Editorial:
Celebrate a year of victories in the armed struggle

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

The NPA has been launching more tactical offensives nationwide. It has responded well to the call of the CPP Central Committee�s 11th plenum at the close of 2002 to intensify the armed struggle.

Since the latter half of last year, the NPA has launched more than one tactical offensive a week in various parts of the country. In the last few months, the NPA�s tactical offensives have become even more frequent and have reverberated like thunder. Consequently, the NPA has confiscated hundreds of weapons that could arm several score platoons of Red fighters. It has resolved at one level, the dearth of arms in the NPA and the need to arm the thousands who wish to join the people�s army.

One of the most celebrated tactical offensives of the previous year was the raid on the PICOP armory in Bislig, Surigao del Sur on March 21, where almost a hundred assorted firearms were confiscated. Another was the daring raid on the 52nd IB detachment in Oras, Eastern Samar on June 26, where 25 firearms were seized and 15 enemy forces killed.

This past year, the NPA has also demonstrated an even higher grasp of military tactics, greater capability with respect to guerrilla maneuvers, firm knowledge of the terrain, expertise in combining advanced and basic military hardware and better intelligence work. This capability was achieved by systematically launching military trainings and implementing a high level of military discipline.

Thus, not only is the NPA able to ensure the victory of tactical offensives, it is now even better at carrying out counter-attacks during defensive battles in order to frustrate the enemy�s assaults.

On the other hand, the reactionary government and its armed forces are in a daze as they face armed attacks by the NPA from all sides. The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police are in a constant state of dread and stupefaction.

Demoralization is spreading among the ranks of the AFP and PNP�s junior officers and rank-and-file as the antipeople practices and the rampant corruption and criminality within the military bureaucracy, especially among high-ranking officials are further exposed. It further deepens in the face of increasing failures and casualties sustained by the AFP and PNP in the field of battle and their intensifying isolation from the people.

More soldiers, policemen and paramilitary forces have been bolting the AFP, PNP and CAFGU as a result of the systematic propaganda and consciousness-raising carried out by the revolutionary movement. A striking example involved a CAFGU platoon in Mindanao that surrendered its firearms to the NPA. Others have joined the Lt. Crispin Tagamolila Movement and have eventually joined the NPA or serve as secret contacts of the revolutionary movement within the reactionary military and police. They provide valuable information, conduct propaganda among other soldiers and police forces, or procure arms and other logistics for the NPA.

The AFP and PNP�s desperation grows worse in the face of the continuous advance of people�s war and their mounting casualties and failures. Consequently, the enemy trains its guns and fascist wrath on the people.

More and more cases of human rights violations are being reported, including cases of �salvaging� (extrajudicial executions), illegal arrests, torture, rape, abuse of women and children, strafing, blockades and restrictions on the movement of people, among others.

The AFP resorts to the tactic of concentrating on 12 of what they consider �priority� guerrilla fronts with the aim of defeating the revolutionary forces in these areas and curbing the expansion and growth of other fronts.

However, due to its limited numbers, the AFP is forced to leave more than a hundred other guerrilla fronts wide open. The relatively fewer enemy forces in these fronts are easier targets for NPA tactical offensives.

The NPA, together with the local Party branches, people�s militia and revolutionary mass organizations, are frustrating the �clear-hold-consolidate-develop� tactic and the long-term military presence in an area by RSOTs (Reengineered Special Operations Team) in the guerrilla fronts concentrated on by the enemy. The revolutionary forces expose the enemy�s small, deceptive �civic projects� through vigorous propaganda work and mass actions.

Wherever there is a long-term, large-scale enemy presence in an area, there is need to take extra precaution and come up with creative ways of organizing, consolidating the Party, conducting education and launching agrarian struggles and other mass campaigns. On the other hand, this also means that there are many more targets for NPA attacks.

The NPA launches tactical offensives even as it prepares the masses and raises their militancy in order to oppose and resist through various means the anticipated military backlash against the unarmed people.

It is the task of the NPA to further advance the people�s war in the coming years. The requisites for the early substage of the strategic defensive of the people�s war have already been completed in the main, and the requisites for entering the middle substage already exist.

In the coming year, the NPA will certainly increase its capacity to launch more and more victorious tactical offensives as it all-sidedly advances revolutionary work in the countryside. The NPA devotes 90% of its time to political work and 10% to military work to maintain the solid unity between the people and their army and ensure the firm political basis for advancing military work.

The NPA will surpass the victories it has achieved in the field of armed struggle. If every guerrilla front could launch one tactical offensive every three months, there will be no less than five tactical offensives launched against the AFP every week. This ensures the attainment of the targeted number of firearms seized from tactical offensives.

The NPA is in a position to surpass severalfold the number of firearms it seized from the AFP and PNP the previous year.

The NPA is improving its recruitment of Red fighters as well as the further expansion and consolidation of the Party within the NPA. We must come up with a systematic recruitment plan that would enable activists from the ranks of the revolutionary mass organizations and people�s militia in the countryside to join the NPA.

Even as we strengthen support for, and recruitment into, the NPA from the countryside, we also give special emphasis to recruiting workers and educated youth, combining them with the greater number who hail from the peasantry.

By launching military trainings and holding military conferences on various levels, the NPA is able to raise its capacity both in terms of practice and theory, to advance people�s war. It also systematizes the training of officers for the people�s army nationwide to increase the number of Red fighters capable of leading the growing army.

21 March 2004
English Edition

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