Maoism is the
“Greatest Internal Security Threat”
Maoist and Muslim Insurgencies in the Philippines
BY GARY LEUPP
DissidentVoice
Posted by Bulatlat
Philippines Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz
stated recently that the threat posed by the New People’s Army (NPA), the
military wing of the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines, has made
it imperative for Manila to
negotiate an agreement
with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The MILF is one of two major Muslim insurgent
groups in the southern third of the archipelago. (The other, the Moro
National Liberation Front, has already signed a peace agreement.) The
government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has asked the U.S. State Department
to
leave the MILF off of its list
of international terrorist organizations in order to promote the peace
talks.
Cruz calls the NPA
“the greatest internal security threat to the country now.” What’s
significant here is that Manila is downplaying the problem of
Muslim insurgency while emphasizing that of the resurgent Maoist
People’s War, whereas the U.S. has depicted its own renewed military
presence in the islands exclusively as an effort to crush al-Qaeda-linked
Islamic terrorism.
U.S.
troops were in the Philippines (a U.S. colony from 1899 to 1946) from 1898
to 1992. They vacated Clark Airfield and
Subic Bay
in 1992, and thereafter the Congress of the
Philippines banned foreign combat troops from
the country. The “war on terror” brought U.S. forces back in February
2002, as “military instructors” into what was touted at the time as the “second
front” in that war.
At the time of course
the world was thinking about
Afghanistan, the neocon plan
for Greater Middle East regime change wasn’t clear to many, and al-Qaeda
and its allies were the main issue.
So the U.S. targeted the Abu
Sayyaf Group, depicting it as an al-Qaeda affiliate (even though Macapagal-Arroyo
herself dismissed the connection). It is in fact a tiny bandit operation
specializing in kidnappings and ransom collection, sometimes in collusion
with corrupt military officers. I assumed in early 2002 that the real U.S.
target was the NPA, which of course as a communist-led organization has
little in common with al-Qaeda’s Islamic ideology. But the presence of a
group like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines allowed the U.S. to reestablish a
military presence that might be deployed in the future to assist the Army
of the Republic of the Philippines (ARP) in anticommunist
counterinsurgency. The U.S. has a very long history of that in the
country, dating back to the campaigns against the communist-led Hukbalahap
from 1946 to 1955.
At present, on the one hand,
the U.S.
wants to portray its small revived military presence in the Philippines
(“Operation Balikitan”) as a response to 9-11 and the sort of terrorism
al-Qaeda represents. On the other hand, it knows that Muslim separatists
are never going to seize power in the Philippines and thereby threaten
U.S. interests. The real nightmare is Manila under the red flag. So
step-by-step since 9-11, using the flexible concept of “war on terror,”
Washington has among its other actions moved against the Maoists, in the
Philippines and elsewhere. As early as January 2002 Colin Powell, as first
ever
U.S. Secretary of State to visit Nepal, site of the world’s most advanced
Maoist movement, told reporters, “You have a Maoist insurgency that’s
trying to overthrow the government and this really is the kind of thing
that we are fighting against throughout the world.” On
August 9, 2002, the NPA and
CPP were placed on the State Department’s terror list (one that they hope
“stigmatizes and isolates designated terrorist organizations
internationally”). On
October 28, 2002,
in response to U.S.
pressure, the European Union added them to its own list. Meanwhile the
founding chair of the party, Jose Maria Sison, in exile in the
Netherlands
with the status of a political refugee, was specifically targeted. On
August 12, 2002, the U.S. Treasury Department took the unusual step of
declaring Sison, who now serves as the Chief Political Consultant for the
National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) in ongoing negotiations
with the government of the Philippines, an “individual terrorist.” The
Dutch government succumbing to U.S. pressure terminated his benefits in
August 2002. The EU again under pressure designated Sison a “terrorist” by
February 2003. A respected revolutionary leader, without charges pending
against him in any court in any country, was now a “terrorist.” Dutch
authorities intimated that U.S. authorities wanted him extradited to the
U.S. to stand trial for an American officer’s death at the hands of the
NPA. Since the event took place while Sison was in prison, they really
want him to stand trial for fomenting a Maoist insurrection in one of
their former colonies.
Today the 36-year-old People’s War, according
to Agence France-Press, enjoys a “resurgence” and boasts of recent
successes. According to a
recent statement
by the CPP, the “NPA has significantly increased the number of its
full-time Red fighters. It is now operating in more than 130 guerrilla
fronts covering significant portions of nearly 70 [out of 78] provinces,
in around 800 municipalities and more than 9,000 barrios.”
While the ARP pooh-poohs such figures, and
argues that the NPA with “only” 8000 troops is a “paper tiger,” Cruz
estimates it will take 6 to 10 more years to quell the insurgency. The
Maoists themselves report: “Currently, the NPA has a sum total of at least
three divisions or nine brigades or 27 battalions of full-time Red
fighters with high-powered rifles. These are augmented by tens of
thousands in the people’s militias and further on by hundreds of thousands
in self-defense units of the mass organizations.” Surely
U.S.
and Filipino authorities alike take seriously the prospect that the
Philippines may someday look like today’s Nepal, or the Peru of fifteen
years ago. But while Manila openly makes anti-Maoist counterinsurgency its
priority, Washington has not yet in public much stressed the Filipino
Maoist threat. The U.S. press ignores the People’s War in the Philippines;
most Americans have no idea that there’s a Maoist insurgency there or that
communism is anything other than totally passé on the planet. This
nonchalance isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Washington continues to
focus on the issue of Islamic “ideologies of hate” and the need to
refashion the “Greater Middle East.” Perhaps it is best that it remain so
preoccupied with that particular losing cause, while
elsewhere real revolutionaries, real anti-imperialists, quietly make
advances.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and
Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts
University and author of numerous works on
Japanese history. He can be reached at:
gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.
April 29,
2005
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