Marawi, Philippines – Maisara Dandamun-Latiph’s workplace sits 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 named 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 starting to obtain payouts, in a compensation course of that additionally should navigate a frayed and fragile belief.
“We wish the individuals to be on board with us,” Dandamun-Latiph advised Al Jazeera. “The individuals deserve nothing lower than superb service after what has occurred.”
Marawi was utterly destroyed after the Maute and Abu Sayyaf teams launched an assault in 2017, holding on to the town throughout a five-month siege earlier than the Philippine navy recaptured it.
Of the greater than 1.1 million individuals who as soon as lived there, most haven’t returned.
The administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte launched greater than $200m in funding to rebuild Marawi. However slightly than new properties, the cash went principally to public infrastructure tasks, resembling a brand new lakeside stadium and conference centre, which now stand alone amid the ruins.
“It’s regular for [residents] to not be so trustful of presidency, particularly with what occurred,” Dandaman-Latiph mentioned.
The Marawi Compensation Board was created by an act of congress in 2022 to deal with claims of wrongful demise and broken or destroyed property. Final 12 months, President Ferdinand Marcos appointed Dandaman-Latiph, a revered lawyer and civic chief, as its chairperson.
The board has obtained 14,495 claims thus far and has permitted 596, totalling about $16.8m for destroyed constructions and civilian deaths. Some 87 civilians died within the siege, with Amnesty Worldwide accusing ISIL-affiliated fighters and the Philippine navy of human rights violations.
All claims are processed in batches within the order they’re obtained, mentioned Dandaman-Latiph, who harassed the necessity for equity in each figuring out compensation and hiring employees for the workplace.
“It needs to be primarily based on advantage,” she mentioned. “In any other case, this workplace will fail.”
A hopeful course of
Dandamun-Latiph’s workplace is stuffed with claimants on any given day, a lot of whom she is aware of by title. As she walks alongside the hall to her workplace, she chats with an aged lady, then spins round and crouches right down to greet a toddler.
“Right here, everyone is aware of everyone,” she 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 evacuate, believing – as many did on the time – that it could final just for a couple of days. Her mom has by no means been discovered, and the household house was utterly destroyed.
After the siege, Dima-Ampao’s household obtained about $1,400 from a authorities activity drive, together with sacks of rice, hen and groceries that had been “solely sufficient for one month for a small household”, she mentioned.
Dima-Ampao compares her state of affairs unfavourably to survivors of battle in Syria and Lebanon, the place she says governments rebuilt housing inside one or two years. “However in Marawi, it didn’t occur,” she mentioned. “They didn’t give us something.”
Now, she feels considerably vindicated by the compensation course of, which she says has been easy. She has obtained $6,100 in compensation for the demise of her mom and is ready for her household’s misplaced property declare to be processed.
The compensation board has embraced a data-driven method, plotting broken and destroyed properties on a 3D map and matching them towards claims.
It additionally permits residents to show property possession through different means, like inviting witnesses, if their paperwork had been misplaced within the siege.
“They only carried them, their households and their garments on their again,” Dandaman-Latiph mentioned. “We don’t need to overburden them.”
‘A useless metropolis’
However at the same time as residents start to obtain compensation, the payouts is not going to rebuild the town of Marawi, which stays largely in ruins.
Marawi’s former business centre stands vacant. Weeds and wildflowers have taken over vacant tons and wound their means across the husks of the buildings.
Close to the town’s largest mosque, which was shortly rebuilt after the siege, one household was rebuilding its home. Three blocks away, a person was promoting dodol, a glutinous rice cake, from a road cart.
However the shops and eating places that when made Marawi common as a buying and selling submit and culinary vacation spot haven’t returned, giving residents little incentive to return again.
The newly constructed stadium and conference centre stand on the shore of Lanao Lake – the jewels of the Duterte administration’s rebuilding challenge. Nevertheless, they’ve not often been used, they usually’ve turn into targets for these wishing the cash had gone to housing and job creation.
“You assume that’s the precedence of the individuals who don’t have any livelihood to play tennis or run or jog or do observe and subject or play soccer? What they want is to have a livelihood,” mentioned Acram Latiph, a professor at Mindanao State College.
“There have been a whole lot of assets wasted,” he mentioned. “All they did was delay the agony of the individuals.”
Final December, a bombing assault throughout a Catholic mass at Mindanao State College was a reminder of the threats that stay within the area.
4 individuals had been killed and not less than 50 injured in an assault that was claimed by ISIL.
“It’s not a query of whether or not it’s going to occur. It’s a query of when,” Latiph mentioned. “They’re like cockroaches.”
Nonetheless, many residents blame the authorities for what occurred to Marawi and query whether or not the siege needed to occur within the first place.
“They mentioned let’s simply sacrifice Marawi and compensate the individuals afterwards,” he mentioned. “It was a tough determination.”
Latiph is hopeful that the compensation board will give residents lengthy overdue aid, however he’s sceptical about whether or not Marawi will ever be rebuilt.
“It’s a useless metropolis already,” he mentioned. “I don’t count on the town to return again to what it was earlier than.”
