Philippine Reds still eye stalemate | Asia News – Politics, Media, Education | Asian Correspondent

Philippine Reds still eye stalemate | Asia News – Politics, Media, Education | Asian Correspondent
Edwin Espejo Dec 26, 2012

In 2008, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) boldly declared that it was aiming for a strategic stalemate in its guerrilla war with the Philippine government in five years.

In its statement to observe its 44^th founding anniversary posted on its website Sunday but dated December 26, the CPP is saying “it is making substantial progress in carrying out the strategic plan to advance the people’s war from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate.”

Today, however, its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), is still far away from that armed parity with the Philippine military.

New People's Army in Northern MIndanao. KEITH BACONGCO

“It currently operates in more than 100 guerrilla fronts and is striving to increase these to 180 within the next five years since 2010 or for a longer period if need be. There are efforts to assist regions that are lagging behind in order to keep them apace with the overall advance,” the CPP stated in reference to its 2008 target.

For the first time also, the CPP-NPA and its political umbrella, the National Democratic Front (NDF), is putting to rest military claims that the armed regulars of the communist have been reduced to a little over 4,000 from a high of 25,000 fully armed NPAs in the 1980s.

“The Aquino regime and its retinue of military officers keep on boasting that most areas of the Philippines have become insurgency-free…(the) fact is, that NPA armed strength in 1986 was only 6,100 rifles,” the CPP central committee said Monday.

But in Mindanao, the NPAs are gaining grounds where comrades elsewhere in the country are still struggling to rebuild their forces after two decades of ‘rectification movement.’

Rebel spokesman Jorge Madlos, a.k.a Ka Oris, said in an e-mailed statement that despite massive military operations in rebel strongholds in the island, they were able to increase the number of guerilla fronts from 39 in 2008 to 44 this year.

Ka Oris said 40 percent of its 44 guerrilla fronts now have company sized formations in addition to its 5 main regional guerilla units (sentro de grabidad).

He said the NPAs are growing at the rate of 10 percent every year over the last three years.
The CPP in Mindanao is also now building regional and sub-regional operational commands for the NPA, something that it used to have in the 1980s but decided to disband following ideological debate which led to the decimation of rebel ranks nationwide in the 1990s.

Rebel forces in the island, especially those in the Davao and Caraga regions, are again capable of launching undersized battalion formations for tactical offensives as they did in raiding Taganito Mines more than a year ago.

Lt. Gen. Jorge Segovia, commanding general of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Eastern Mindanao Command, however said rebel forces in the island could not be more than 1,500 fully armed regulars.

The CPP was re-established in December 26, 1968 led by University of the Philippines professor Jose Maria Sison and a motley group of intellectuals.

It is waging a Maoist-inspired protracted guerilla warfare that goes into “3 strategic stages” namely, strategic defensive, strategic stalemate and strategic offensive.

Forty four years after, the CPP is still in the strategic defensive stage.

The Philippine insurgency is the longest running of its kind in Southeast Asia.