the Philippine armed forces. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:30am, 26 May 2018Updated: 5:13pm, 26 May 2018

Faisal’s life has ground to a halt. Looking out forlornly to a lush paddy field, this “tricycle” – as the sidecar is called in the Philippine hinterland, where it’s the main mode of public transport – is waiting out its exile on the edge of a refugee camp. Now a heap of rusting metal and wood with a garnishing of creeping foliage, there’s no sign of the motorcycle that once drove it. Only the windscreen, washed by the frequent Mindanao showers, remains unconquered. Emblazoned with FAISAL in blue, it shimmers in the midday sun.

Ali Bashar Usman named his tricycle after his eldest son, who in turn is named after a late Saudi king. Usman fled Marawi with his wife and six children in it when war broke out in the Philippines’ only “Islamic city” in May last year between government forces and a group of youths who lay siege to the city and pledged their allegiance to Islamic State (IS). The government immediately declared martial law in the entire southern island of Mindanao of 22 million people, where Marawi is the capital of the Lanao del Sur province. The battle raged for five months. In October, President Rodrigo Duterte announced the main rebel leaders had been killed and Marawi “liberated”.

Faida Mamayandig and the Usmans’ tricycle. Photos: Debasish Roy Chowdhury

But that means little to the Usmans, trapped in an evacuation camp with little prospect of making it back to their home as they knew it, in a city laid to waste. A year after the conflict erupted, the family is among the 237,000 people – or 67 per cent of the city’s population of 353,000 – who remain displaced. Those who managed to salvage sufficient resources before fleeing found places to rent elsewhere. Others moved in with relatives or friends in nearby towns and villages. But for the likes of Usman, a tricycle driver with neither the resources nor resourceful acquaintances, a yellow tarpaulin tent it is, with no electricity and limited water, on the outskirts of the nearby city of Iligan.

I don’t get to meet Usman the couple of times I visit the encampment, one of the many scattered around Marawi. “He’s working as a carpenter, trying to save up and fix the tricycle. It’s all we have left,” says his wife Faida Mamayandig at the camp’s community area, which is slowly coming to life in what would otherwise be a dull afternoon. The inhabitants are gathering around as the military is about to start a “psychosocial intervention” session to help ease their trauma.

It’s a unique project, with seven female soldiers in hijab armed with two stereo speakers engaging with the camp’s children in an hour-long song and dance session. They perform musical renditions of Islamic prayers, children’s poems and even YouTube star Sophia Grace’s Girl in the mirror, with periodic exhortations of “sempre peace!”

“We are trying to show them that we are one of them, not enemies, as they have been taught by IS. They used to live in an environment of violence, fear and hatred. Now they want to draw, study and go to college. They now trust the military,” says Second Lieutenant Angel Manglapus, leader of this most extraordinary girl band.