Few noticed the news report buried below the fold of inside pages. In a Mindanao barangay, a carabao was blown to smithereens. Would one less from the country’s 2.9 million water buffalos matter? This zapped carabao couldn’t compete with the evening news police blotter tripe.

But this carabao was different. Its hooves tripped against a landmine. And mines kill or maim mostly civilians.

The Geneva Convention bans their “production, stockpiling, transfer and use.” The 1997 “Mine Ban Treaty” of Ottawa buttressed those curbs. After Senate ratification, the Ottawa treaty entered into force here on August 2000. Government then called for a universal mine ban through United Nations General Assembly Resolution 57/74.

Abu Sayyaf sporadically sows IEDs (improvised explosive devices). At heart, Abus are bandits with bogus Islamic credentials. They prefer kidnapping for ransom. It pays handsomely, as Ces Drilon and ABS-CBN’s television team painfully learned.

Ransoms also whet greed. The Abu Sayyaf jacked up the price tag for the release of aid workers Milet Mendoza and Esperancita “Espie” Hupida. The two served indigent women of Basilan of all religious creeds. But they lack funds or corporate clout.

Communist New People’s Army units ignore Geneva and Ottawa pacts. They’ve triggered IEDs in Davao del Norte, Samar, Sorsogon, Kalinga, and Camarines Norte.

Landmines have not blanketed conflict-hit areas of Mindanao – until now. Whether one addresses divinity as “Allah” or an“Our Father,” mines kill. Trekking back to their looted communities, Moro and Christian evacuees are threatened equally.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front sees this lethal impartiality. In April 2002, it signed a “Deed of Commitment.” This calls for (1) a total ban on anti-personnel mines, and (2) cooperation in clearing mines. MILF and government swept together for mines, especially in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao.

But today’s conflicts unfortunately sidelined this modest but valuable effort. Yet, such efforts can tamp down flashpoints. Thailand and Cambodia joint patrols on their disputed borders prove their usefulness.

One blasted carabao, however, does not prove wholesale mine-seeding. Were those mines sown by MILF “rouge commanders” to delay troops snapping at their heels? And there’s always the festering question: How much of mine-making skills stem from Al-Qaeda instructors who slip in via the south’s porous border?

As a result, some itch to slap “rouges” with yet another rap: mine-sowing. Commanders Kato, Bravo and men already face charges of murder, looting and dragging civilians as human shields. They torched Christian chapels, eerily cloning Hindu arsonists in Orissa, India.

Yet, resumption of humane programs, from de-mining to temporary ceasefires, are possible, even in midst of deadlock. Over a thousand civilians were recently pinned down by cross fires in Barangay Kalipapa. This village is a stone’s throw from Datu Piang town. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representatives scrambled to contact both sides to secure safe passage.

Red Cross succeeded in moving civilians to safety, noted ICRC’s Ronald Bigler. “This was possible because we’ve had a working relationship with both the AFP and the MILF for years,” he said. Jaw-jaw beats war-war hands down anytime, the Economist notes.

Cooperation in humane programs, including health, safe water and schools for children, would give elbowroom for stymied Mindanao negotiators. There are no unsolvable deadlocks. Peace now prevails in once strife-torn Northern Ireland. And the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize went to Marti Ahtisarri of Finland. Among other things, Ahtisarri helped Jakarta and Aceh untangle their “unsolvable dilemma” of either succession or war.

There are also people of goodwill. The Bishops-Ulamas Conference brings together Catholic bishops and ulamas of Mindanao. The interfaith group provides a non-government organization umbrella for Protestant, Muslim and Catholic leaders who support the Mindanao peace process. So does the Peacemakers’ Circle Foundation.

“Amicable ties among religious communities are common,” notes the United States State Department report on “Religious Freedom 2008.” In fact, “leadership of human rights groups, trade union confederations, and industry associations typically represents many religious persuasions.”

Viewpoint (Inquirer, Oct. 18, 2007) pointed to the letter of 138 Muslim scholars, “A Common Word between Us” – to Christian leaders. This “resonant voice” reveals the unprecedented efforts to heal often tense relations between these two faiths on the international level.

Despite differences, the two great commandments – love of God and neighbor – are an area of common ground. “Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works,” the letter says.

The Vatican, World Council of Churches, Jewish rabbis and divinity schools in Yale, Harvard and Cambridge are now expanding this dialog –almost totally ignored by the local press.

The significance is in “the emerging voice of mainstream Islam (which has been) missing for so long,” BBC notes. “Until now, extremists, from maverick imams to the leaders of al-Qaeda, found it easy to claim they speak for Islam.”

“Common Ground” undercuts the Bravos and the Katos. Zapped carabaos and maimed people, in short, are not inevitable. (Inqurier News Service)