THE military is confident that it could meet its target of ending the communist insurgency problem this year, before it fully shifts into a territorial defense posture.
“Our campaign is continuously showing success, paving the way for the clearing of additional barangays from the New People’s Army [NPA],” said the Armed Forces chief of staff, Gen. Hernando Delfin Carmelo Iriberri, after the command conference that was attended by all military commanders on Friday.
Irriberi said the government has already cleared a total of 64 provinces from the influence of the communist guerrillas and is working to clear the remaining 12 provinces, most of them in the Davao and Caraga regions.
Iriberri said the 12 provinces are already “peaceful and ready for peaceful development.”
The Internal Peace and Security Plan Bayanihan, the military’s countercommunist-insurgency campaign that also included all threat groups, was conceived during the term of President Aquino and has an end goal of defeating all rebels before his term ends in June this year.
There is an urgency for the government to end the insurgency problem, so that it could fully focus its attention to territorial defense, whose center is fending off China’s aggressiveness in the West Philippine Sea.
Iriberri said the military cleared at least 13 guerrilla fronts last year and this translates to 292 barangays formerly influenced or controlled by the NPA.
For the rebels, each guerrilla front covers one or, in some cases, two provinces, and its armed members are equivalent to a company-sized or bigger formation in the military.
Iriberri said that from a membership of 4, 443 at the end of 2014, the military has managed to reduce the number of rebels to 3, 296 as of the end of last year. He did not explain how the Armed Forces arrived at those exact figures.
Iriberri said the military and police forces also arrested or neutralized at least 31 top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA-National Democratic Front.
“There was no major tactical offensive that the rebels carried out last year,” Iriberri said in underscoring the accomplishment of the military.
As to the other threat groups like the Abu Sayyaf, he said the military has also reduced its membership, although he could not give figures.
The Abu Sayyaf has resurrected its kidnapping activities late last year by taking in a number of foreigners, including the two Canadians and a Norwegian from a resort in Davao del Norte, whom it took to Sulu for ransom negotiations.
As to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, it has an existing preliminary peace agreement with the government.
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