Life after I.S.: Philippines faces its next battle – rebuilding Marawi

More than a year since Duterte declared Marawi ‘liberated’ from Islamic State extremists, much of the city remains in ruins

Evacuation camps house hundreds of people, whose hopes of reclaiming their lives are fading by the day

Reading Time:8 minutes

Sagunsungan Temporary Shelter houses some of those displaced by the fighting. Photo: Chris Healy

Published: 10:32am, 8 Dec 2018Updated: 3:19pm, 8 Dec 2018

Hamidah Abdullatif was on top of the world. It was the spring of 2017 and she had just graduated from college with a degree in computer science. She was ready to embark on a career in information technology in her beloved hometown of Marawi, the historic and picturesque Islamic city on Lake Lanao on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao.

“It was a beautiful city,” Hamidah recalls of Marawi, the capital of Lanao del Sur province, where the Maranao, the dominant, mostly Muslim ethnic group, lived side by side with Christians, the dominant religious group in the Philippines. “It was a joyful place to live. People here would wave when they saw each other.”

But a month after graduation, Hamidah’s highest high soon spiralled into her lowest low.

On the afternoon of May 23, 2017, hundreds of militants affiliated with Islamic State (IS) fought back against a counterterror offensive by the Philippines army and national police. In a matter of hours, Marawi’s bustling streets – the biggest trading centre in the southern Philippines – became a war zone as militants and security forces engaged in street-to-street fighting.

As many as 350,000 people fled in the days that followed. Hamidah and her family were among the first to leave.

“It was sudden. I was cooking bananas. Suddenly, someone shouted and told us to leave because there were many ISIS militants,” says Hamidah’s mother, Sapia Gaga, using another abbreviation for IS. “Just like that. I ran together with my grandchildren.”

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x