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War and conflict · report
Conflict Alert 2018
Published free: the link opens the whole book.
The 2018 Conflict Alert report, written after the 2017 Marawi siege, on the threat of violent extremism in the Bangsamoro. It looks at what that threat means for the peace process and the region's future development.
Conflict Alert is International Alert Philippines' system for tracking violent conflict in Muslim Mindanao, begun in 2013 as the Bangsamoro Conflict Monitoring System. This edition covers 2017, the year of the Marawi siege and martial law. Its data comes from police records gathered by researchers at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City, Western Mindanao State University and MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology, checked by local validation groups in each area.
The report looks at how often conflict occurred, its human cost and its causes, then turns to violent extremism, the shadow economy of drugs, guns and gambling, violence against women and children, and urban conflict. It found that 2017 had fewer violent incidents than 2016 but far more deaths. Rebellion by the MNLF, MILF and communist rebels nearly disappeared, while extremist violence, clashes over religious identity and urban violence rose.
The report weighs 2 explanations for Marawi: that it marked a new kind of extremism, or that many fighters came from older secessionist struggles and switched allegiance to ISIS.
Cover from the publisher’s PDF, shown to identify the book; its rights stay with the publisher.
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The first report from the Bangsamoro Conflict Monitoring System, built with police data and university partners. It maps violent incidents in the ARMM from 2011 to 2013 and links them to rebellion, clan feuds, politics and illicit economies.

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The 2020 Conflict Alert report, analysing conflict data and trends in the Bangsamoro from 2011 to 2019. It tracks how long-running clan, political, criminal and extremist violence continued into the first year of the BARMM.