Insurgency: Brink of Victory

The Philippine Army has a new chief. Major General Andrres Centino is now in command. During his assumption-of-command ceremony he gave an interesting speech declaring that the Philippines is on the "brink of victory" against various security threats.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1140613

"The PA is the prime force provider in the campaign of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to address insurgency and terrorism. Today as we simultaneously wage war in different fronts working within a whole of-nation framework, the Army, all stakeholders, our country is on the brink of victory against the communist insurgency, secessionism, and terrorism," Maj. Gen. Andres Centino said in his speech during the assumption-of-command ceremony at the PA headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.

Centino said this victory will come soon as the AFP is led by a Commander-in-Chief (President Rodrigo R. Duterte) whose "unflinching resolve" fuels their determination to finally put an end to the conflict that has plagued the country for years.

"With all the instrumentalities and agencies of government focused now on doing their respective mandate channeling all efforts towards the united front through the President's issuance of Executive Order 70 and the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC), we have been able to focus and execute our core functions as your Philippine military to ensure victory over the enemy," he added.

"Interagency cooperation and collaboration have enabled our Army units in the field to engage the enemy decisively, resulting in dismantled guerilla fronts, reduction in the enemy strength, and the liberation of communities from the clutches of the communist terrorist group," he added.

"Additionally, the Army (has) attained desired level of readiness for us to effectively support the AFP's campaign and the programs of the national government as such we are poised to provide a ready and disciplined force able to maneuver and employ capabilities to accomplish campaign objectives across a range of military operations," he added.

"We will sustain our endeavor to modernize. Acquisition of new equipment and technology shall be prioritized," he added. 

He added that he will remain focused on key thrusts of the service such as readiness improvement, personnel management, operations, intelligence, logistics, and training.

"This (will) provide our soldiers (with) the advantage in the fights that lie ahead. These priority areas will serve as (a) framework to build (and modernize) our Army anchored on the guidelines of the Army Transformation Roadmap," he added.

"With these thrusts achieved, we will have a PA that is built on genuine transformation, an Army with modern technology and capability, an army that is professional, well equipped, and an Army of world-class standard and the pride of the Filipino people," Centino said.

Maj. Gen. Centino says the Philippines is "on the brink of victory against the communist insurgency, secessionism, and terrorism." What's really interesting here is his inclusion of secessionism. The reason for the Islamic insurgency is because the Muslims want Mindanao. They see that island as their ancestral domain. The Islamic insurgency grew out of the Muslim Independence Movement. The culmination of this movement is the BARMM which is an autonomous Muslim governed region in the Philippines. 

 “We have not given up on our struggle.” 

“We are not surrendering. Decommissioning is not tantamount to surrendering,” said Ebrahim, who is also Chief Minister of the interim Bangsamoro government. 

“I would like to emphasize that the decommissioning doesn’t mean we have given up on what we used to fight for,” Ebrahim emphasized.

https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2019/09/martial-law-insurgent-free.html

What the MILF used to fight for, the reason the group broke away from the MNLF, is the formation of an independent Muslim Mindanao. Will they continue to pursue this goal? According to Murad the answer is yes. How they continue this fight remains to be seen. So it's rather odd that the new Chief of the Army would say they are on the brink of victory against secessionism when the BARMM represents secessionism.

Another thing he mentions is "interagency cooperation and collaboration" in the field has led to the Army dismantling fronts, reducing enemy strength, and liberating communist controlled communities. This is a good thing and one hopes it can remain that way as this sort of cooperation was sorely lacking during the Marawi siege.

Instead of working together toward a common goal the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force were sometimes more concerned about their pride. Take the instance of one Air Force commander who ignored the requests of an Army commander to drop bombs until he was issued an apology for being shouted at.

Butler carried on with the immense duty of being the liaison, dispatching flights, choosing options, sometimes second guessing commanders. And sometimes, it felt as though he was the commanding general of the Air Force. Charlie got used to having him around, sige, alam mo na 'yan.  You know what to do.  

One of the battalion commanders gave him hell for delaying a flight when his troops were waiting for the bomb drop. Butler had to pull his phone away from his ears as the barrage of invectives came through; in retaliation he ignored the commander's bomb run requests in his sector for about a week until an apology was offered in a long and winding text message.

https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2020/09/book-review-battle-of-marawi-reveals.html

The book "The Battle of Marawi" is quite revelatory as it peels back the layers showing the AFP to be inept and ill-prepared. They even lied in their reports to cover up what exactly happened. In four years has the Army really become "built on genuine transformation, an Army with modern technology and capability, an army that is professional, well equipped, and an Army of world-class standard?" And what does Maj. Gen. Centino mean by "the Army (has) attained desired level of readiness for us to effectively support the AFP's campaign." Is that really accurate when the AFP is engaged in modernizing the military forces?

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/787907/new-commander-promises-a-disciplined-philippine-army/story/

"Acquisition of new equipment and technology shall be prioritized," he said, adding the goal is for the country to have a "professional and well equipped" army.

If the goal is for the Philippines to have "a professional and well equipped army" that suggests that currently the Army is neither professional or well equipped.

The last thing to remark on in this speech is his lauding of Duterte's "unflinching resolve" inspires the Army to finally end the conflict. What exactly is this resolve? Is it a resolve to end the insurgency? He does not say and actually Duterte has waffled all over the place when it comes to the CPP-NPA. As Mayor of Davao and at the beginning of his term as President he was on friendly terms with the communists. He even released certain prisoners belonging to the NDFP for peace talks. 

It's also demeaning to past administrations who have been resolved to end the insurgency during their terms. Nearly every president since Cory Aquino has vowed to end the insurgency. The Philippines has been on the brink of ending the insurgency for two decades now. Remember this from 2018?

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1049059/afp-on-track-to-end-insurgency-by-mid-2019-says-lorenzana

The Department of National Defense (DND) believes that the military is on track to exterminate Philippine communist insurgency — the longest in Asia — by middle of 2019, as President Rodrigo Duterte has earlier predicted. 

DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in his keynote speech at the agency’s 79th founding anniversary on Wednesday that their recent “victories” are leading to the end of communist insurgency by second quarter of 2019. 

“With the influx of NPA (New People’s Army) surrenderers responding to the President’s sincere call for peace, the inter-agency Task Force Balik-Loob was created last April 2018 to centralize the government’s reintegration efforts for former rebels and oversee the enhanced comprehensive local integration program or e-clip,” Lorenzana noted. 

He then mentioned that as of September 2018, there were 3,443 rebel returnees based on records of the AFP Peace and Development Office. 

Obviously his prediction was wrong. But why was he so confident in the first place? He says 3,443 rebels had surrendered as of September 2018. So how many are left? Since the publication of this article hundreds more have surrendered. In 2010 the NPA was estimated at being less than 5,000.

Perhaps with Maj. Gen. Centino at the helm the Army can push the insurgency over the brink and get the final victory. Apparently Centino is an ardent communist hunter.

https://ptvnews.ph/northern-mindanaos-top-npa-hunter-named-as-new-army-chief/

The new chief served as the AFP deputy chief of staff for operations before his transfer to the 4ID, and was known to be big on hunting down communist rebels. 

There are several articles calling Centino a "Top NPA hunter" but they don't give any evidence or list of accomplishments. If he is big on hunting the NPA he does not seem to big on killing them. 

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1132740

The identities of six in 10 communist New Peoples Army (NPA) combatants in Northern Mindanao are already known to government authorities, the chief of the Army's 4th Infantry Division (4ID) said.

In a report delivered during the Joint Meeting of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and Regional Task Force ELCAC with President Rodrigo R. Duterte on  Friday afternoon here, Maj. Gen. Andres Centino said the identification of NPA personalities in the region has assisted the military to convince combatants to surrender and pursue rebellion if they resist.

Since NTF-ELCAC was formed through Executive Order (EO 70) in 2018, Centino said 4ID managed to profile 478 of 820 active-duty NPA fighters.

He attributed this to an improved database, which also helped in the discovery of the burial sites of rebels slain by their own comrades so that their bodies could be exhumed and returned to their respective families.

"Before, most of these rebels are known through their aliases, but after (the creation of NTF-ELCAC), we were able to know their real names, and we were able to trace their whereabouts," Centino said.

Just like Duterte and the NTC-ELCAC, Centino wants these rebels to surrender and avail of the E-CLIP program which provides cash, housing, and job opportunities. But he is not averse to killing them if need be.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1139074

Maj. Gen. Andres Centino, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said the latest batch of surrenderers weakened further the communist rebel movement in Bukidnon.

“We will continue to press the fight against the CTG in our area of operations first to pressure them to surrender or decimate their forces through armed engagement if necessary,” he said.

If they all surrendered the insurgency would end quickly but with the NICA saying that there are 300,000 to 400,000 CPP-NPA allies in the government and the proliferation of many front groups, some of which have members in Congress, it's not going to be that easy.