A gratitude for the answer request given to me.
The New People's Army are incapable of winning the quasi-civil war with the Philippine government owing to their smaller numbers and limited support. The NPA numbered 24,000 at its historical maximum by 1986, which was rather tiny to the 250,000 to 320,000 soldiers of the Philippine army by 1972 not including the hundreds of thousands of men serving under the Constabulary. The huge numbers of the government servicemen at arms roaming across the country prevented and intimidated most people in the archipelago from immediately joining the NPA.
In reality, though, the NPA only proved nothing more but a nuisance in the countryside. It was always so even during the Marcos regime. Aside from raids on armories and police stations on towns and cities, they never managed to at least temporarily take an urban community during the whole duration of the regime. With their meager numbers and influence rather limited to rural villages far away from urban centers and army encampments, only a fool’s dream can imagine of such a total internal communist takeover of the Philippines. Marcos merely overrated the insurgency via the media to avail of a monster cash grab from the United States for reasons stated that the funds will be used against communism; most historical scholars already have news where that money went.
Further hampering their efforts are the numerous purges occurring throughout their ranks during the early 1980’s, out of paranoia that they were being infiltrated by government agents on the inside. As a result, thousands of their own were summarily executed on such grounds. This ensured that their rebellion will never gain traction and never gain the opportunity to take over the national government by brute force, like the famed takeovers of the communists in China and Cuba.
The NPA witnessed with glee the ousting of Marcos in the 1986 EDSA Revolution and the succeeding of their erstwhile ally Corazon Aquino. In Aquino, while political activists who had ties to them started resurfacing on the public limelight because of her anti-Marcos reforms, they secretly saw an opportunity to finally take over the national government in just one fell swoop after their inability to defeat the Philippine Army of the Marcos regime years prior. However, Aquino got the better of it and betrayed her alliance with the communists, ordering the Army to crush them wherever they see one. Thus defeated in the latest anti communist insurgency campaign, that triggered yet another round of purges within the rebellion, dwindling their numbers even further into just 4,000 rebels by 1992.
With the rapid expansion of urbanized communities across the islands since the early 1990’s, the influence of the NPA in the countryside continue to shrink that in 2007 Cebu was the first province to announce the total eradication of the rebellion in the locality, although a number of people from there continue to join the rebellion in other areas across the country. Though at times the movement continues to recruit novices and had their total size fluctuating as the years go on, save for internet propaganda, the NPA will never achieve the same size and level of influence it once had during the Marcos regime.
No comments:
Post a Comment