Typhoon Haiyan: the Philippines' communist insurgency explained

From The Telegraph (Nov 13): Typhoon Haiyan: the Philippines' communist insurgency explained

Philippine army officers have reported attacks by communist rebels from a little-known insurgency on aid convoys trying to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan



Soldiers and residents look at the devastation from a military aid supplies distribution truck in Tacloban city. Photo: REUTERS

The communist insurgency that has troubled the Philippines for decades is now at its lowest ebb but continues to rumble on.

It has often been relatively ignored by the world compared to an insurgency in the semi-autonomous Mindanao province in the Muslim south, but over the years has proved just as deadly and disruptive.
 

Reports from areas affected by Typhoon Hainan that New People’s Army rebels attacked aid convoys will have touched a raw nerve in Manila. Most attacks have been brief, with attackers fleeing after soldiers return fire but the threat of violence is impeding the delivery of aid and causing burials to be delayed.
 

But the government has often declared that the insurgency was on the verge of being eradicated.
 

The rebellion’s roots lie in the Second World War and peasant militias that fought the Japanese. After independence from the United States was granted in 1946, pockets of resistance built up against the new but fragile central government, with many groups embracing communism as the ideology spread across the world.

The Communist Party of the Philippines formed a military wing, the NPA, which began an insurgency in earnest in the late 1960s, when it became more Maoist in tendency following the Sino-Soviet split.

Spread through most parts of the country, it was strongest in the central and southern islands. Tens of thousands of civilians, army troops and rebels have died in the conflict.

The NPA was strongest in the 1980s, growing as an alternative to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and peaking as a force after he fled in 1986.

A determined counter-insurgency operation launched by President Cory Aquino, coupled with an internal split, crippled the organisation and cost it many of its supporters in the early 1990s, but by the turn of new century it had regrouped.

It remains active, especially in mountainous and neglected areas. Philippine press reports are still dotted with incidents involving the NPA – a remote shootout with troops that claims a handful of lives; a village chief murdered for failing to cooperate; a soldier or two kidnapped by a rebel commander. Heavy machinery for government infrastructure projects is periodically found burned or destroyed, in order to deter Manila’s reach.

But the rebels are undoubtedly in decline. There are nearly as many news items announcing small groups declaring the fight is over and accepting government rehabilitation projects.

The military aims to make Samar, one of provinces badly hit by the typhoon, rebel-free by the end of next year. The NPA’s presence there is already described as skeletal.

In October, the commander of the 802nd Brigade of the 8th Infantry Division declared that rebel numbers in Leyte province – the worst affected - were down to a mere 40, operating in hilly terrain.

But areas once dominated by rebels remain flooded with weapons, and it only takes a few men with a gun to spread panic among the hungry and the desperate, and to make life difficult for aid agencies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/philippines/10447524/Typhoon-Haiyan-the-Philippines-communist-insurgency-explained.html