Military confident of defeating communist rebels in 2 years
Associated Press
First Posted 17:21:00 06/26/2008
Filed Under: Politics, Armed conflict
MANILA, Philippines -- Philippine military officials said Thursday they were confident of defeating a nearly 40-year communist insurgency before the 2010 deadline set by the President.
Chief of staff General Alexander Yano said the New People's Army, the armed wing of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines, remained the "primary threat" to the government.
Yano told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines that the insurgents were the main security threat because they were widely spread around the country and ideologically driven to overthrow the democratic system.
Armed forces operations chief Brigadier General Romeo Lustestica said the military was nevertheless on track to defeat the rebels, aiming to reduce their number to an "inconsequential level" of 30 percent of their current strength of 5,000 fighters by 2010, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's term ends.
"As long as we are able to sustain the momentum and nothing happens along the way that will distract our operations, then we are confident that we'll be able to get our target," Lustestica said.
The rebels have repeatedly scoffed at the Arroyo government's target. The Communist Party has also disputed the military's estimate of the NPA's strength, saying that in 2006 it had 27 battalions, or about 13,500 full-time fighters with high-powered rifles, backed by tens of thousands of militiamen nationwide.
Yano described operations to defeat the rebels as a complicated task of cutting the "umbilical cord" that links the guerrillas in the countryside with their unarmed supporters in urban centers, such as the Communist Party and other allied groups.
He acknowledged that the insurgents could not be completely wiped out and said the goal would be to reduce them to a smaller concern that could be dealt with by police.
"You can never reduce insurgency to zero. There will always be recalcitrants in any society," Yano said.
The rebels withdrew from peace talks in 2004 after accusing Arroyo's government of instigating their inclusion on US and European Union terrorist lists.
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