The books

2023Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A study of how vulnerable or resilient the madrasah system is to violent extremism, and where it is heading in the Philippines. It weighs how public policy and the BARMM's regional autonomy can support madrasah development.

2023Free to read

Benedicto R. Bacani, Norma Tillo-Gomez, Ofelia Durante and others

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

An assessment of how the national plan against violent extremism is being carried out in the 5 provinces of the BARMM. It draws on interviews with 50 officials, 10 focus groups with 78 community leaders and a survey of 150 programme beneficiaries.

2023Free to read

Initiatives for International Dialogue

Initiatives for International Dialogue

A research report on land loss and displacement in Marawi City and Maguindanao, based on household-level mapping. It argues that land dispossession is a root cause of conflict in the Bangsamoro that transitional justice must address.

2022Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A follow-up to IAG's 2017 study that tracks how urban Bangsamoro youth's views and attitudes toward violent extremism have changed. It adds the views of young people living in conflict-affected rural areas of the BARMM.

2020In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

University Press of Kentucky

Pershing’s years among the Maranao and in Sulu, as a captain at Lake Lanao and as governor of the Moro Province, and the mix of diplomacy and force he learned there.

2020In print

Carmela Fonbuena

Journalism for Nation Building Foundation

The five-month battle for Marawi in 2017, from the soldiers, hostages, residents, officials and former fighters who lived it, by a defence journalist who covered it day by day.

2020In print

Criselda Yabes

Pawikan Press

The siege of Marawi as the people who fought it and lived through it remember it, by a journalist who has followed the military in Mindanao for thirty years.

2020In print

Rommel C. Banlaoi

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The Islamic State-aligned groups that took Marawi, what became of them afterwards, and the threat they still pose, by a Philippine security analyst.

2020Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

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.

2019In print

Simeon Dumdum Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Poems by a Cebuano poet and retired judge, the title poem among them written on the siege of Marawi.

2019Free to read

Tengku Shahpur

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

What the survivors of the 2017 siege of Marawi told listeners about their losses, life in the evacuation centres and the city they want rebuilt.

2019Free to read

eds. Liezl PG. Bugtay, Nikki Philline C. de la Rosa and Judy T. Gulane

International Alert

The 2019 Conflict Alert report on the fall in violent incidents in Muslim Mindanao after the Marawi war, even as extremist violence continued. Its title borrows Charles Tilly's line that war makes states, as the BARMM was being set up.

2019Free to read

Jeremy Simons and Radzini Oledan

Initiatives for International Dialogue

A research study and resource guide from IID's Bangsamoro Transformative Justice Initiatives project, 2017 to 2019. It explains transitional justice, dealing with the past and reconciliation, and records community stories of survival and truth-telling.

2018Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

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.

2017Free to read

Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict

Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict

A report, written while the siege was on, on who the Marawi fighters were, how Indonesians and Malaysians joined them, and what it meant for the region. Free to read.

2017Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A survey-based study, done with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, of how vulnerable young people in the ARMM are to violent extremism. It aims to give government agencies and communities an early picture to shape their response.

2017Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

The 2017 Conflict Alert report on the causes, costs and trends of violent conflict in Muslim Mindanao from 2011 to 2016. It shows illegal guns, the drug trade and pro-ISIS extremist groups such as the Maute Group becoming major drivers of violence.

2016Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

The stories of almost 300 Bangsamoro men and women, from Maguindanao, the Lanao provinces, the Zamboanga peninsula, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, of decades of conflict and their hopes after the 2014 peace agreement.

2016Free to read

Conciliation Resources

Conciliation Resources

First-person stories of Moro and Teduray women: fighters, wives of combatants, women caught between armies, and peace advocates. It was made jointly by 3 Bangsamoro women's organisations and Conciliation Resources.

2015Free to read

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Interviews with 10 of the 145 MILF fighters who handed in their weapons at the first decommissioning, in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, in June 2015, on the lives they hoped to build.

2014In print

Francisco J. Lara Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Why the conflict keeps returning: the clans, the rebel fronts and the state as rival sources of authority in Muslim Mindanao, and the shadow economy that sustains all three.

2014Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

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.

2014Out of print

ed. Venus Betita

forumZFD

The first collection on transitional justice in the Bangsamoro, launched in Davao City in July 2014. It explains the concept, draws lessons from other countries, and looks at truth, justice, reparation and reconciliation in Central Mindanao.

2013Free to read

eds. Francisco J. Lara Jr. and Steven Schoofs

International Alert

The shadow economies of Mindanao, from guns and drugs to the informal credit and trade that ordinary people live by, and how they feed and are fed by the conflict. Free to read.

2013Free to read

Abubakar Datumanong, Parido Rahman Pigkaulan, Maguid Makalingkang and others

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Four ways Moro communities settle disputes and feuds by custom, set out by researchers from those communities, with the case for building them into the formal justice system.

2013Free to read

Fermin Adriano and Thomas Parks

The Asia Foundation

The Mindanao case study of a multi-country Asia Foundation research project on aid in long-running subnational conflicts. Using field research and a perception survey by Social Weather Stations, it asks whether development aid in conflict areas of Mindanao has helped or hurt peace.

2011In print

James R. Arnold

Bloomsbury Publishing

The American campaigns against the Moros under Wood, Bliss and Pershing, from Bud Dajo to Bud Bagsak, as a military history for the general reader.

2011In print

Lino Miani

ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute

The trade in guns across the Sulu and Celebes seas, who sells, who buys and what the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia have done about it.

2011In print

Criselda Yabes

Anvil Publishing

Years on the road with the army in Mindanao and Sulu, and the soldiers who found themselves building schools as often as fighting.

2011Out of print

Mary Fe B. Arquiza

Mindanao Migrants Center for Empowering Actions

A study of how displacement by armed conflict leaves people in Mindanao's evacuation camps open to human trafficking. It documents a problem long suspected but little studied.

2010Free to read

Soliman M. Santos Jr. and Paz Verdades M. Santos

Small Arms Survey

Profiles of 14 armed groups in the Philippines, the communist and Moro fronts, the Abu Sayyaf and the clan militias among them, with what is known of their arms and their effect on the people around them. Free to read.

2010In print

Criselda Yabes

University of the Philippines Press

A novel of Sulu in the 1970s, of a Tausug family and the war that came to Jolo. It was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and won the UP Centennial Literary Prize.

2009Out of print

eds. Arndt Graf, Peter Kreuzer and Rainer Werning

Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia

Essays from a Penang conference on the Mindanao conflict after the collapse of the 2008 ancestral domain agreement.

2009Out of print

Shamsuddin L. Taya

Penerbit Universiti Utara Malaysia

How the MILF fought and negotiated, read as strategy, by a Malaysian political scientist.

2008In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

Ateneo de Manila University Press

A hundred years in the Bukidnon–Lanao borderlands, where Maranao, Lumad, settlers and the state met and sometimes made terms.

2008Out of print

Pressia Arifin-Cabo, Joel Dizon and Khomenie Mantawel

Kadtuntaya Foundation

A photo-documentary, with photographs by Bobby Timonera, in which key actors in the Mindanao conflict each describe their vision of peace. It also shows everyday rural life in North Cotabato and Maguindanao during an uneasy ceasefire, in English and Maguindanaon.

2007In print

Robert A. Fulton

Tumalo Creek Press

The first years of the American occupation of the Moro country, from Bates’s treaty with the Sultan of Sulu to Bud Dajo, told campaign by campaign from the army’s records.

2007Free to read

ed. Wilfredo Magno Torres III

The Asia Foundation

The first systematic study of rido, the clan feuds that take more lives in Muslim Mindanao than the rebellion, with case studies from Lanao, Maguindanao, Sulu and Basilan and the ways communities settle them. Expanded edition from Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2014; the original is free to read.

2007Out of print

eds. Peter Kreuzer and Rainer Werning

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

Essays by people inside the conflict and those who study it, Moro scholars, MILF writers and foreign observers among them, gathered by two German researchers.

2006Free to read

Malcolm Cook and Kit Collier

Lowy Institute

A Lowy Institute Paper on the prospects for peace in Mindanao and the threats to the GRP–MILF peace process. Written as foreign terrorists were using Mindanao as a haven, it argues that backing the peace process is a gamble worth taking.

2005Free to read

Peter Kreuzer

Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

How the clans of Muslim Mindanao hold power through violence, and why the state lets them, in a report from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Free to read.

2005Out of print

eds. Kamarulzaman Askandar and Ayesah Abubakar

Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network

Papers from the Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network on the roots of the conflict and the peace process to 2005.

2005Free to read

Human Development Network

Human Development Network

The 2005 national human development report, devoted to the costs of armed conflict in the Philippines, including the Moro conflict and the communist insurgency. It treats human security as a precondition of human development and examines prejudice against Muslims as a driver of conflict.

2004Free to read

Eric U. Gutierrez and Saturnino M. Borras Jr.

East-West Center

The argument that land, not religion, is at the root of the Moro conflict: how colonial and Philippine land policy dispossessed the Moros and why the peace deals have not touched it. Free to read.

2004Out of print

Eddie Ll. Quitoriano and Theofeliz Marie P. Francisco

Save the Children UK, Philippines Programme

Accounts from displaced children of Pikit and Carmen in Cotabato and Pagalungan in Maguindanao who lived through the 2000 and 2003 wars between the army and the MILF. It looks at how they coped and what in their families and communities helped them.

2003Free to read

International Alert

International Alert

A discussion paper on the economic roots of the Mindanao conflict and what business and donors could do about them. Free to read.

2003Out of print

Patricio P. Diaz

MindaNews

A veteran Cotabato journalist’s columns on the conflict and the peace talks, collected: forty years of watching from close up.

2003In print

Gracia Burnham

Tyndale House Publishers

A year as a hostage of the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Basilan, by the American missionary whose husband was killed in the rescue that freed her.

2003Out of print

Roberto C. Layson

Initiatives for International Dialogue

Reflections by the Oblate parish priest of Pikit, Cotabato, a town repeatedly caught in fighting between the army and the MILF. Drawing on what war did to Muslim and Christian villagers there, it argues that war itself is the enemy.

2002Out of print

Karl M. Gaspar, Elpidio A. Lapad and Ailynne J. Maravillas

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

A reader for peace workers on Mindanao's history, ethnic relations and Muslim–Christian relations. It was written for Mindanao peace advocates and co-published with Catholic Relief Services.

2000Out of print

Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria

Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs

Two journalists’ investigation of the MILF, the MNLF, the Abu Sayyaf and the Mindanao war at the turn of the century, from the camps and the back channels. The book most reporters on the region started with.

2000Out of print

eds. Eric U. Gutierrez, Kristina Gaerlan and Mara Stankovitch

Institute for Popular Democracy

A reader on the war in the South at the end of the 1990s: the rebel fronts, the clan armies and the religious leaders, with primary documents and the authors’ reporting.

2000Out of print

Hilario M. Gomez Jr.

Silsilah Dialogue Movement

The conflict read as a problem of relations between Christians and Muslims, from the Silsilah Dialogue Movement in Zamboanga.

1998Free to read

Thomas M. McKenna

University of California Press

An anthropologist’s account, from years in Cotabato City, of how ordinary Maguindanaons lived the rebellion, the datus and the state, and why the separatist story and the everyday one do not match. Free to read in the University of California Press e-books collection.

1997Self-published

Ernesto M. Espaldon

Published by the author

The Tausug guerrillas who fought the Japanese in Sulu, told by a physician who was the youngest commander in the Sulu Area Command in 1945.

1996Out of print

Arnold Molina Azurin

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

A Filipino anthropologist’s essays against the romance of rebellion, on the South and on war zones elsewhere.

1996Out of print

Antonio R. Enriquez

Giraffe Books

Stories of Mindanao’s wars and the people who live through them, by the Zamboanga novelist.

1994Out of print

Macapado A. Muslim

Mindanao State University

A Maranao political scientist’s case, made in the early 1990s, that autonomy won by politics could answer what the armed struggle had not.

1993Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

How the Moro cause reached the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Muslim world, and what the attention did to the movement at home. Revised 1995.

1990Out of print

W. K. Che Man

Oxford University Press

The Moro and Patani Malay movements side by side: their histories, their organisations and what each state did about them, in the first full comparison of the two.

1985Out of print

Cesar Adib Majul

Mizan Press

Majul’s short account of the Moro struggle of the 1970s and the rise of the Moro National Liberation Front, written for readers abroad.

1980Out of print

T. J. S. George

Oxford University Press

A journalist’s account of the Moro revolt of the 1970s, the MNLF and the Marcos government’s war, written as it happened.

1977Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

Filipinas Foundation

The Moro revolts from the American conquest to the eve of martial law, by the historian who would lead the National Historical Institute.