MATANAO, DAVAO DEL SUR –– At least 53 troops from the Army and the police have been deployed in two villages here and in nearby Santa Cruz town, where the military chose to launch its end-the-communist-insurgency campaign in former rebel strongholds.
Police Captain Renato Uy, supervisor of the Revitalized Pulis sa Barangay, said on Thursday the troops, 30 of them policemen, had been sent to the villages of Colonsabak of this town and Sibulan of nearby Sta Cruz, as part of the government’s Task Force End Local Communist Armed Conflict (TFELCAC) program.
Military officials picked out Colonsabac, a village of 1,700 people about eight kilometers away from the town proper here, and Sibulan, a village of 6,000 people in Sta Cruz town’s border with Davao City, for their history of New People’s Army (NPA) presence in the area, according to Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Carandang, commander of the 39th
Infantry Battalion.
Carandang said the troops, 23 of them soldiers under the “Retooled Community Support Program” of the Philippine Army, would stay in the communities.
He said police and soldiers were there to deliver government services to the communities.
“Soldiers and policemen are there to help establish conflict-resilient communities,” he said.
Carandang said TFELCAC is part of President Duterte’s “whole-nation approach” to end five decades of communist insurgency in the country.
The two villages in Davao del Sur were sites of clashes between government troops and NPA rebels.
In 2018, a clash between troops and the rebels in Sibulan led to the recovery of firearms by the military.