Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief-of-staff on Monday said the military is steadily winning the peace against the New People's Army (NPA).
He made this statement after noting that in 2013, violent incidents initiated by the NPAs have reached 477, which is significantly lower than the 587 recorded in 2008.
"More importantly, last year, 16 insurgency-affected provinces were normalized. Early this year, Pampanga followed suit bringing to 42 the number of provinces normalized.
The AFP will continue the conduct of operations towards the normalization of 33 remaining provinces in accordance with the time-frame of 'Bayanihan'," Bautista stressed.
Normalization means that the armed threats have been reduced significantly to a level that will allow the local government to assume the lead role in addressing these issues.
"In many areas of the country the insurgents have lost their ideological mooring and have degenerated into bandit groups primarily focused on extortion activities only. Popular support to the insurgents has waned and people have been getting tired of armed violence," the AFP chief pointed out.
Bautista said that improvements in internal security will allow the government to refocus its resources to other pressing national security concerns.
Among these are territorial defense and the adverse effects of climate change. Let me now talk about these issues.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=619388
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