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By Nora O. Gamolo, Senior Desk Editor,
and Anthony A. Vargas, Reporter
Amid latest reports of two dead rebels in
clashes and rebels felling a mobile communication tower, exiled
rebel leader Jose Maria Sison debunked claims of the Armed Forces of
the Philippines (AFP) that it had destroyed 13 guerrilla fronts,
reduced the total number of guerrilla fronts to only 87, and regular
combatants of the New People’s Army (NPA) to less than 6,000 in
2007.
He also claimed that the Arroyo government has
rejected calls for peace negotiations, saying that “[it] is
obsessed with military force and has ignored proposals for
exploratory talks.”
In the latest press statement he released to
media, Sison quoted Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal, spokesman of the
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), who said that NPA
guerrilla fronts have even increased to cover all the 173
congressional districts in the provinces, and armed city partisans
now operate in 44 congressional districts in the cities. People’s
militia units were also organized in villages and self-defense units
in mass organizations.
Sison said the number of guerrilla fronts have
fluctuated between 120 and 130, not 87, as claimed by the military.
He pointed out that the military and police troops are capable of
concentrating only on less than 10 percent of the guerrilla fronts
at every given time.
The guerrilla group, meanwhile, “has been very
successful in employing the flexible tactics of concentration,
dispersal and shifting, according to circumstances.”
Sison said that “Before and after 2010, the
armed revolution can, at will, undertake tactical offensives to
disprove the false claims of military success by the Arroyo
regime.”
On January 7, President Arroyo has lately
ordered the release of an additional P1 billion to create six more
Army battalions, a new Marine battalion, and 25 companies of
paramilitary units to boost its campaign to destroy the NPA, or at
least render it “inconsequential” by 2010.
The military has lately revealed its plan of
further reducing rebel strength by 1,500 and dismantling at least 30
guerilla fronts by end-2008.
In 2007, the military said it was able to cut
down rebel strength to 5,400 from 6,400 in 2006, and dismantled 13
guerrilla fronts, half of their intended target of 26.
Sison’s claims came amid military reports that
communist guerrillas have become active anew, clashing with security
forces and attacking a telecommunications tower in the Philippines
in separate incidents, leaving two rebels dead.
A military patrol fought with New People’s
Army members near a town east of Manila on Saturday, leaving two
rebels dead and a third critically wounded, AFP spokesmen said.
The suspected rebels were killed, and another
one critically wounded and captured following an encounter with
government troops in a remote village in Laguna province Saturday,
said the Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres.
Torres said the encounter between troops and
rebels took place about 8 a.m. in Barangay Masiko in Pila town.
Elements from the army’s 1st Infantry
Battalion were dispatched to the area following reported rebel
sightings in the village. Troops located and immediately surrounded
the house reportedly occupied by the rebels, reports said.
A firefight ensued, resulting in the killing of
two rebels and the wounding of one, while no casualties were
reported on the government side.
The wounded rebel was rushed to the nearest
hospital for treatment, while five firearms and a homemade bomb were
recovered from the house. Two women from the occupied house were
also rescued by troops, and were presumed innocent pending a probe.
The army spokesman said that the said operation
was conducted in close coordination with the Laguna Provincial
Police Office under Senior Supt. Felipe Rojas.
Meanwhile, a military report said a Smart
Communications tower near a remote northern town was burned down by
the NPA in an attack early Friday.
The military claims that the rebels often attack
economic targets as part of efforts to raise funds for the
39-year-old Maoist insurgency, one of the world’s longest. They
usually demand money, firearms and explosives as a form of
“revolutionary tax” to guarantee against attacks.
The Arroyo government has lately ordered
stepped-up security of economic targets after the NPA burned down
the base camp of Swiss-based mining company Xstrata at its copper
exploration site on the southern island of Mindanao on New Year’s
Day.
The NPA’s mother organization, the Communist
Party of the Philippines, has admitted responsibility for the
Xstrata attack, vowing that it would “resist the Arroyo regime’s
campaign to auction off the country’s natural resources to big
foreign capitalists.”
In early December, state troops pounded on
suspected rebel lairs in Surigao del Sur in war-weary Mindanao, amid
public criticisms that the military campaigns were intended to
facilitate mining and logging exploration in the province.
-- With AFP
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