Unending War: Explaining the Survival of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (original) (raw)

Abstract

The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) is confronted by a persistent communist insurgency, the origins of which date back to 1968, when the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) announced its loyalty to the Maoist precept of “people’s war” and mobilized its devoted military wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). The CPP-NPA started with a small group of students and workers convened by Jose Maria Sison, a university lecturer who was profoundly influenced by the theoretical foundations of Marxism-Leninism. The Third World fusion of peasant unrest and nationalism marked by a series of events in the 1960s such as the Vietnam War, the perceived inequities in the relationship between the Philippines and the United States, oppression resulting in social inequalities, the political radicalism that was sweeping university campuses around the world, and the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, further influenced the creation of the militant organization. The CPP-NPA’s principal objective is “to replace the current economic and political order in the Philippines with a socialist system” and its main function is “to wage a protracted people’s war to destroy the reactionary state power and the interventionist “U.S. imperial forces, protect the people and advance their national and democratic interests.” To achieve its objectives, the CPP-NPA utilizes all tactical means at its disposal: military struggle, mass mobilization, political lobbying, political subversion and International Solidarity Work (ISW) with other left-wing organizations. Estimates provided by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) indicate that the CPP-NPA continues to mobilize around 5,000 cadres, a drastic decrease from its peak of 28,000 cadres in the mid-1980s. Although diminishing in numbers, the AFP still considers the CPP-NPA as the primary security threat due to its capacity to operate nationally and its ability to infiltrate various state and private institutions. With this background, this paper argues that CPP-NPA has been able to sustain its activities for the past four decades due to the structural conditions in the Philippine society, particularly the prevalence of extreme poverty and lack of governance in the countryside. Moreover, the CPP-NPA’s steady recruitment pools, persistent ideology, resilient operational security, and reliable sources of money have enabled the organization to develop and expand its influence and operations to at least 1,000 barangays nationwide.

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