Editorial: Further advance guerrilla warfare throughout the country!
The crisis-ridden reactionary system in the country continues to slump and disintegrate. The nation�s economy continues to worsen and the poverty and oppression suffered by the masses of the people are becoming more acute. The people have more considerable basis to protest. Contradictions among the ruling classes are intensifying. The semicolonial and semifeudal system in the country reels, especially as the world capitalist system sinks into recession. The latter is pulling down the Philippine economy, tied to it all the more by the policy of "globalization". New disorders are erupting in the world and in the country.
The crisis of imperialism has worsened even more since the terrorist attack in the US on September 11 and the US war of aggression against Afghanistan. In the Philippines, the ruling system is distressed anew with Misuari�s repudiation of the agreement between the MNLF and the government and the outbreak of fighting between the Misuari faction of the MNLF and the government�s armed forces.
The steadfastly and rapidly strengthening subjective forces of the revolution � the Party, people�s army, revolutionary mass movement and united front � are in a much better position now to advance people�s war in the light of prevailing excellent conditions for revolution.
The US-Macapagal-Arroyo regime responds with even more repression to the intensifying crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. Alongside the regime�s intensifying attacks on guerrilla fronts of the New People�s Army, it is taking a hard-line stance with regard to the peace talks.
The government�s armed forces are principally concentrated on the NPA and its revolutionary base. At present, 75% of AFP and CAFGU combatants (55,288 personnel) are concentrated against the NPA. There are 11,600 forces positioned against the MILF and 8,700 against the Abu Sayyaf.
Meanwhile, even as the NDFP and GRP panels have agreed to resume peace talks, the regime continues to impede its progress. The regime insists on its condition that the NDFP cease what the GRP calls "political assassinations". This violates a basic principle in The Hague Declaration of 1992 (the linchpin agreement in the peace talks) which states that the talks should be conducted without preconditions from either side. The imposition of such a condition is tantamount to requiring the NDFP to relinquish its responsibility to dispense justice in accordance with the decrees of the revolutionary organs of political power and the people�s courts.
Obviously, peace talks are not a priority of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime. Thus, it has time and again been imposing conditions and arbitrarily suspending the talks. At present, the regime is more interested in defeating the revolutionary movement by means of all-out war.
In its intent to crush the revolutionary movement, the enemy is implementing the tactic of concentration to take advantage of its strategic military superiority over the NPA. The AFP is massing several brigades of troops in the first 13 priority guerrilla fronts (which it intends to destroy by 2002), carrying out fierce offensives and going on a ruthless rampage against the people. This enemy campaign is being implemented within the framework of Oplan Makabayan/Balangai.
Due to a shortage of forces and resources, the AFP is compelled to prioritize certain selected targets of concentration by each area command: Mindoro Oriental (SOLCOM and the AFP general command); Isabela-Quirino-Aurora-Nueva Ecija (NOLCOM), Bohol (VISCOM), and the Caraga Region (SOUTHCOM). Next to Basilan, Mindoro Oriental suffers the highest enemy concentration today. Upon Macapagal-Arroyo�s direct order, half of the 13 combat battalions of the AFP presently deployed in the Southern Tagalog region have converged in Mindoro, aside from two battalions of the PNP.
As a result of these concentrated operations by the enemy�s armed forces, the people�s welfare and human rights are relentlessly trampled upon. This proceeds from the so-called "back-to-basics orientation", which involves no less than a return to the purely military basic orientation and the abandonment of the old deceptive civic action programs.
Such an orientation involves a complete disregard for how people are treated and how military operations may affect them. The spate of victims of forced evacuations, especially in Mindanao and Mindoro, deserves notice. This has wrought cruel hardships and injuries on the people and has thus resulted in the further isolation of the enemy from the people.
We carry out our line of intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare within the strategic defensive stage by launching tactical offensives of various sizes that the people�s army can win against weak sections of the enemy in as many fronts as possible throughout the country.
In the face of enemy concentration in some guerrilla fronts, we need to launch an increasing number of tactical offensives in even more parts of the country. Thus, the enemy will be compelled to overstretch its forces and attention across an increasing number of guerrilla fronts and a wider field of combat. This, even as we attack isolated small and weak sections of big and strong concentrations of the enemy.
In this manner, we steadily strengthen ourselves and gradually weaken the enemy. The strategic superiority of the enemy with regard to military matters can always be transformed into the revolutionary armed forces� tactical superiority. This can be achieved through intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base.
In this regard, the victorious tactical offensive of the NPA in Cateel, Davao Oriental on November 10 is good news. In that battle, the NPA annihilated 18 soldiers from the headquarters of the AFP�s 27th Special Forces Company, wounded 11 others and confiscated 21 high-powered rifles.
It is important to renew and strive to carry out the Party�s call in its statement on the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the NPA: Forces of the people�s army spread out in more than 100 guerrilla fronts should launch series of tactical offensives that can be won. If on the average we succeed in seizing even only 10 rifl es from the enemy forces in every guerrilla front every month, we shall thus be able to cumulatively win bigger victories in war. This will certainly overextend the forces of the enemy and expose their weak sections, which we can easily annihilate.
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