Though Greatly Weakened, Philippine Communist Insurgency Holds Steady

Though Greatly Weakened, Philippine Communist Insurgency Holds Steady
Communist New People’s Army (NPA) rebels hold weapons in formation in the hinterlands of Davao, Philippines, Dec. 26, 2013 (AP photo).

In late February, communist rebels killed five Philippine soldiers in an ambush in the northern Ilocos Sur province. In an email interview, Patricio Abinales, a professor of Asian studies at the School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, discussed the Philippine communist insurgency.

WPR: What are the objectives of the New People’s Army, and how has their insurgency evolved over the past decade?

Patricio Abinales: The New People’s Army (NPA) is the armed group of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), established in 1968 to wage a Maoist-style “protracted people’s war” aimed at “surrounding the cities from the countryside,” and gradually weakening the government to the point of collapse. In its place, the CPP-NPA aims to establish a “People’s Democratic Republic of the Philippines,” again modeled after communist China under Mao Zedong.

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