twelve killed a day

The deal to end one of two long-running insurgencies in the Philippines, which have killed more than 160,000 people, could be signed as early as this week if the four-day talks in Malaysia are successful.

The Philippines is a small island country composed of over 7,000 islands.  Most of the nation is catholic but part of the southern regions are muslim.  During WWII the Americans organized tribes of headhunters to fight against the Japanese.  These people have always loved to fight and at the end of the war they continued to fight although they had given up hunting heads.  Islam supplied  them with weapons and gave them a target.  In the sixties and seventies these warriors were losing interest in a seemingly lost cause but some followers of communism saw an opportunity and infiltrated them and gave them a renewed hope in their fighting.  In the past forty years over 160,000 people have died because of these communist muslims.  That equates to about 4,000 a year or an average of roughly 12 people a day.

The peace treaty is not going to stop the fighting and killing, just reduce the numbers and scope of the fighters.