President Duterte capped his seventh visit to Marawi City on Tuesday with this good news: “Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby declare Marawi City liberated from the terrorist influence that marks the beginning of rehabilitation.” The announcement came a day after government troops killed Isnilon Hapilon and Omar Maute, the leaders behind the siege, and rescued 17 hostages. It took five months for our troops to gain victory in the war that claimed the lives of more than a thousand people.
There are still a few terrorists left, and a few more hostages in a contained area that remains a battle zone. However, as Armed Forces chief General Eduardo M. Año said, the small number of the remaining enemy can now be considered a law-enforcement matter and does not constitute serious threat to hinder the succeeding phases of national government programs. Hopefully, the mopping-up operations against the remaining Maute-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters will be finished soon so that the government can start assessing the damage, which will pave the way for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
Nobody knows how long it will take to rebuild Marawi, and the wounds of the brutal war may not completely heal. The best we could do is to look at the ruins with a positive view: Take this chance as a great opportunity for the government to develop Marawi into a modern, resilient, sustainable and world-class city.
In a recent interview with the BusinessMirror, urban planner and architect Felino Palafox Jr. presented a road map in rebuilding Marawi City. He said Marawi can be transformed into a modern city based on the Dubai model. Recalling his experience in Dubai when he was asked by Sultan Khalifa al Habtoor to design a master-planned community from vast desert lands, he said we can do the same in the war-ravaged city. “I think Marawi can be the center of peace and inclusivity in Mindanao—Unity in diversity and interfaith,” Palafox said. “We can build a smarter, safer, livable, resilient and walkable city and a modern city that will be inclusive, Islamic, international and interfaith.”
If his company is involved in designing a master plan for a new Marawi, and he has his way, Palafox would like to preserve some of the ruins caused by the onslaught of terrorism to remind the people, not only from Marawi but as well as other Filipinos, the horrors and evils of urban terrorism. Government planners in other countries put premium in restoring their important landmarks, he said, citing the city planners of Rome, Warsaw, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other cities that preserved important landmarks in their history. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, preserved the structures that serve as reminders of the brutality and horrors of fascism, such as the Nazi concentration camps. In Japan, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became memorials to show the dreadfulness of World War II and the atomic bombs that devastated the two cities.
Palafox has a good point. Preserving some of the ruins of war in Marawi City as a memorial will allow future generations of Filipinos to visit the place and learn from the horrible consequences of terrorism. In other countries, ruins are preserved because they carry important lessons and messages to the succeeding generations. We must preserve some of the Marawi ruins as a living museum of the destruction caused by terrorism and extremism.