Images from Mindanao

April 18, 2007 | Pulitzer Center

On the morning of their friend's wedding, pandalas (bridesmaids) adjust their dresses and take care of final preparations before the start of the ceremony which will blend features of ethnic Kalagan culture with both Islamic and recently-adopted Christian marriage rituals. Living near Mindanao's largest city of Davao, the Kalagan people are one of the smaller Islamicized ethnic groups in the Philippines.

During the Bakwit Power: People's Exodus to Peace rally on June 24, 2003, refugees block one lane along Mindanao's National Highway to protest continued fighting near their homes between government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces. In December 2003, the Department of Social Welfare and Development estimated that there were still 25,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout Mindanao.

Displacement and hunger do not prevent a woman from performing her afternoon prayers in Pikit's largest evacuation camp at Buisan Warehouse, southern Philippines. Because most of the people displaced by recent fighting between Islamic insurgents and government forces in 2003 were Muslim, a local non-government organization provided a tarp which evacuees used to fashion a make-shift mosque.

Fresh Moro Islamic Liberation Front troops from Marogong, Lanao del Sur Province wait for the go signal from their commander to enter the perimeter of Camp Jabal Nur, Philippines.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) soldiers gather together in prayer at Camp Jabal Nur in Mindanao before starting an educational seminar about their 2001 bi-lateral ceasefire with the Philippine government. Officially established in 1984, the MILF, which is the largest separatist movement in the Philippines, is waging an armed struggle to create an independent Islamic state in the southern island of Mindanao.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front soldiers hike up a steep mountain trail near their jungle base of Camp Jabal Nur in Lanao del Sur province, Mindanao. Since the fall of Camp Abubakr As-Siddique in May 2000, the MILF's Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) has broken down into highly-mobile guerilla units that are based in several satellite camps throughout Central Mindanao.

After farming and spending time with their families in nearby Marogong, Lanao del Sur, Moro Islamic Liberation Front soldiers ride a jeep back to their base at Camp Jabal Nur in the southern Philippines, Mindanao. Although the MILF maintains a 12,000-man army, the organization rotates its soldiers regularly to allow them to seek out employment opportunities. A MILF soldier typically serves at least two to three months every year in the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF).

Mohammad Zacaria-Pangcoga grimaces in pain as a nurse attends to his shrapnel wounds at Cotabato City's Regional Hospital, southern Philippines. The young man was injured in a grenade blast during a community fiesta in Cotabato City, the ARMM's seat of government. A string of bombings in several of Mindanao's larger cities has killed scores of people since the beginning of 2002.

Evacuees navigate their way through a cloud of anti-malarial chemicals in Pikit’s largest evacuation center at the Buisan Warehouse, Philippines. More than 40,000 people, most of them Muslim, fled to Pikit town to escape heavy fighting and artillery barrages between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front during February 2003.

These photographs were taken by Ryan Anson on a previous trip to Mindanao, prior to his Pulitzer Center reporting project in 2007.