The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-CC) today ordered the New People’s Army to “train to use their rifles, and develop or acquire weapons against enemy aircraft.”

In a message to the NPA to mark its 53rd anniversary, the CPP said the NPA must draw “lessons and inspiration” from Vietnam where the US aerial bombardment in the 1960s was defeated by the Vietnamese revolutionaries using hand-carried surface-to-air missiles. It also cited the experience in the 1980s of the anti-Soviet mujahideens who used US-supplied Stinger missiles, as well as the recent success of the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan against US drones and aircraft.

According to the CPP Information Bureau, there have been around 200 incidents of aerial bombardment, aerial strafing and artillery shelling since 2017 which mostly were aimed at civilian communities, farms and mountain villages of minority communities.

While some units of the NPA were hit by AFP aerial bombardment, the large majority of NPA fighters have successfully used guerrilla methods of secrecy to render the AFP’s aerial surveillance ineffective and deny it of targets. Without clear targets, the AFP has been dropping bombs indiscriminately causing widespread terror against civilians.

The CPP denounced the Duterte regime’s military and police overspending, together with its corruption and wasteful infrastructure spending, as among the reasons for bankrupting the government and budget cuts for public health and public education.

Early last year, the NPA successfully fired at an AFP BlackHawk helicopter and prevented it from landing in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. (CPP Information Bureau)

READ | CPP Central Committee’s Message to the NPA on its 53rd anniversary: Raise the fighting capability of the NPA and the masses! Persevere and advance along the path of protracted people’s war!