Regarding basic and special tactical offensives
Punitive action against the Keangnam Construction Co. in Mulanay, Quezon last October. The capture of Maj. Noel Buan, intelligence chief of the Southern Luzon Command, last July. The arrests of Brig. Gen. Victor Obillo in Davao City and Chief Insp. Roberto Bernal in Bacun, Sorsogon last February. The capture of Sgt. Wivino Demol, an intelligence operative, in Rizal in January 1998. These are but some of the noteworthy special tactical offensives launched recently by the New People�s Army (NPA).
Punitive action was taken against the Keangnam Construction Co., a Korean outfit, for its refusal to respect the taxation policies and laws of the people�s democratic government. Meanwhile, Major Buan, General Obillo, Chief Inspector Bernal and Sergeant Demol were arrested for their intelligence activities that formed part of the reactionary government�s suppressive military campaigns against the people and the revolutionary movement.
Aside from these, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines has issued a directive to the NPA in June 1998 to form special units to arrest the relatives of the late dictator Marcos (especially Imelda Marcos and Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) along with their minions, bring them before the people�s court and make them answer for their crimes against the people.
Special tactical offensives are combat operations that may be carried out by NPA commando units or armed city partisans beyond guerrilla zones. These offensives may encompass urban areas, the enemy�s trunklines as well as his rear.
Special tactical offensives are aimed at:
- "delivering occasional head blows to the enemy, tying down his forces to urban areas and strategic camps, seizing arms and sabotaging facilities that are crucial to his military campaigns of suppression, waging nationwide propaganda through dramatic or high-impact offensives and countering enemy propaganda that the people�s army is too remote and is dwindling;
- "targeting and punishing the most notorious enemies of the revolution, such as the biggest plunderers, the worst violators of human rights, renegades in the active service of the enemy and other bad elements who have incurred blood debts, thereby making them all feel unsafe, waste resources for their selfprotection and cover themselves with armed body guards whose presence all the more justifies armed assaults;
- " undertaking exemplary actions against key facilities and operations of the foreign monopoly capitalists, big compradors and big landlords who refuse to negotiate with representatives of the people�s democratic government on outstanding matters and violently oppose the revolutionary policies and laws on businesss enterprises, land reform and taxation;
- "preventing the most reactionary politicians and plunderers from appearing in public and from deceiving the people in the course of reactionary elections and other political activities and thereby countering the enemy objective of conjuring the illusion of democracy and aggravating his inability to rule in the old way. !"serving notice to all and sundry that the people�s army has a long-range capability and that the enemy cannot attack the people in the rural and urban areas with impunity.
By a rule of thumb, guerrilla units of the NPA devote 90% of their time and effort to mass work and 10% to tactical offensives. The NPA expands and consolidates the mass base in the guerrilla zones to advance wave upon wave. On the basis of an ever-widening and -expanding mass base, the people�s army can wage guerrilla warfare intensively and extensively in the countryside.
In this regard, 90% of tactical offensives launched by the NPA are basic tactical offensives while 10% are special.
These percentages are not meant to be followed mechanically but are meant to stress what is principal and secondary in the relationship between mass work and combat operations and between basic tactical offensives and special ones.
Nonetheless, if the people�s army were to limit itself to basic tactical offensives in the countryside, the enemy can become confident that it has a completely safe rear and that it can deploy more forces against the guerrilla fronts in the countryside. It is therefore necessary to attack the enemy where he comes from and do so once in a while or as often as possible and necessary.
But the conduct of special tactical offensives should not run counter to the strategic line of protracted people�s war. Special tactical offensives must be carried out in such a way and at a rate that they do not change the legal and defensive character of the mass struggle in the urban areas and that the legal democratic forces can give full play to their legal forms of struggle.
The worsening economic and political crisis of the ruling system increasingly makes it impossible for the enemy to rule in the old way. His inability to rule in the old way will certainly be aggravated by the special tactical offensives of the people�s army.
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