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The New People’s Army (NPA), the military arm of
the local communist party, celebrates today, March 29, its 38th
birthday. This must be a long time for a revolutionary army to take
power using the barrel of the gun.
But from the looks of it, this
guerrilla army founded in a sleepy town of Pangasinan by UP
intellectuals led by Jose Maria Sison and remnant Huks led by
Bernabe Buscay-no will remain part of our political scene. Notice
that the AFP alert on NPA raids scheduled for today remain in the
front pages.
The NPA is, perhaps, the only
major insurgent group in the world today that has a socialist goal.
A Maoist-inspired army continues to operate in Nepal while Sendero
Luminoso in Peru is bruited to be the beacon light of Marxism in
Latin America. But we know of no ideological army that can threaten
a state the way the NPA does.
The NPA has probably survived
because it has treated the insurgency as a local war, instead of a
nationalist conflict that could invite intervention. Despite its
ardent anti-Americanism, it has refused to kill US troops operating
in the Philippines. By deftly avoiding American reprisal, it has
been able to build up its forces, using land reform as an issue to
recruit dispossessed peasants to the communist-guerrilla army.
There has been no change in the
doctrine of the New People’s Army since 1969 when it replaced the
postwar Huks. Its strategy of “organizing the peasants as the core
of a people’s army that moves in waves towards the city” remains
in force. The NPA generally shuns terrorism, although it
occasionally sends in hit men or sparrows in cities for desired
political and propaganda impact.
We don’t really know how many
are the riflemen and civilian supporters of the NPA. But in its
website, it boasts of operating in majority of the provinces where
its forces organize in mountainous areas and border areas with
multiple access. Even if the AFP claim is true that the NPA has lost
many members after 1986, still the NPA is a force in many towns. For
instance, a candidate in the current elections cannot campaign in
its base without consulting the guerrillas.
The NPA has reached a point of
no-win, no-loss situation. As one analyst said, it cannot be beaten
by government forces because of its roots among the peasants and its
many proto-governments in rural sanctuaries. But this guerrilla
force cannot also hope to capture Manila. Reason: its built-in
inability to concentrate forces as in the Chinese and Vietnamese
experience.
Besides the all-mighty United
States and its allies in the region will always be there to assist
the Manila government. (One observer told me that in the event that
the NPA takes Manila, the government can still set up another
government in Cebu with the support of US allies in the region.)
Looking toward the future, the
NPA must be waiting for correct timing and situation. Unless the
world situation develops in such a way as to provide political
maneuver for insurgent groups, it would be hard to imagine the NPA
or any guerrilla group taking power at this time.
World War I produced the first
socialist country in the Soviet Union. The Second World War produced
the second socialist country in China. For an archipelagic country
like the Philippines, any insurgent group must wait for a sea-change
in the world situation. In short, the NPA is waiting for a situation
similar to the Hukbalahap movement when it was able to build up a
strong guerrilla army during the Second World War.
Without that change, which really
means a total realignment of world powers, the NPA will remain
fighting a limited war that has no bearing to the capture of
political power. That is a calibrated conflict, the kind of
“fighting behind the sugar canes” that it began in Central Luzon
38 years ago.
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