The end of the NPA is imminent! So says top NPA commanders who have surrendered.
Three ranking leaders of the New People’s Army (NPA) who have returned to the fold of the law have admitted that the communist organization is on the brink of collapse.
The three, who belonged to the Komiteng Larangan Gerilya Sierra Madre (KLG SM) operating in the province, surrendered and yielded their high-powered firearms to the Army’s 91st Infantry Battalion (91IB) and Philippine National Police (PNP) from Aurora and Nueva Ecija in a secluded area in Sitio Balitwak, Barangay San Isidro, San Luis, Aurora last Saturday.
The rebel leaders surrendered two M16 5.56mm rifles and an M653 5.56mm rifle or Baby Armalite.
In an exclusive interview with the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Monday, the ranking NPA surrenderers, who introduced themselves as alias "Ka Dingdong", "Ka Dong" and "Ka Junjun", said what remains of the NPA membership is already weak.
Ka Dingdong, a squad leader, and team leaders Ka Dong and Ka Junjun, said from the previous three platoons of KLG SM, there is now only one platoon under the leadership of its commanding officer Harold Miňosa and vice commanding officer Sudario Lee alias "Ka Aura".
They said the rebels are already dwindling in numbers as many have surrendered due to the hardships they are experiencing in the mountains.
“Sa totoo lang hindi na namin kaya ang paghihirap sa loob ng kilusan. Ito ang nararanasan ng hukbo, gutom at pagod, nararamdaman namin na wala ng patutunguhan ang ipinaglalaban namin. Nalinlang kami ng dati naming mga kasamahan. Lakad lang kami ng lakad, walang katapusan kaya kusang loob na kaming sumuko at nagbaba ng armas (The truth is we can no longer bear the hardships inside the movement. This is what the comrades are experiencing, hunger and fatigue. We feel that what we were fighting for nothing. We were fooled by our former comrades. We were just walking and walking and there is no ending. That is why, we decided to surrender and yield our firearms),” they said.
The surrenderers said they were NPA fighters since 2017 and had engaged in close fights with government troops five times in the provinces of Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya and Aurora.
Coming from former NPA rebels instead of hopeful AFP commanders makes this rhetoric seem more authentic and plausible. But who knows what to believe when the AFP was caught last year faking a photo of surrendering rebels? Have 4,000 surrendering rebels received millions in aid from the government?
The financial aid was distributed through the agency’s Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (ECLIP), a “locally-driven, managed, and implemented program which veers away from the past practice of pre-packaged interventions designed at the national level,” the DILG said in a statement.
The DILG’s ECLIP provides each rebel surrenderer with an immediate cash aid of P15,000, livelihood assistance amounting to P50,000, and reintegration assistance of P21,000, as well as firearms remuneration for each surrendered firearm.
Of the total P304.43 million, the DILG said that P58.845 million was in the form of immediate assistance to 3,923 former rebels, P121.250 million of livelihood assistance was given to 2,426 former rebels, P57.217 million for firearms remuneration of 858 former rebels and P67.116 million was for reintegration assistance to 3,196 former rebels.
As of May 31, the 4,190 ECLIP beneficiaries composed of 2,646 were former regular members of the New People’s Army, while 1,544 were from the Militia ng Bayan, who are auxiliary members of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the agency said.
The program is “heavily concentrated” in Mindanao, particularly the Davao Region, which has 1,035 beneficiaries, Northern Mindanao with 498 beneficiaries, Caraga with 496 beneficiaries, Soccksargen with 370 beneficiaries, and Zamboanga Peninsula with 159 beneficiaries, the DILG said.
There are 349 ECLIP beneficiaries in Eastern Visayas while 121 are from Western Visayas and 72 from Central Visayas.
In Luzon, the DILG said it has assisted 245 former rebels in the Bicol Region, 203 in Mimaropa, 174 in Central Luzon, 179 in Cordillera Administrative Region, 101 in Cagayan Valley, 27 in Ilocos Region, and seven in the National Capital Region.
Those are interesting statistics but we are not told if the number 4,000 is cumulative since the beginning of the E-CLIP program or from some other fixed period. It cannot possibly be cumulative because the AFP claimed over 10,000 rebels and supporters surrendered in 2018 alone.
As this develops, the AFP official said the number of regular NPA members and their supporters, who have surrendered to government forces from Jan. 1 to Nov. 28 this year, has now reached 10,698.
https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2019/10/martial-law-continues-to-lose.html
So where does the number 4,000 come from? The number 4,000 has come up before in 2018.
From January 1 to March 15, the AFP has claimed recording 4,356 NPA regular members and supporters who have surrendered.
Of this number, 626 were either NPA regulars or Sangay sa Partiko Lokal members and 3,730 were Militia ng Bayan, Underground Mass Organization members and mass supporters.
https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2019/10/martial-law-continues-to-lose.html
I have
written about this math problem before and the again the numbers do not add up. There are either more NPA members than the AFP would care to admit or something else is happening.
A recent situation in Jolo has raised some serious questions about how the war against terrorism is being conducted. Just how has Abu Sayyaf been able to operate for so long? Who is financing them? Who is protecting them?
Four soldiers were killed following an alleged misencounter with policemen in Barangay Walled City, Jolo, Sulu, according to a report from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and the police.
The initial report said the Jolo Municipal Police Station (MPS) and the Provincial Drug Enforcement Unit were on patrol at Barangay Bus-Bus when they spotted a gray Montero SUV boarded by four armed men along Sitio Marina, Barangay Walled at around 2:40 p.m. on Monday, June 29.
When confronted by the Philippine National Police team, the men introduced themselves as members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. They were then directed to proceed to Jolo MPS for verification.
Upon arrival at the station, police said the men fled toward Martirez, Barangay San Raymundo.
When PNP personnel chased them, the police said the men disembarked from their vehicle with firearms. The men pointed their firearms towards the personnel, however, before they could pull the trigger, the police was able to shoot them in defense, the report said.
The report added police could not find any motive yet for the shooting. A team from the Scene of the Crime Operatives is currently processing the scene.
That is the initial
story given by the PNP and it turns out it was a lie. Those AFP soldiers
were undercover operatives
and they would
not have had weapons on their
person. That means they did not fire their weapons.
Army chief Lt. Gen. Gilbert Gapay on Tuesday (June 30) called for the sacking of Sulu provincial police commanders for the killing of four Army intelligence officers by policemen in the province’s capital, Jolo.
The four intelligence officers were tracking two suspected suicide bombers from the Abu Sayyaf Group when their vehicle was flagged down by police on Monday (June 29) afternoon.
The Army officers had identified themselves to the policemen but still ended up being shot by the policemen when one of the officers alighted, unarmed, from the SUV they were riding in.
The police have a different version of what happened. The Sulu police force claimed that its men stopped the vehicle carrying the intelligence officers and instructed them to go to a nearby police station for verification of identities.
According to the PNP narrative, as the police team and the Army officers neared the police station, the officers’ SUV sped off, which triggered a car chase. Police said they only defended themselves as the soldiers opened fire.
Gapay called the case as one of “murder” and described the police account as “fabricated.”
“We find the report fabricated, full of inconsistencies. Parang sine and very misleading (It’s like a movie and very misleading),” he said.
“There was never a firefight. Walang gunfight and our men never fired a single shot (There’s no gunfight and our men never fired a single shot). There were witnesses, there were CCTVs and we have personnel tailing,” he added.
The policemen also fled the scene after the shooting, which Gapay said puzzled him.
“After na mapatay nila lahat they fled. SOP ba ‘yun? Diba pag namatay you have to cordon the area and wait for the SOCO? Wala, nagtagbuhan lahat (After they killed everyone they fled. Is that SOP? Isn’t it that when someone is killed you have to cordon off the area and wait for the SOCO? No, they all fled) ,” he said.
The AFP says there was no gunfight and that the PNP officers fled the scene. The NBI says one solider was shot eight times.
The National Bureau of Investigation found that one of the four soldiers killed by cops in Jolo, Sulu suffered eight gunshot wounds while the two others had at least three gunshot wounds each.
Eight times seems like overkill. Why would the PNP stop these soldiers and blast them? What motive could they possibly have to execute these four men in broad daylight and then flee the scene? Those four intel soldiers were on the trail of 2 suicide bombers who have now escaped capture.
An Army unit awaiting a signal to swoop down on an Abu Sayyaf bomb maker and two suspected female bombers instead received word that four of their comrades had been gunned down in Jolo, Sulu, a military spokesperson said on Thursday, July 2, 2020.
The team rushed to where the four Army intelligence operatives had been shot near the Jolo police headquarters on Monday afternoon, June 29, 2020, minutes after they were informed that the group’s leader, Maj. Marvin Indammog, had been killed, Army spokesperson Col. Ramon Zagala told the Inquirer.
“These soldiers were prepared to go after Sawadjaan once Major Indammog tracked down his location,” Zagala said. He was referring to Mundi Sawadjaan, a bomb expert and a target of Indammog’s group.
“We don’t know how close they got to pinpointing Sawadjaan and his cohorts’ location because they were already shot to death and all focus turned to the incident,” Zagala said.
Maj. Gen. Corleto Vinluan Jr., commander of Joint Task Force Sulu, said Indammog’s team was about to conduct a raid on the suspected bombers somewhere in Jolo that Monday afternoon.
“They came from Barangay Mauboh, in Patikul town, on their way to Jolo for this mission. It has been their packet mission for three weeks,” Vinluan said.
Alleged IS leader in PHHe said they were set to capture Sawadjaan and two newly trained female suicide bombers when their plan was stalled after they were stopped at the checkpoint in Barangay Busbus.
“When they were ordered to report to Jolo Municipal Police Station, everything was no longer going according to Indammog’s plan, until they were fired upon by the cops,” Vinluan said.
Sawadjaan, who is in his early 30s, is a nephew of Abu Sayyaf subleader Hatid Hajan Sawadjaan, the alleged leader of the Islamic State (IS) group in the Philippines.
The military said Mundi Sawadjaan was behind a series of deadly blasts in Sulu in 2019. These include the Jan. 27 twin bombings at the Jolo Cathedral, which left more than 20 dead and over 100 wounded; a suicide bombing that killed eight people at an Army camp in Indanan, Sulu, on June 28, in which he fitted explosive vests on the two Egyptian bombers; and a checkpoint bombing also in Indanan on Sept. 8, which killed three people, including the foreign female suicide bomber.
Three weeks of surveillance on a high value target down the drain. Now that Sawadjaan knows he was being watched he has certainly moved to safety. Perhaps the stupidest response to this incident is Senator Hontiveros' call for more legislation.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Thursday filed a resolution calling on the Senate to launch a probe that will aid legislation in response to the killing of four soldiers by police officers in Jolo, Sulu.
Hontiveros said her resolution "aims to institutionalize measures against the excessive use of force and violence within the police force."
Congress can hold investigations in aid of legislation because it has oversight powers on how the executive branch implements laws and policies.
Senator Pangilinan had the same reaction as Hontiveros thinking that legislation is the problem. Particularly he thinks the new Anti-Terror bill will cause an increase in such incidents.
“Nakakabahala ang balitang ito. Ngayon pa lang na hindi pa batas ang anti-terror bill, may nangyayari nang ganito. Ano na lang ang laban ng ordinaryong tao?” Pangilinan said in a statement.
(This news is alarming. The anti-terror bill has yet to become law but an incident like this already happened. What can an ordinary citizen do?)
“This incident is disturbing because it appears that the police are quick in pulling the trigger without careful judgment,” Pangilinan said.
“If they can do this to their fellow uniformed men, how much more to the ordinary civilians who are unarmed and defenseless?” he added.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1300439/pangilinan-wants-senate-to-probe-killing-of-4-army-men-in-jolo
We will all have
to wait for the NBI to finish their
investigation before making any judgements but it appears that the soldiers
were targeted for death by the cops who killed them. That is not
a problem
legislation
will fix. It also has nothing
to do with the anti-terror bill which has
now become law. Hard
questions must be asked and hard answers will surely be uncovered by the NBI. The question that must be
asked is, "Is the PNP protecting Abu
Sayyaf?"
Don't forget that during the Marawi siege weapons with AFP markings
were found.
Most weapons recovered from slain militants belonging to the Maute group and its allies or from areas they had vacated in this Lanao del Sur provincial capital bore marks which indicated that these came from the government, a military spokesperson said.
“It only meant that somebody from the government sold it to them,” said Capt. Jo-ann Petinglay, spokesperson for the Joint Task Force Marawi.
Petinglay, however, did not say how many of these recovered firearms had been confirmed to have come from the government armoury.
The military has recovered at least 628 firearms—among these high-powered weapons like Barrett .50 caliber sniper’s rifles and Armalite, Garand and M14 rifles—since fighting began in late May when Islamic State-inspired militants took over sections of Marawi.
According to Petinglay, finding out who are responsible for the delivery of the firearms to the Maute group and its allies is not the military’s priority, noting that the investigation can be conducted after the fighting here ends.
“It’s easy to track where (the firearms) came from (based on the markings). But it’s not our priority right now. Once the fighting is over, we will commence our investigation,” she said.
Later the AFP did a 180 and claimed none of the weapons came from the military.
“As for the (seized Maute Group) firearms inventoried so far, we are still to see any weapon (serial numbers) matching those in the inventory of the AFP,” Guerrero said in Filipino when asked during a press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City whether AFP weapons were found among the terrorists’ arms cache.
https://news.mb.com.ph/2017/12/17/seized-weapons-in-marawi-not-from-military-afp/
These weapons were then destroyed and with them all hope of finding their true provenance.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday witnessed the destruction of firearms seized from Islamic State-inspired extremists during the 5-month siege in Marawi City.
A total of 652 weapons that were either captured, confiscated, surrendered or recovered from Maute terrorists were destroyed at the Philippine Army headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.
A road roller vehicle flattened machine guns, squad automatic weapons, rifle propelled grenade launchers, sniper rifles, M16 rifles, shotguns and airguns. They were then cut into pieces using a metal bond circular saw.
The military said all destroyed firearms will later be burned. Metal residues and scrap will be properly kept for final disposal in accordance with the Armed Forces’ policies and directives, Tiongson said.
Did the AFP lie when they first claimed that the weapons bore AFP markings? Why would they do that? How did Maute rebels obtain those firearms? Aside from Islamic terrorists the NPA is most certainly receiving financial assistance from government officials namely through extortion taxes.
December last year, Duterte drew flak when his pronouncement during a visit at the Communist Party of the Philippines quoted him as saying that he pays revolutionary tax. A youtube video later circulated accusing him of giving P125 million as annual revolutionary taxes.
He clarified that he attended the CPP anniversary at a Typhoon Pablo-affected area where he gave some amount for the typhoon victims; the funds were sourced out from private donors. He said he merely kidded that the funds were the taxes that he would pay to NPAs, but because there was no barangay captain around to receive the donation, he coursed it through local NPA leaders.
In Thursday’s trade expo, Duterte said, “I can talk, but I can’t talk them out of their ideology. You have to realize the Communist Party is entering its 45th year here. You have to admit there’s been historical injustice committed on the people.”
Duterte said the national government should deal with the revolutionary groups by talking peace.
“Crimes I can deal with it. But with the revolutionary (groups), I give it to the (national) government, but here, I advised government not to make arrests of revolutionaries” he said.
As to the NPAs asking taxes he said “I cannot put it to a stop. So factor that in your investments. If you pay to the BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue), you prepare also for the NPA.” Some participants giggled and smiled on this remark.
Duterte said the above in 2013. He not only advocated paying NPA but he also sympathized
with them as being revolutionaries
who are attempting to correct historical injustices.
Today
the same problem continues to stymie the government's efforts to end the insurgency.
The DILG Secretary says that of the 349 officials, there are 11 provincial governors; five vice governors; 10 provincial board members; 55 mayors; 21 vice mayors and 41 councilors.
Also in the list are 126 barangay captains, 50 barangay councilors, and eight other barangay officials.
"This number is not alarming as compared to the total number of barangays in the country, but it sends a message that extortion starts at the community level, down in the grass roots," Año says.
Other source of extortion money are 11 former local government unit (LGU) officials, 10 incumbent congressman, and one former congressman.
Clearly the insurgency is being funded in part, whether small or large, by government officials.
The big question to ask from the incident in Jolo is were those soldiers killed to protect Abu Sayyaf? It is not out of the realm of possibility. Hopefully an NBI investigation will make the matter clear. A Senate inquiry into the Marawi siege would also clarify things. But instead of calling for that the so-called opposition wants more useless legislation.
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