Though Greatly Weakened, Philippine Communist Insurgency Holds Steady

From World Politics Review (Apr 6): Though Greatly Weakened, Philippine Communist Insurgency Holds Steady



Communist New People’s Army (NPA) rebels hold weapons in formation in the hinterlands of Davao, Philippines, Dec. 26, 2013 (AP photo).

In late February, communist rebels killed five Philippine soldiers in an ambush in the northern Ilocos Sur province. In an email interview, Patricio Abinales, a professor of Asian studies at the School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, discussed the Philippine communist insurgency.

WPR: What are the objectives of the New People’s Army, and how has their insurgency evolved over the past decade?

Patricio Abinales: The New People’s Army (NPA) is the armed group of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), established in 1968 to wage a Maoist-style “protracted people’s war” aimed at “surrounding the cities from the countryside,” and gradually weakening the government to the point of collapse. In its place, the CPP-NPA aims to establish a “People’s Democratic Republic of the Philippines,” again modeled after communist China under Mao Zedong.

After surviving the first years of the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos, the NPA expanded at a remarkable speed in the 1980s. Its fastest growth was in areas where the human rights violations of the Marcos regime were most intense. This rapid expansion came to a halt in 1987 when local NPA commanders panicked over reports of widespread military infiltration. As paranoia spread, the internal investigations degenerated into brutal interrogations and executions of suspected spies. The NPA’s 14,000-man armed force disintegrated almost overnight, and by the time it was able to recover in 1992, it had dwindled to about 2,000 guerrillas.

Since then, the NPA has been unable to reclaim its former glory. It has been able to maintain its current force of roughly 4,000 guerrillas by imposing revolutionary taxes on businesses operating on or near its bases and campaign taxes on candidates during election periods, and by acquiring shares in profitable illegal mineral and logging operations.

WPR: How has the Philippine government responded to the communist insurgency, and how does their approach differ from the campaign against the Islamic insurgency in the south?

Abinales: Under Marcos, counterinsurgency operations were brutal: The military burned villages and displaced communities, all to deprive the NPA of support and recruits. In the cities, rebels who were arrested were then tortured and some were summarily executed—the local word for this was “salvaged.” Presidents after Marcos, however, explored options apart from warfare. They opened preliminary peace talks with the CPP, did not oppose the party’s decision to participate in electoral politics and engaged in civic action projects aimed at winning the hearts and minds of communities in guerrilla zones.

A similar approach was applied to deal with the Islamic insurgency in the south, although the government had to agree to negotiations as early as 1976 because the two insurgent groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and its successor, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), had international support, particularly from Arab states. The MNLF signed a peace agreement in 1996, and the MILF signed one in 2014.

WPR: What are the prospects for a cease-fire or final settlement of the conflict?

Abinales: The CPP leadership has increasingly been divided over this issue. The older generation of rebels, led by the founding chairman, Jose Maria Sison, is more willing to talk about a peaceful settlement with the government. Other rebels, however, especially those in the NPA, disagree and have enough support from a militant younger generation to keep the peace talks at bay. No one foresees a cease-fire or a final settlement in the near future.

 http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/15431/though-greatly-weakened-philippine-communist-insurgency-holds-steady