Marawi, Philippines – Maisara Dandamun-Latiph’s workplace is positioned on a hill overlooking the ruins of Marawi, the southern Philippine metropolis that was destroyed throughout a five-month battle with hardline fighters linked to the ISIL (ISIS) group in 2017.
Dandamun-Latiph was appointed chairperson of the Marawi Compensation Board in 2023, after years of guarantees to rebuild the town got here to nothing.
Now, Marawi residents are lastly beginning to obtain funds, in a compensation course of that should additionally deal with frayed and fragile belief.
“We wish folks to assist us,” Dandamun-Latiph instructed Al Jazeera. “Folks deserve nothing lower than an excellent service after what has occurred.”
Marawi was fully destroyed after Maute and Abu Sayyaf teams launched an assault in 2017, holding the town for a five-month siege earlier than the Philippine army recaptured it.
Of the greater than 1.1 million individuals who lived there, most haven’t returned.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration spent greater than $200 million to rebuild Marawi, however as a substitute of spending it on new housing, the cash went largely to public infrastructure initiatives, corresponding to a brand new lakeside stadium and conference middle, which now stand alone within the ruins.
“It’s regular that [residents] “We must always not belief the federal government a lot, particularly with what occurred,” Dandaman-Latiph mentioned.
The Marawi Compensation Board was created by an act of Congress in 2022 to deal with claims for wrongful demise and harm or destruction of property. Final yr, President Ferdinand Marcos appointed Dandaman-Latiph, a revered lawyer and civic chief, as its chairperson.
The junta has acquired 14,495 functions up to now and permitted 596, totalling $16.8 million for destroyed buildings and civilian deaths. Some 87 civilians have been killed within the siege, and Amnesty Worldwide has accused IS-affiliated fighters and the Philippine army of human rights violations.
All claims are processed in batches within the order they’re acquired, mentioned Dandaman-Latiph, who harassed the necessity for equity in each figuring out compensation and staffing the workplace.
“It must be primarily based on benefit,” he mentioned. “In any other case, this workplace will fail.”
A hopeful course of
Dandamun-Latiph’s workplace is filled with candidates each day, a lot of whom she is aware of by title. As she walks down the corridor to her workplace, she chats with an older girl, then turns and bends right down to greet a younger boy.
“Everybody right here is aware of one another,” he mentioned.
Faisah Dima-Ampao, a Marawi native, had simply returned to the town in 2017 after working in Saudi Arabia for 36 years.
When the combating started, her mom didn’t depart, considering – like many on the time – that it could solely final a number of days. Her mom was by no means discovered and the household dwelling was fully destroyed.
After the siege, Dima-Ampao’s household acquired about $1,400 from a authorities process drive, together with baggage of rice, rooster and meals that “was solely sufficient for a month for a small household,” she mentioned.
Dima-Ampao compares her scenario unfavorably to that of survivors of the battle in Syria and Lebanon, the place she says governments rebuilt properties inside a yr or two. “However in Marawi, it didn’t occur,” she says. “They didn’t give us something.”
Now, she feels considerably vindicated by the compensation course of, which she says has been easy. She has acquired $6,100 in compensation for her mom’s demise and is ready for her household’s declare for the misplaced property to be processed.
The compensation board has taken a data-driven strategy, plotting broken and destroyed properties on a 3D map and evaluating them to claims.
It additionally permits residents to show possession of the property by means of different means, corresponding to inviting witnesses, if their paperwork have been misplaced through the siege.
“They only carried them, their households and their garments on their backs,” Dandaman-Latiph mentioned. “We don’t need to overburden them.”
‘A lifeless metropolis’
However at the same time as residents start to obtain compensation, the funds is not going to rebuild Marawi Metropolis, which stays largely in ruins.
Marawi’s outdated business centre lies empty. Weeds and wild flowers have invaded vacant tons and made their means into the ruins of buildings.
Close to the town’s largest mosque, which was rapidly rebuilt after the siege, a household was rebuilding their dwelling. Three blocks away, a person was promoting dodol, a glutinous rice cake, at a avenue stall.
However the outlets and eating places that when made Marawi a preferred spot as a shopping mall and culinary vacation spot haven’t returned, giving residents little incentive to return.
The newly constructed stadium and conference middle sit on the shores of Lake Lanao, the jewels of the Duterte administration’s reconstruction undertaking. But they’ve not often been used and have turn into the goal of those that want the cash had gone to housing and job creation.
“Do you assume that’s the precedence of people that wouldn’t have the technique of livelihood to play tennis, run, jog, do athletics or play soccer? What they want is to have a way of livelihood,” mentioned Acram Latiph, a professor at Mindanao State College.
“Quite a lot of assets have been wasted,” he mentioned. “All they did was extend folks’s agony.”
Final December, a bomb assault throughout a Catholic mass at Mindanao State College was a reminder of the threats that persist within the area.
4 folks have been killed and at the least 50 injured in an assault claimed by IS.
“It’s not a query of if it should occur, however when,” Latiph mentioned. “They’re like cockroaches.”
Nonetheless, many residents blame authorities for what occurred in Marawi and query whether or not the siege needed to occur within the first place.
“They mentioned let’s sacrifice Marawi and compensate the folks later,” he mentioned. “It was a troublesome choice.”
Latiph is hopeful the compensation board will present residents with long-awaited reduction, however is skeptical whether or not Marawi will ever be rebuilt.
“It’s a lifeless metropolis already,” he mentioned. “I don’t count on the town to return to what it was earlier than.”
