COTABATO CITY (December 20, 2025) —- Another group from the now both defunct Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters surrendered to the Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team in a symbolic rite on Wednesday, December 17, in Barangay Pigkalagan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte.
The nine erstwhile terrorists are now undergoing religious reorientation by Army Islamic theologians under the 6th Infantry Division, whose headquarters is in Camp Siongco in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.
Local officials in Maguindanao del Norte province who helped convince the nine Dawlah Islamiya and BIFF members to surrender to the 1st BCT told reporters on Friday that four in the group, Talib Mandih Bansil, Omar Saling Badrudin, Amir Andig Baytu and Mukamad Aning Usman, are experts in fabrication of improvised explosive devices that can be detonated from a distance using mobile phones.
Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, said on Friday that the nine terrorists first turned over their assault rifles, grenade and rocket launchers to officials of the 1st BCT, led by Col. Rommel Pagayon, before they renounced their membership with both terror groups in the presence of local executives from different towns in Maguindanao del Norte, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“We agreed to surrender after learning that all of our companions who surrendered ahead of us have all been reintroduced to the local communities by the 6th Infantry Division and different agencies of the government,” the group’s leader, Ayong Muksin Kader, said in Filipino.
Units of 6th ID, mayors and governors in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte, both in BARMM, and in the nearby provinces of Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato and Sarangani in Region 12, have secured the surrender, in batches, of 1,933 members of the Dawlah Islamiya and BIFF since 2021.
“We attribute credit for that feat to the mayors and governors, the moderate Islamic religious leaders and the traditional Moro datus supporting our reconciliation program for violent religious extremists,” Cagara.
The allies Dawlah Islamiya and BIFF are both tagged in all deadly bombings in Central Mindanao since 2014 and have a reputation for fomenting hatred for non-Muslims that Islamic missionaries in the region detest for being contrary to Islam’s advocacy for tolerance and interfaith solidarity among culturally-pluralistic communities.
Photo shows the entrance to Camp Siongco in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte, where the headquarters of the 6th ID is located. The 6th ID has a regional reconciliation program, being implemented for six years now, for violent religious extremists that has, in effect, virtually decimated the Dawlah Islamiya and BIFF terror groups.