CPP/CIO: AFP’s ramped-up dirty war in Eastern Visayas disproves self-declared deadline vs. NPA

Posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Website (Mar 2, 2021): AFP’s ramped-up dirty war in Eastern Visayas disproves self-declared deadline vs. NPA

KARLOS MANUEL

SPOKESPERSON

EASTERN VISAYAS REGIONAL OPERATIONAL COMMAND (EFREN MARTIRES COMMAND) NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY

MARCH 02, 2021

Maj. Gen. Pio Diñoso III of the 8th Infantry Division-Philippine Army is just one of the many Army chiefs before him who declared they have “dismantled” the NPA’s guerrilla fronts or that they will defeat the NPA in Eastern Visayas. And like all his warmongering predecessors, who think that more troops, more bombs and bigger operations can help them realize their pipe-dream, his “deadline” of “dismantling three guerrilla fronts in 2021” and “ending the NPA in the region before 2022” is surely bound to fail.

Hell-bent to defeat the NPA in Eastern Visayas as one of the Duterte regime’s priority regions, it has dumped not less than 18 AFP-PNP combat battalions in the region as of January this year, aside from the CAFGU members belonging to 86 detachments, and the 226 newly-sent PNP-SAF commandos. The enemy plans to recruit more troops for counter-insurgency. The 8th ID-led Joint Task Force Storm is conducting focused military operations in the towns of Pambujan, Las Navas, Silvino Lobos in Northern Samar, in Matuguinao, Calbiga, Pinabacdao in Western Samar, and in Borongan City in Eastern Samar. Combat-intelligence-psywar operations guised as Retooled Community Support Program operations and “surrender campaigns” continue in all provinces, even in the purportedly “insurgency-free” Leyte, Southern Leyte and Biliran. Ten of the newly-delivered Black Hawk Sikorsky helicopters will reportedly be sent to the Philippine Air Force in Tacloban City. Aerial surveillance by drones and helicopter overflights continue to disturb the peasant masses.

This ramped-up rampage by the 8th ID against the NPA and all revolutionary forces is not proof of military superiority but of the innate futility of their counter-revolutionary war. This all-out war only shows that despite the enemy being far “stronger” and “bigger” with their more advanced weaponry, war budget, and military assistance from US imperialism, the NPA has withstood all of its attacks. The NPA, composed largely of poor, landless peasants, could not have persisted for 52 years in the face of such adversity had it not enjoyed the support of the broad masses who believe that only through armed revolution can the current rotten system be overthrown, and who embrace the NPA as their true army and defender. Because of this, the NPA is definitely the far stronger and bigger army and can thus never be completely defeated.

Diñoso’s dirty war against the NPA will not only fail, it will push throngs of downtrodden, abused, hungry, impoverished, discontented, wronged and enraged masses to take up arms to defeat the AFP and overthrow the Duterte regime. The AFP is merely hastening its own defeat.#

https://cpp.ph/statements/afps-ramped-up-dirty-war-in-eastern-visayas-disproves-self-declared-deadline-vs-npa/