This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 15, May 22-28, 2005
Maoism is the “Greatest
Internal Security Threat” BY
GARY LEUPP
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 © 2004 Bulatlat
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