Why rebel in the Philippines?

What made the Philippines such fertile land for revolution was not just the widespread anger towards the interference of the USA, but also the economic structure of the countryside. In rural areas, the land of the Philippines is mostly controlled by large landlord dynasties, raising rents to squeeze already poverty stricken people into an even dire economic situation. Killings committed by the police and the military are another source of anger towards the government, who routinely conduct arbitrary detentions and killings of workers who strike, and are especially violent against ethnic minorities in the countryside such as the Lumad people. One of the most well-known cases of this was the Hacienda Luisita massacre in which 12 farmers and two children were killed by Philippine police and soldiers (two suffocated and died after inhaling tear gas). Other various problems facing the Filipino working class include pollution and environmental destruction, lack of employment, low wages, drug abuse, Islamic terrorism, and violent crime.

In this photo taken Nov. 23, 2016, a 24-year-old New People’s Army guerrilla, who uses the nom de guerre Comrade Katryn, smiles as she talks to reporters at a rebel encampment

What does the NPA provide to rural villagers?

In this documentary, RedFish journalists embedded themselves with a platoon of communist guerrillas of the New People’s Army.

Despite being an army, most of the activity of the New People’s Army of the Philippines does not include fighting. NPA recruits are required to undergo several months of work for the NPA before they are made into fulltime soldiers. Most of this work depends on the skill of the individual recruit but it is mostly farming and doing small jobs in rural villages in NPA areas. The NPA offers medical services to rural villagers and deploys its guerrillas to conduct labour jobs on rural farms and villages. The medical services the NPA offers are very varied but the most common medical services the NPA offers are vaccinations, circumcisions, infant health advice, and wound treatments. This was demonstrated best after the Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 which killed 10,000 people in the Philippines. After the typhoon had ended, NPA soldiers lended their hands to help rebuild villages, help farmers rebuild their homes and offer emergency aid to injured civilians.

How does the NPA conduct its army?

The NPA accepts into their fighting ranks women, LGBT people, and people of any religion and ethnic background. For this reason many of their members consist of various oppressed people. Their weapons and tactics are very typical for a guerrilla army. The NPA uses the jungles, caves, and mountains to build bases in isolated and hard to reach areas. The heavy rains, jungle mist, and strong winds all provide a degree of camouflage from military spy drones which the USA deploys in the Philippines. NPA weapons are very varied but typically they use M16 rifles, M14 rifles, Kalashnikov rifles, Among the more exotic weapons, one NPA broadcast video depicts an NPA commander with a Tavor rifle used by the Israeli military.

During the Troubles in Northern Ireland there were many cases of Irish immigrants sending weapons from the USA to the IRA by sending individual pieces of weapons through the post. It is not unrealistic to assume that this same strategy is used to funnel weapons to the NPA, as the USA has very relaxed attitudes towards gun control and a high Filipino immigrant population. The Philippines is a poor country with violent drug gangs, a high level of violent crime, covered in hard to penetrate heavy jungles, and is one of the capital shipping countries in the world. All of these factors make the control of weaponry very difficult and easy for the NPA to acquire.

Conclusion-

The NPA is aiming towards a ceasefire with the Philippine government and its current president Rodrigo Duterte but has not cancelled the revolution and is very unlikely to lay down arms. Communist guerrillas in history have never been defeated through brute force alone since most attempts to fight guerrillas also ends up harming local people and thereby creating more communist guerrillas. The only way the NPA can be defeated is either from inside the NPA itself or if the Philippines ever sees a single day without poverty, but the NPA has kept itself together for nearly half a century and the Philippines has never in hundreds of years seen a single day without mass poverty.