Once hailed by their allies and sympathizers as heirs of the Katipunan and bearers of the great revolutionary spirit, the Communist Party of the Philippines is now on the brink of suffering a decisive defeat in the hands of a revitalized counterinsurgency campaign that has blended arms, direct community support and road building.
The CPP used to employ a triad operation it calls ASARBB or armed struggle, agrarian revolution and base building enabling it to grow into seven guerrilla fronts or areas of influence in Negros since the 1990s but it was not able to adapt to the challenges of a whole of government approach under then President Duterte’s Executive Order 70 that has led to the whittling down of the CPP”s armed wing, the New People’s Army into a handful of stragglers from a previous force of a few hundreds of rifles since former priest Frank Fernandez headed the CPP’s reconstruction efforts here.
Since Duterte’s EO70 was implemented in 2018, the Army and the Philippine government had implemented a combined arms approach of sorts, using warfighting, direct community aid and road building to chip away at the CPP that once held sway over 30 villages (barangays) and 89 communities or sitios in upland areas of the island with a population of close to five million (4.7 million based on the 2020 census).
Army general Ted Dumosmog, commander of the 303rd Infantry Brigade that leads the ground war in Negros Occidental province sits down with DNX Executive Editor Julius D Mariveles and nuances the gains of the fight against the Communist terrorists and the need to continue fighting for the peace despite their wins.
