A New People's Army unit negotiates a mountain stream in Negros (photo from http://www.philippinerevolution.net/)
On the eve of the 45th founding anniversary of the New People’s Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines said it looked to its armed wing’s “rapid expansion to 25,000 fighters and the growth in the number of its guerrilla fronts to 200, covering every rural congressional district.”
The NPA was founded March 29, 1969, three months after university professor Jose Ma. Sison founded the CPP.
“From nine automatic rifles upon its founding in 1969, the NPA is well on its way to having 10,000 high-powered firearms,” the CPP said in a statement.
While giving no exact figures on the NPA’s strength, the CPP claimed “thousands of Red fighters” operate in “more than 110 guerrilla fronts covering significant portions of 71 provinces,” augmented by “tens of thousands of people’s militias and hundreds of thousands of the masses’ self-defense forces.”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines has consistently downplayed the communist rebels’ strength, claiming its operations have whittled down the NPA from a peak of more than 24,000 in the 1980s to an “inconsequential” 4,000 or so fighters.
However, 2001 to 2010, despite two counterinsurgency campaigns -- Oplans Bantay Laya I and II -- it said were sure to decimate the NPA, the military ended the decade admitting failure.
It is currently implementing “Internal Peace Security Program Bayanihan,” which Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Noel Detoyato said, “advocates for a whole-of-nation approach in ending conflict … as well as peace and development initiatives all over the country.”
In recent months, the NPA has stepped up offensives in several regions, most notably Mindanao, although one of the rebels’ latest attacks was practically at Metro Manila’s doorstep.
On March 20, the NPA’s Narciso Antazo Aramil Command in Rizal ambushed troops of the 59th Infantry Battalion, killing two soldiers, including an officer, and wounding four others.
But the military has also scored big lately with the arrest last weekend of CPP chairman Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Austria in Cebu, and just this Thursday of the eight-month pregnant Andrea Rosal, daughter of the late rebel spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal, who authorities claim is a leading cadre of the movement in Southern Luzon.
However, rebel leaders, including Sison, while demanding the release of the Tiamzons because of their status as consultants of the National Democratic Front peace negotiating panel, have also dismissed government’s assertion that the arrest of the couple had dealt a major blow to the revolutionary movement and left a vacuum in its leadership.
Sison said the rebels have a “deep bench.”
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/83692/npa-at-45--cpp-looking-forward-to-25000-fighters-200-guerrilla-fronts
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