Jose Maria Sison

Duterte Passes the Philippines’ Maoist Rebellion on to the Next President

Michael HartLeave a comment
Rodrigo Duterte promised to end the insurgency via peaceful means during his 2016 election campaign, but talks collapsed less than a year into his presidency. (Image Source: Prachatai)

“If [you] find [yourselves] in an armed encounter with communist rebels, kill them, make sure you really kill them, and finish them off if they are alive.” Those were the orders of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, addressed directly to soldiers last March, with his administration entering its final stretch. “Forget about human rights,” Duterte added, “that’s my order. I’m willing to go to jail.” Six years earlier on the campaign trail, Duterte had vowed to end the insurgency, waged by the Maoist rebels of the New People’s Army (NPA) since the 1970s, via peaceful means if he became president.

Yet with just weeks left in office after his successor is elected on 9 May, Duterte is set to join the list of Philippine leaders in the post-1986 democratic era to have failed to end the NPA’s campaign. This is despite peace talks having taken place under all six presidents since dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown, and despite efforts by Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops to inflict a decisive military blow. Duterte, as the first president to hail from the rebel heartlands of eastern Mindanao, was better placed to end the insurgency than his predecessors, so what explains the latest failure?

A short-lived peace dialogue

Upon winning the presidency in 2016, Duterte announced a unilateral ceasefire with the NPA in his first State of the Nation address. Talks got underway that August, with four rounds of dialogue held in Oslo, Rome, and Amsterdam over the next year. By November 2017, the peace process was dead. Rebel attacks resumed and a fragile truce between the two sides collapsed, after Duterte refused to release political prisoners. Dialogue was terminated by the government, which labelled the NPA and its political parent body—the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)—as terrorist organizations.  

In the years since, Duterte’s presidency has seen unrelenting clashes between soldiers and the NPA, and frequent rebel ambushes in their rural strongholds in eastern Mindanao, across the Visayas, and northern Luzon. Relations between the government and the CPP—still led by its founder, Jose Maria Sison, now 83 years-of-age and and living in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands—fell to an all-time low under Duterte, a former student of Sison’s while studying at university. In 2021, the government designated Sison and another 18 senior CPP leaders as terrorists, later applying the same label to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), which represents the CPP in formal peace talks.

Manila has repeatedly ruled out reviving political dialogue and Duterte has stated that unless rebels stop attacking military patrols, “no peace talks can ever succeed under me or any other president.”

With peace negotiations dead, Duterte’s alternative policy was to establish a National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Since 2018, the task force has overseen the work of provincial peace panels, set-up to initiate dialogue between local political and community leaders and NPA ground commanders, in an effort to reduce violence. In a parallel process, the government has also encouraged rebels to surrender in return for livelihood aid, including housing, jobs training, and cash handouts, via the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Programme (E-CLIP). Duterte has praised these two initiatives for “addressing the root causes” and deviating from the “traditional military approach,” yet despite impacting some localities they have not altered the national picture.

‘Red-tagging’ and AFP crackdown

The NTF-ELCAC has also been caught-up in accusations of ‘red-tagging,’ reviving a harmful practice associated with the Marcos dictatorship, whereby political opponents—including journalists, rights activists, and lawmakers from the left-leaning Makabayan bloc—have been publicly labelled by the state as communist sympathizers. The proliferation of red-tagging is a visible symptom of Duterte’s authoritarian governance style in which dissent is rarely tolerated and hostile rhetoric from the top openly encourages vigilante violence. The main figurehead of the NTF-ELCAC, Gen. Antonio Parlade, was forced to resign last year to “ease pressure” on the body, after the repeated use of his position to attack government critics and spread fake news about the insurgency undermined peace efforts.

Rebel ambushes on troops delivering aid during natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic soured relations between the NPA and the government. (Image Source: US Embassy Jakarta)

While the NTF-ELCAC has pushed on with its artificial outreach to the NPA, the AFP has at the same time maintained that it can end the insurgency on the battlefield. Speaking in December, new chief-of-staff of the military, Lt.-Gen. Andres Centino, rallied troops to defeat the rebels by the conclusion of Duterte’s term in office on 30 June. While similar deadlines in recent years have been left unmet, the latter stages of Duterte’s presidency have seen an intensified counter-insurgency campaign. On 16 August last year, 19 rebels were killed during an AFP raid on an NPA camp and explosives factory in Dolores, Eastern Samar province, while on 1 December a similar operation in Miagao town, Iloilo province, killed 16 rebels. The AFP has also targeted senior figures in recent months, killing the chief of the NPA’s National Operations Command, Jorge Madlos (alias Ka Oris), in Bukidnon province, and the most senior rebel commander in Mindanao, Menandro Villanueva (alias Bok), in Davao de Oro.

But despite these losses, the NPA has retained its strength nationally. The reasons for this are rooted in both geography and history—and explain the endurance of the NPA beyond Duterte’s presidency.

Strategic and ideological edge

Across an expansive maritime nation of more than 7,000 islands, the NPA has a broad geographical presence, and is active in at least 69 of the Philippines’ 81 provinces. This makes the group more or less impossible to defeat via conventional military means. The strategic adoption of guerilla tactics, whereby rebels operate out of densely-forested, mountainous, and largely inaccessible terrain as a deliberate choice, plays to their advantage, with the NPA able to take soldiers and police officers by surprise by ambushing them on rural roads before retreating. Rifles, often looted from army bases, and rudimentary explosive devices capable of delivering a quick blow, are the insurgents’ weapons of choice in a war designed to demoralize the enemy rather than defeat it outright. A commitment to this grinding approach, along with the decentralized nature of rebel units, which are divided into small groups of fighters moving between temporary camps, have enabled the insurgency to persist.

Also in the rebels’ favor is their ideological coherence. Since the formation of the CPP in 1968, and the NPA a year later, both entities have remained closely intertwined, with minimal factionalism or splintering. Sison, who founded the movement as a young student activist, remains at the head of the CPP-NPA today, with the strategy he outlined in the 1970s in Philippine Society and Revolution and Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War still underpinning the group’s anti-capitalist stance. The refusal of the NPA to give up its core demand to replace the Manila government with a socialist system has blocked progress in peace talks under six successive governments—including Duterte’s.

A steady stream of new recruits has also been key to the NPA sustaining its campaign. Despite the NTF-ELCAC reporting the surrender of 20,500 rebels since Duterte came to office in 2016—a figure overstated for propaganda purposes, which likely includes mostly family members of NPA fighters and ‘supporters’ of the movement rather than armed rebels—the AFP acknowledges that the NPA still has 3,500 fighters across at least 43 rebel fronts, with around 1,000 fighters based in the rebel stronghold of eastern Mindanao. These estimates are broadly in line with the NPA’s strength over recent decades, which since the early-2000s the military has reported annually to be around 3,000–4,000. After suffering losses, the NPA retains the ability to replenish its ranks from the impoverished rural areas in which it operates, which economically lag far behind Manila and main provincial cities.

Taking on the next president

It is clear that after five decades of insurgency, the only way to end the conflict is a peace deal with the CPP at the national level. With Duterte having ruled out talks for his remaining weeks in power, what odds the next president can tame the NPA? If Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.—the current favorite, with Sara Duterte-Carpio as his running mate—were to win the election, it would likely be more of the same. While he may not repeat his father’s crackdown of the 1980s when the NPA was at its strongest, he has vowed to support the NTF-ELCAC and is likely to replicate Duterte’s strategy: initially offer peace negotiations but revert to a strongman approach upon the first sign of fracture.

If he wins the presidency, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is likely to continue Duterte’s policy on the NPA, supporting localized talks through NTF-ELCAC. (Image Source: Bongbong Marcos)

Marcos’ main rival, liberal candidate Leni Robredo, has at times criticized the NTF-ELCAC and struck a more conciliatory tone, pledging to deflect from “militaristic approaches to ending internal armed conflict” in order to create a “conducive environment” for peace talks. Her opponents in the present administration, some of whom Robredo accuses of red-tagging her, might argue that Robredo’s plan would backfire, enabling the NPA to use any peace process as a useful pretext to quietly bolster their ranks and regain strength. Yet any president looking to reboot political talks would face a similar risk; as all six previous incumbents of Malacañang have discovered. That Duterte—once a friend of Sison, and sympathetic to the socialist cause—failed to secure peace, only emphasizes the size of the task.

A version of this article is also published on Asia Sentinel.

Duterte’s ‘Red-Tagging’ Risks Igniting the Philippines’ Maoist Insurgency

Michael HartLeave a comment
The practice of labelling political opponents as communist sympathizers, referred to as ‘red-tagging’, has proliferated since Duterte entered office in May 2016. (Image Source: PCOO)

The communist insurgency in the Philippines is into its sixth decade. Since its formation in 1969, the New People’s Army (NPA)—the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), formed a year earlier—has fought a low-level guerrilla war against government troops. Over that time, much has remained the same. The CPP’s founder Jose Maria Sison remains at the helm, albeit now aged 82 and living in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands. Across the Philippines, NPA insurgents still target soldiers and police officers in roadside ambushes before retreating to their isolated rural hideouts.

Amid this violence, peace talks have failed under six successive Philippine leaders, including current president Rodrigo Duterte since 2016. His election—as an outsider candidate hailing from Mindanao where the insurgents are most active—initially led to hopes of a breakthrough. Yet since peace talks collapsed a year into his tenure, the proliferation of ‘‘red-tagging’’, whereby senior officials routinely label political opponents as communist sympathizers, now risks further violence. Killings of left-wing activists by vigilantes and police have become more frequent, and threaten reprisals from the NPA.

Talks collapse under Duterte

Such an outcome was not inevitable. In August 2016, the NPA and the Philippine military had both declared unilateral ceasefires soon after Duterte came to power. Manila entered negotiations with the National Democratic front of the Philippines (NDFP)—a negotiation panel representing the CPP and NPA in peace talks with the government—and several rounds of talks were held in Amsterdam, Oslo and Rome. But in early-2017, the peace process collapsed after Duterte refused a CPP demand to release political prisoners, sparking renewed rebel attacks and bringing an end to the ceasefires.

Efforts to re-start talks have since failed. The CPP has refused to meet a list of pre-conditions set by Duterte; which include an immediate cessation of rebel violence and for the CPP to pledge never to partake in a future coalition government. Sison has also declined repeated requests from Duterte to return to the Philippines for one-on-one talks, fearing the invitation is a pretext for his arrest. A war-of-words has erupted between the two men in recent years as Government-CPP ties have faltered.   

Localized peace initiative stalls

Since terminating talks in 2017 and disbanding its negotiating panel, Manila has pursued a localized approach to tackle the NPA uprising. In December 2018, Duterte signed Executive Order 70, forming the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). The role of this body is to oversee smaller provincial and municipal task forces, charged with engaging rebel commanders in local settings and encouraging defections. Rebels who surrender are offered livelihood support, jobs and skills-training through a government-run programme. This local-level strategy has several flaws.

First, it rules out a peace agreement with the CPP-NDFP at the national level, preventing a solution to the conflict in its entirety. Second, the success of this plan has been overstated by the military. In 2020, the military claimed 7,615 rebels had surrendered over the course of the calendar year; this is more than the entire fighting force of the NPA, which has around 4,000 fighters. This figure presents an inaccurate picture of inroads being made against the NPA locally, as among those listed as having defected were rebel supporters or villagers belonging to the NPA’s Militia ng Bayan. In any case, the NPA has proven its ability over five decades to continually replenish its ranks after suffering losses.

With peace talks having failed under six Philippine presidents, NPA rebels have been active in the countryside since the insurgency began in the 1960s. (Image Source: Christian Razukas)

The military’s aim to defeat the NPA by the end of Duterte’s term in mid-2022 is a near-impossible task. Many previous deadlines have come and gone, with the NPA’s strength seemingly unaffected. Eastern Mindanao, Samar, Mindoro, Negros Island and northern Luzon all remain NPA strongholds.

The proliferation of ‘‘red-tagging’’

Aside from violence in those areas, the broader narrative of the conflict is increasingly being driven by government propaganda. Under Duterte, ‘‘red-tagging’’—the labelling of a wide range of political adversaries as NPA supporters—has returned on a scale not seen since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos at the height of the insurgency in the 1980s. The practice has been deployed to target labour leaders, human rights activists, students, journalists and legislators from opposition left-wing parties in the Makabayan bloc. This campaign has been waged alongside intimidation, threats and violence.

In 2020, four NDFP negotiators were killed. Some were shot dead by unknown gunmen while others died during law enforcement raids. In March, Julius Soriano Giron was killed in Baguio city. In August, Randall Echanis was shot dead in Manila. And in November, Eugenia Magpantay and Agaton Topacio were killed during a raid in nearby Rizal province. These high-profile killings demonstrate that targets of police operations often extend beyond armed rebels, to the political leadership of the movement.

A pattern has also emerged of law enforcement raids targeting activists judged by the government to share ideological links with communist fighters. On 30 December, nine local indigenous leaders, suspected to have ties to the NPA, were killed in co-ordinated police raids on Panay Island. Then on 7 March this year, another nine people were killed in similar raids across the provinces of Batangas, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal. Human rights groups claimed that among the deceased were anti-poverty campaigners, the leader of a workers’ union and two members of a local fisherman’s organization.  

The killings in March sparked huge outrage, coming just two days after Duterte had ordered police and military forces to ‘‘finish off’’ communist rebels. In the same remarks, made in Cagayan de Oro city at a meeting of NTF-ELCAC, Duterte told soldiers to ‘‘forget about human rights’’ in operations targeting suspected insurgents. His national security advisor, Hermogenes Esperon, later defended the raids as legitimate and claimed the victims were all insurgents, stating ‘‘in the name of law and order, a shoot-to-kill order has been issued against armed CPP-NPA members. It is shoot on sight’’.

Encouraging vigilante violence

The widening crackdown associated with ‘‘red-tagging’’ has been assisted by a new Anti-Terrorism Act passed last year, which granted the state new powers to list groups and individuals as terrorists and openly publish their names. Amnesty International has said this practice is ‘‘in contravention of international standards on due process and the presumption of innocence’’, while ‘‘vague and over-broad definitions’’ of terrorism risk the law being ‘‘used to target government critics’’. In December, the NPA and CPP were both designated under the new legislation as domestic terror organizations.  

The rise in ‘red-tagging’ under Duterte has stoked renewed fears of vigilante violence, while military operations targeting NPA insurgents gather pace. (Image Source: Matthew Hulett)

Armed vigilantes have been empowered in this hostile climate. On Negros Island, a hotspot of NPA activity, anti-communist militia Kagubak has been linked to assassinations of farmers and left-wing activists in recent years. In February, Cristina Palabay, head of Philippine human rights organization Karapatan, told VOA that at least 78 people were killed and 136 arrested in 2020 in cases recorded as being linked to ‘‘red-tagging’’, warning that ‘‘more and more people are now in the firing line’’.

Human Rights Watch raised similar alarm in a recent statement, warning that the deadly practice ‘‘constricts further the increasingly diminished democratic space in the Philippines, where activists, rights lawyers, journalists and even ordinary Filipinos on social media are under threat’’, and called out ‘‘government officials who give a wink and a nod to extrajudicial killings by their red-tagging’’.

Aiding the rebel cause?

The ‘‘red-tagging’’ epidemic now risks pushback from the NPA and escalation on the battlefield. At the start of this year, the CPP directed the NPA to revive its Special Partisan Units, which are tasked with assassinating soldiers and government figures in towns and cities. These secretive units, usually made up of three or four NPA snipers, proliferated during the Marcos dictatorship in the 1980s, and their revival on a notable scale would bring the insurgency from the countryside into urban centres.

In response to the 7 March killings of activists by police, the NPA has welcomed those targeted by ‘‘red-tagging’’ to join its ranks, vowing that ‘‘targets of Duterte’s state terrorism can be absorbed by NPA units or provided safe haven’’ in rebel bases. A CPP statement also called on the NPA to launch ‘‘tactical offensives’’ and ‘‘mobilize its units’’ to ‘‘punish the perpetrators and masterminds of these crimes’’. Through his expanded crackdown, rather than defeat the NPA, Duterte is aiding its cause.

A version of this article is also published on Geopolitical Monitor.