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THE gravest threat to national stability, after the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front secessionism and
deteriorations on the rice and food front, is the nearly forty-year
insurgency being waged by the New People’s Army/Communist Party of
the Philippines in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The NPA is not in a position to
overthrow the government in the near future, but its cancerous
growth and its deleterious drag on the economy is worrisome.
Guerrilla operations have held back regional development,
constricting growth in the hinterland. Its system of taxation hurts
business, including the transport of food from the farms to the
urban centers.
The insurgency has also become an
active recruiter of jobless adults, out-of-school youth and people
generally unhappy with the government and the system of justice.
Minors and women are found in its ranks in large numbers. The
movement no longer mouths Maoism but continues to fascinate for the
adventure it promises and the cause it professes to embrace. While
it continues to drape itself with the mantle of anti-imperialism,
the truth is that extreme poverty and a poor justice system have
become its principal recruiter.
Why the NPA thrives
The movement represents a second
government in the country. It takes pride in its “centers of
influence” that the military prefers to call “fronts.” It
provides basic services in areas unreached by the government. It
operates a system of justice, albeit harsh, enforces a system of
taxation, claims to have an influence on foreign policy and counts
on a few governments and nongovernmental organizations among its
patrons. Its standing army, fully armed and professionally trained,
compares favorably with the MILF fighters.
Like the MILF menace, its threat
to established order is real and exercised in many ways. Only the
Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police
stand in the way of an active takeover. The military and the police,
backed by the Constitution and our democratic institutions, straddle
the dividing line between order and chaos.
These thoughts came to mind as we
read three important speeches delivered Monday morning at Camp
Aguinaldo. The occasion was the turnover of command from the
outgoing AFP chief of staff to his successor. The ceremony gave
Commander in Chief Gloria Arroyo, outgoing COS Gen. Hermogenes
Esperon Jr. and new chief of staff Lt. Gen. Alexander Yano pause to
reflect on the state of the Philippine military and the challenges
facing it.
Where the speakers agree
A leitmotif running through the
speeches was the modernization of the armed forces, insulating the
military from politics and ending the communist insurgency by 2010.
There is no question that modernization should keep pace with the
growing needs of the military. The putschists who pretend they can
rule the country better than the civilians belong to the stockade.
But ending the communist insurgency by 2010 or in two years sounds
great but unrealistic.
The speakers conceded that the
war on poverty had to be won to help end the insurrection. The
effort would require “hard” (military action) and “soft”
approaches—poverty mitigation, reforms, civic action and winning
the masses over to the government side. Could the government deliver
in two years time?
The military successes look
impressive. Reporting on his watch, General Esperon said that the
military “decimated” the enemy in just 22 months. From 100
guerrilla fronts in December 2006, the number went down to 87 in
December 2007. Another eight were “dismantled” in the first
quarter of 2008. Ten others were “downgraded” from the status of
a regular front. The NPA currently numbers 5,470 partisans, less
than its strength of 11,930 in January 2001, Esperon boasted.
When to end the war
We accept the general’s word.
Our difficulty is figuring out the size of a communist guerrilla
front and defining the terms “dismantle,” “downgrade” and
“neutralize.” Keeping count of the enemy is hard because it is a
mobile, shadowy army. Conventional wisdom also says a guerrilla
fighter is equivalent to 10 regular troops. Moreover, the NPA does
not fight conventional battles but specializes in ambushes and
lightning attacks. Its hit-and-run tactics partly explain its
longevity.
The insurgency is formidable and
the NPA a resourceful, flexible force. Its four-decade history is a
reminder that it should not be taken for granted or underestimated.
Presidents from Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and
Joseph Estrada to Gloria Arroyo have not found a formula to end it,
much as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have successfully dealt
with their own rebellions.
The Palace, Congress, the armed
forces, the defense department, private business, the Church and the
judiciary know what fuels the rebellion and what alienates citizens
from their government. They should also know what economic,
political and social reforms are needed to bring the people and the
state closer together. But crush the “ideological nonsense” in
two or three years? The policymakers need to go back to the drawing
board.
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