Año: PH insurgency-free before Marcos steps down

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Sep 3, 2023): Año: PH insurgency-free before Marcos steps down (By: Dexter Cabalza)

National Security Adviser Eduardo Año INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

National Security Adviser Secretary Eduardo Año has made a bold promise to finally end the decades-old problem of communist insurgency in the country before the term of President Marcos ends.

Año was banking on the “strategic victory” of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), where he sits as vice chairperson along with Vice President Sara Duterte, in almost five years since the government task force was created in 2018 to address the root causes of the communist insurgency.

“So what we can see in the term of [President Marcos], finally we will end this local armed communist conflict,” Año told a press conference in Malacañang on Thursday, following the NTF-Elcac’s executive committee meeting presided by the President as chair.

“They will be isolated and just become bandits because of lost ideology and nonsupport from the people. And at the same time, we would also want to give a chance to these people to return to the folds of the law,” Año said.

No mass-based support

According to Ernesto Torres, executive director and undersecretary of NTF-Elcac, they were able to “dismantle” 69 out of the 89 guerilla fronts of the New People’s Army (NPA)—the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)—in different barangays across the country since the task force was set up in 2018.

Of the 20 remaining NPA guerilla fronts, only one in Northern Samar has remained active. The 19 other fronts—six each in Luzon and Mindanao, and seven in Visayas—have “weakened,” or having no mass-based support.

Geopolitical issues

With this development, he said the 150,000 active personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines could now be reoriented to focus on external threats, given the “so many geopolitical issues and challenges,” that the country is facing right now, particularly the increasing aggression of China in the West Philippine Sea.

“So we can categorically say that the shift of focus [of the military] from internal security to external defense will happen within this administration. That is our objective and we are confident that we are going to attain that,” added Año, the executive director of the National Security Council.

The CPP-NPA has been waging an armed struggle since 1969 or more than five decades and is considered the longest communist insurgency in the world.

In 2019, then President Rodrigo Duterte permanently ended peace talks with the CPP and vowed to end the communist insurgency before his term ended in June 2022—a promise that he failed to fulfill.

After the executive committee meeting, the NTF-Elcac also agreed to expand its membership to 11 other government agencies, bringing its sitting members to 32.

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