The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) needs to upgrade its strategy against the New People’s Army (NPA) to effectively defeat the communist insurgency problem in the country, a top military official said on Sunday.
AFP chief of staff Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said they are now conducting an intensive review on the best practices that were conducted in the past against the CPP-(Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA.
(6th Infantry Division – Kampilan Facebook / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
“We have to sustain our best efforts and of course we have to do corrective measures in all the things that we committed mistakes. So we really need to catch up on the catch up plans (against the CPP-NPA),” said Sobejana.
The government has further intensified the campaign against the communist rebels since the peace talks bogged down anew under the Duterte administration. Part of the intensified campaign are the aggressive military operations and crackdown on personalities identified with the communist rebels.
In the past months, government and military officials have stepped up their social media presence against the communist rebels, although there was a public backlash when it wrongly tagged some alumni of the University of the Philippines as slain and captured communist rebels.
“We’ve been fighting this insurgency for 50 years now so the people are really tired of this problem. So what we are doing now is to think well on what to do best,” said Sobejana.
The communist rebels have been waging more than five decades of armed struggle through direct engagements with government troopers or ambush and raids on police stations and other government installations.
President Duterte also cancelled all peace negotiations with the communist rebels and did not even declare a traditional Holiday truce with the rebels.