The AFP has released another update on the war against the insurgency. Between January 1st and September 3rd 1,134 NPA members and supporters have been neutralized. Sounds great. But do they break those numbers down into categories?
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1283622 |
Around 1,134 New People's Army (NPA) members and supporters have been "neutralized" through government operations from Jan. 1 to Sept. 3 this year, according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
Of the total, there were 1,018 surrenderees while 42 were arrested and 74 were killed in military operations, AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla told reporters Tuesday.
“That is significant because every surrender is an opportunity for reintegration, for families to be reunited, and for communities to move further away from violence," she said.
Padilla said the goal is not simply to have a bigger number in the scoreboard but to have fewer communities affected by armed conflict.
"Neutralized" is a military term which refers to the surrender, capture or killing of enemy troops.
During the same period, a total of 724 firearms were either seized or surrendered, along with 280 anti-personnel mines.
Around 42 NPA encampments were also captured, Padilla added.
The military earlier reported that around 2,018 NPA members and their supporters were neutralized, a total of 1,134 firearms and 531 anti-personnel mines were either seized or surrendered and 149 NPA encampments were captured in 2025.
No, they don't. Remember the last count was 780 actual NPA combatants left. This number 1,134 tells us nothing about how many rebels actually remain. In fact it shows the NPA has a lot of support because undoubtedly the majority of this number are mere supporters.
Another top NPA leader has been nabbed. This time in Surigao del Sur.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2300595/top-alleged-npa-leader-nabbed-in-surigao-del-sur |
Joint police and military forces arrested Region 13’s (Caraga) second most wanted member of the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels in Barobo town, Surigao del Sur, on Saturday, Sept. 5, police said on Monday.
Police arrested the suspect, identified as alias “Jepoy,” 53, around 9:15 p.m. in Barangay Sudlon.
They said the suspect, a resident of Sitio Emerald in Barangay Diatagon, Lianga, was allegedly a former political instructor of the NPA’s Sub-Regional Committee Southland of the North Eastern Mindanao Regional Committee.
Police arrested the suspect on the strength of several warrants issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 28 in Lianga. The warrants were for three counts of murder, for which no bail was recommended; two counts of frustrated murder, with bail set at P200,000 each; and two counts of attempted murder, with bail set at P100,000 and P120,000.
The operation was led by the Surigao del Sur Police Provincial Office and carried out by personnel from the Barobo Municipal Police Station, Regional Intelligence Unit 13, 14th Special Action Company of the PNP-Special Action Force, 41st Military Intelligence Company, 1st Surigao del Sur Provincial Mobile Force Company, Regional Mobile Force Battalion 13, and other intelligence units.
Police said they informed the suspect of his constitutional rights under the Miranda doctrine and the Anti-Torture Act. The arrest was also recorded using a body-worn camera.
The suspect remains in the custody of the Barobo police for documentation and proper court disposition.
Col. Jeffrey Lawrence Mauricio, Surigao del Sur police provincial director, commended the operating units for their intelligence sharing and coordination.“The capture of a high-ranking CTG leader brings justice closer to the victims of these violent acts and brings us one step closer to achieving total peace in Surigao del Sur,” Mauricio said.
He added that the police, together with their military counterparts, would continue efforts to locate wanted individuals hiding from the law.
The capture brings justice closer they say. But of course the wheels of justice turn very slowly in the Philippines.
Another leader was killed in Leyte during a clash with the Army.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2302046/npa-leader-killed-in-clash-with-army-troops-in-leyte |
A ranking New People’s Army (NPA) leader was killed in a brief clash with government troops on Tuesday afternoon in the hinterlands of Barangay Caridad, Baybay City, Leyte, the military reported.
The Army’s 8th Infantry Division(ID), which is based in Catbalogan City, Samar, said the encounter occurred on Sept. 8 after soldiers received information from a resident about the presence of armed men allegedly collecting money and food from communities in the area.
Troops from the 802nd Infantry Brigade(IB) proceeded to the area to verify the report, resulting in a firefight that lasted about five minutes, according to the military.
Killed was Erwin Murillo Maceda, alias “Romnick,” who was identified by the Army as the vice team leader of the NPA’s Island Committee Levox under the Eastern Visayas Regional Party Committee.
An M16 rifle was also recovered from the encounter site, the 8th ID said.
Brig. Gen. Pompeyo Jason Almagro, commander of the 802nd IB, said Maceda and his group had allegedly been involved in extortion, threats against residents and business owners, and attacks on government security installations in Leyte.
“The people of Leyte have endured years of fear, intimidation, and disruption caused by armed groups. We will not allow these conditions to return to communities that have worked hard to achieve peace,” Almagro said in a statement released on Wednesday.
The military said the encounter followed reports of armed NPA members attempting to regain their presence in communities where government authorities have declared stable peace and security conditions.The Army also credited residents’ cooperation and timely reporting for enabling government forces to respond to the reported presence of armed men.
“The cooperation of our communities is critical. Their timely reporting allows government forces to respond before threats can escalate,” Almagro said.
The 8th ID renewed its call for remaining NPA members to abandon armed struggle and surrender, saying government programs are available to assist former rebels who return to civilian life.
The military said it would continue operations in areas where armed groups are reported to be operating while encouraging NPA members to return peacefully to their families and communities.
Leaders continue to be captured or killed or surrender and yet the AFP said just a few years ago that the NPA is leaderless.
In South Cotabato a mixed group of 8 including NPA rebels and Islamic terrorists surrendered to authorities.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1283810 |
Eight mixed violent rebel surrenderers have chosen the right path and embraced peace over violence after being convinced of the government’s peace and reconciliation program.
The surrenderers, comprising members of the communist New People’s Army and local Moro rebel groups, surrendered to authorities and turned over their firearms during a formal surrender ceremony in Tupi, South Cotabato on Thursday.
Initially, the eight combatants voluntarily surrendered to the police’s Regional Mobile Force Battalion 12 (Soccsksargen), led by Col. Samuel Cadungon. On Thursday afternoon, they were presented to Brig. Gen. Alan Manibog, director of the Police Regional Office - Soccsksargen; Lt. Col. Dranreb Canto, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Battalion; and South Cotabato Governor Reynaldo Tamayo Jr., for their inclusion in the government’s Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP).
E-CLIP aims to support their reintegration into mainstream society by providing them with livelihood aid from the government.
“Every decision to abandon violence and return to the fold of the law is a victory for peace and a reminder that there is always a path toward a better future,” Manibog said in a statement on Friday.
He said the group’s surrender and turnover of their firearms mark a meaningful decision to leave violence behind and rebuild their lives alongside their families and communities.
“I call on other rebel combatants to avail of the government peace program by peacefully laying down their guns and abandoning violence,” he added.
In Butuan 6 NPA rebels surrounded to the police.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1283721
Six remnants of the communist New People's Army (NPA) surrendered to the Butuan City Police Office (BCPO) during internal security operations and localized peace engagements in several barangays in the first week of September.
The surrenderers were members of the Sub-Regional Sentro de Grabidad Westland under the dismantled North Eastern Mindanao Regional Committee of the NPA.
Four of them yielded to BCPO's Police Station 6 and the City Intelligence Unit. They were identified by their aliases as Rey (31), Ray (31), and Kas (43), who served as couriers, and Jay (26), a Milisya ng Bayan member.
The other two, identified as Alias Aslet (26) and One Heart (25), both Milisya ng Bayan members, surrendered to personnel of the Butuan City Mobile Force Company and turned over an improvised short firearm.
"The surrenderers are currently undergoing custodial debriefing and are being processed for the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (ECLIP) of the government," BCPO Director Col. Richie Yatar said in a statement on Thursday.
He added that ECLIP will provide the former rebels with financial assistance, skills training, and livelihood packages to help them rebuild their lives as they return to their families and communities.
Both of these groups will be able to avail of E-CLIP benefits.
In Butuan the NPA attacked a police station.
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| https://www-abs--cbn-com.translate.goog/news/09/03/19/police-station-sa-butuan-inatake-ng-mga-hinihinalang-npa |
Suspected members of the New People's Army (NPA) attacked the Butuan City Police station in Barangay San Mateo in the city on Monday.
The attack occurred around 10:00 PM and was repelled by police and soldiers stationed at the station.
"Our personnel at Station 5 are always prepared because they know the situation there and there is also an augmentation from the Philippine Army and the residents in that area are providing information," said Police Capt. Emerson Alipit, spokesperson of the Butuan City Police.
"Our personnel there retaliated and when they were hit with M203s, they withdrew," he said.
According to the police, the rebels were positioned on the mountainous side of a school and along the Subait River near the station when they opened fire.
Residents in the area were scared, especially since their houses were close to the police station.
No injuries were recorded on the police and soldiers' side, but it is not yet certain on the side of the suspected rebels.
Many M16, M14, and AK-47 rifle bullets were recovered near the Subait River when authorities conducted a clearing operation on Tuesday.
The station was first attacked by NPA members in 2017 and was followed up twice in 2018.
It just goes to show the NPA is still a violent force. They may be depleted but they are very active.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity has noted Northern Samar's shift to peace after decades of conflict.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1283627 |
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU) highlighted Northern Samar’s shift from addressing armed conflict to sustaining lasting peace.
OPAPRU Eastern Visayas Program Manager Imelda Bonifacio cited the province’s progress in addressing insurgency and improving socioeconomic conditions.
Bonifacio said Northern Samar’s gains demonstrate a shift from simply addressing armed struggle to sustaining peace through reconciliation, good governance, improved public services, and inclusive socioeconomic development.
“Peace has evolved. It is no longer about silencing gunfires. It is about civilian-led healing and delivering genuine socio-economic upliftment straight to our doorsteps,” she said during the National Peace Consciousness Month opening here on Tuesday.
Among the gains she cited was the declaration of 17 municipalities as having a Stable Internal Peace and Security Condition, including all municipalities in the province’s 1st District, as well as Laoang, San Roque, and Lapinig in the 2nd District.
She also noted the decline in the province’s family poverty rate to 12.5 percent, along with infrastructure projects aimed at improving connectivity and access to services in remote communities.
These include the PHP85 million Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) road project and the Catubig Bridge, which is expected to improve access among previously isolated communities.
Bonifacio also said Northern Samar has been recognized as one of the country’s Top 3 model provinces for implementing the Transformation Program.
The province is also set to host the first Kauswagan Peace and Development Center in Eastern Visayas, which will serve as a coordination hub for peace partners and help accelerate the delivery of services to peacebuilders and communities. OPAPRU is set to provide PHP6.37 million in support for its operations.
Governor Harris Ongchuan, who led the ceremonial ringing of the peace bell, called on the people of Northern Samar to protect the province’s peace gains and sustain cooperation among government institutions and communities.
“The province’s peace gains carry a greater responsibility for the government and residents to sustain an environment where families, businesses, and communities can thrive,” Ongchuan said.
The opening ceremony also featured the Pledge for Peace, participated in by provincial government officials and employees, along with representatives of the OPAPRU, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Bureau of Fire Protection, Department of Education, Philippine Information Agency, and the Provincial Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
Activities for the month-long observance of Peace Month include a Serbisyo Fair for peacebuilders and former rebel organizations, the completion ceremony for the 11th batch of reintegrated former rebels, and the launch of the Kauswagan Peace and Development Center.
The region serves as an example for the rest of the nation.
Let's take a look at a rather interesting article from Rappler about the decline of the NPA which they connect to the entire Philippines' Left.
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| https://www.rappler.com/voices/newsletters/vantage-point-philippines-communist-party-left-relevance/ |
For more than half a century, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has been promising a revolution. Today, I find myself asking: what exactly is left to revolutionize when history has already rendered judgment on the ideology behind it?
At its height, the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), reportedly commanded more than 25,000 armed fighters across the archipelago. It was an insurgency that the Philippine state could not dismiss, but that’s no longer the organization confronting us today.
Government figures say all 89 guerrilla fronts that existed at the beginning of the Marcos administration have been dismantled. By August 2025, authorities estimated that only about 785 armed NPA members remained, with roughly 780 firearms operating in small, dispersed units.
I hesitate to call what remains an army. An army seeks to defeat another army, capture territory, and ultimately seize political power. What we see today are armed remnants capable of ambush, extortion, and intimidation, but apparently incapable of mounting anything resembling the revolution promised by the CPP in 1968.
The revolution has become a war of attrition against history itself.
We note its political decline, too. Makabayan mounted an ambitious Senate campaign in 2025. Not one candidate won, while the broader movement’s party-list representation contracted.
This does not mean every Filipino identified with the Left has become irrelevant. Social democrats, labor activists, environmentalists, Akbayan, and the CPP-aligned national-democratic movement are not interchangeable.
Akbayan, after all, topped the 2025 party list elections. My argument concerns the revolutionary Maoist Left and the worldview that continues to orbit around it.
The author gives some caveats here but he certainly equivocates Makabayn and the Left with the CPP. He can tip toe as much as he likes.
Nowhere is its intellectual predicament more obvious to me than in its opposition to EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) and, more recently, Pax Silica.
EDCA is a 2014 military pact between the Philippines and the US, which allows US forces rotational access to designated military bases in the country, pre-positioning of equipment, and infrastructure construction, even as the Philippine maintains complete ownership and sovereignty over all sites.
Pax Silica, meanwhile, is a US-led global alliance launched in December 2025 to protect global supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, and critical minerals among allied nations, primarily to counter China’s tech dominance.
According to Left-leaning groups, these foreign partnerships enhance geopolitical risks for the Philippines. EDCA is transforming our country into an American military outpost and giving Americans access makes us a target. Washington is using Manila to contain China. Philippine sovereignty is supposedly being surrendered to another imperial power and local development is being sacrificed for foreign security interests.
These allegations deserve a debate. No military agreement should escape scrutiny. Concerns for the environment, indigenous rights, and Philippine sovereignty surrounding Pax Silica should not be simply shrugged off.
This is correct and should not be a left/right issue. Building huge AI data centers offshore in the Philippines that not even Americans want because of the negative environmental impact should be debated. The same goes for EDCA which does make the Philippines a military target if the USA were to ever engage in a wider war. However, even without EDCA the Philippines receives millions every year in military aid from the USA. The Philippine and American military forces are inextricably intertwined.
But listen carefully to the larger narrative. The perspective begins sounding remarkably similar to Beijing’s.
China has repeatedly argued that expanded EDCA access undermines regional stability and drags the Philippines into America’s confrontation with China. Parts of the Philippine national-democratic Left make essentially the same strategic argument.
I’m not alleging collusion. But there is a more interesting question about the resistance to EDCA that needs to be answered. Why are supposedly opposing ideological camps repeatedly arriving at positions producing the same strategic outcome: weakening Philippine-American security cooperation precisely when China is pressing its expansive claims in the West Philippine Sea?
What about the opposition to Pax Silica?
The Philippines joined the US-led initiative in April. New Clark City is being positioned as a hub for AI, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, and secure technology supply chains. The proposed development covers roughly 1,620 hectares, with BCDA projecting eventual investments of $40 billion to $70 billion and more than 130,000 jobs.
Those are projections, not guarantees, and the government should be required to prove them.
But Pax Silica’s strategic purpose is unmistakable. The United States and its partners want technology and critical-mineral supply chains less dependent on China. The Philippines wants to climb those same supply chains rather than remain primarily an exporter of labor and low-value commodities.
And once again, elements of the Philippine Left are marching against it.
The ideological ancestors of today’s Philippine Maoists once looked toward Mao Zedong’s China as proof that a communist revolution could transform an impoverished Asian society. Yet modern China became an economic superpower only after dismantling much of Mao’s economic system.
Beginning in 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s China opened itself to foreign investment, introduced market incentives, and loosened collectivized agriculture, eventually becoming one of capitalism’s greatest manufacturing platforms. China’s economy subsequently grew around 9% annually for decades, while close to 800 million people escaped extreme poverty.
China did not accomplish that by becoming more Maoist. It achieved economic success by becoming less so.
Vietnam offers another uncomfortable exhibit. Its Doi Moi reforms that began in 1986 moved the country toward markets, private enterprise, foreign investment, and international trade. Vietnam remained communist politically, while retreating from orthodox communist economics. The Soviet Union, too, disappeared in 1991.
Communism’s greatest historical humiliation was not simply that its enemies defeated it. Its surviving practitioners had to abandon much of its economics to survive.
So that while Filipino Maoists continue fighting American imperialism as though history stopped during the Vietnam War, communist Vietnam, for example, welcomes American investment.
The revolutionaries have somehow become more doctrinaire than the revolution that inspired them.
While some on the left might be Maoists and "more doctrinaire than the revolution that inspired them" they don't have much if any power or reach.
Meanwhile, American bases in Subic and Clark disappeared more than three decades ago. Today, Chinese vessels confront Filipino vessels in waters over which the Philippines possesses sovereign rights.
Yes, practically as soon as the Americans left the Chinese began building bases in the West Philippine Sea. You can read about that at this link.
The weakening of those “offshore bases” had already started in 1991 when the Philippines, unwilling to accept Washington’s ambiguous commitment to its defense, refused to extend the lease on the Seventh Fleet’s bastion at Subic Bay. As US Navy tugs towed Subic’s floating dry docks homeward to Pearl Harbor, the Philippines gained full responsibility for its own defense, which it largely failed to fund. As a result, during a raging typhoon three years later, China occupied some shoals in the Spratly Islands—the first step in what would be a stealthy bid for control over the South China Sea and its later challenge to US power in the Pacific. Instead of air and navy patrols, the Philippine military grounded a rusting US-surplus ship on nearby Ayungin Shoal in 1998 to serve as a base for a squad of barefoot soldiers, who were forced to fish for their rations. Meanwhile, in those years the US Navy underwent a 40 percent reduction in its pool of surface warships and attack submarines, further weakening the US position on the Pacific littoral.
Yet much of the revolutionary script remains unchanged: America is the imperialist; capitalism is exploitation; foreign investment creates dependency; and security cooperation with Washington constitutes surrender.
An ideology that cannot adjust to a changing reality eventually stops being a logical tool for truth. It becomes dogma.
The NPA may still possess guns. Its remnants can still kill and intimidate. The government must therefore continue treating them as a security threat until armed resistance ends.
But I no longer see an advancing tide of the revolution, only its vestiges.
Perhaps the supreme contradiction of the Philippine communist movement is that, after more than half a century of armed struggle and generations sacrificed for a revolution, its greatest adversary turned out to be neither the Armed Forces, the United States, nor capitalism.
It is history.
Time moved on. The revolution did not.
This is not the greatest analysis. For one thing the author notes there are an estimated 785 NPA rebels since August 2025 yet since then, since the beginning of this year in fact, over 1,000 rebels and supporters have been neutralized. The author does not explore discrepancy which deserves to be answered before a full accounting of the remaining insurgency can be made.
