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A TOP Philippine general conceded Monday the military lacked the
manpower and equipment needed to defeat the nation’s communist
insurgents.
Philippine troops have been battling Muslim
militants, draining the military of resources vital to put down the
long-running and separate communist insurgency, Major General Jogy
Leo Fojas said in a report published in the broadsheet The
Philippine Star.
The newspaper quoted the general as saying he
doubted whether the military could “wipe out communist
insurgents” by 2010.
President Gloria Arroyo pledged last year to
defeat the 36-year-old rebellion by the time she left office in
2010.
Fojas, head of military operations, said the
army had failed to meet a half-year target in its campaign against
the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party
of the Philippines.
“As of the first semester 2007, we have only
dismantled three NPA fronts,” the newspaper quoted Fojas saying.
“Our target for the whole of 2007 was 18
guerrilla fronts. Our field commanders are still doing their best to
meet the target,” he said.
Fojas gave no reason for missing the targets in
the report.
Under its counter-insurgency plan, the military
aims to dismantle about 80 percent of the 100 NPA guerrilla fronts
in 69 of 81 provinces.
While 18 guerrilla fronts were targeted for
dismantling this year, the remaining 62 rebel bases are set to be
destroyed between January 2008 and June 2010.
A senior intelligence official was quoted saying
security forces had been sidetracked by elections in May, and by
efforts to hunt down Islamic militants in the south.
Some 12,000 troops are tied down in several
Muslim-majority southern islands where the al-Qaeda linked Abu
Sayyaf and other militant groups have been waging deadly attacks.
“Our troops are thinly spread across the
archipelago and we moved so many resources to address the more
immediate threat posed by Islamic militants from the Abu Sayyaf,”
the unnamed intelligence official was quoted saying.
“We’re too busy putting out fires here and
there in the first half of the year that rebels just took advantage
of the vacuum left by the movement of our forces.”
Despite the strain on the military, Fojas said
latest intelligence estimates showed NPA strength had fallen to
about 6,300 fighters at the end of June, down by 900 from the
end-2006.
The paper said that since 1969, more than 40,000
people have been killed in the conflict, one of the longest
Maoist-led rebellions in Asia.
--AFP
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