Wistful Thinking

AFP Chief Gen. Delfin Bangit's admission that the AFP will not be able to meet de facto President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's 2010 deadline to defeat the New People's Army (NPA) comes as no surprise. The military claims of success in its counterinsurgency campaigns have been belied by independent media reports of the NPA's tactical offensives resulting in firearms seized and AFP troops captured, killed or wounded.

Moreover, the underlying socio-economic causes of the longest-running armed conflict in the Southeast Asian region to date make a military solution untenable ab initio as any student of history knows.

Mr. Bangit subsequently backpedals and attempts two explanations for the military's admitted failure.

First, he says that the insurgency is not just a military problem, its roots being poverty and lack of government services, ergo a military solution cannot be the only solution. Second, he says that the military did such a good job securing the May 10 polls it did so at the expense of its drive to wipe out insurgency by June 30, the end of Mrs. Arroyo's term of office.

Both reasons won't wash. These (poll duties and non-military solution) were elements known to the counterinsurgency planners long ago. Is he saying these were not factored in by Mrs. Arroyo when she gave the orders and by the AFP when it mapped out its implementing and operational plans?

What was the whole point in the AFP's crowing until last week that they were well on their way to meeting the deadline? Clearly the military and the Arroyo regime have been pulling our legs all along. Or so they thought.

But by saying they cannot do it alone, Mr. Bangit is once again pointing the accusing finger at the civilian component of the "counter-insurgency plan". While there is a lot of truth to Mr. Bangit's claim that civilian government agencies are not performing their function of fostering the socio-economic development of NPA-controlled or influenced areas, he does so in an attempt to cover up, as all his predecessors have done, the fact that military operations have failed dismally to achieve their objective of "rendering inconsequential", much less decimating the NPA.

Rather, the gross human rights violations committed by the AFP and paramilitary forces under its supervision, as well as the injustices and iniquities committed by the government against the people, have only served to infuriate and drive more and more people to the mountains to fight alongside the NPA or render them support.

The case of the Morong 43 (forty three health professionals and community health workers arrested en mass while allegedly training to make explosives) is only the latest example of the gross abuse of authority and human rights violations by the military, apparently with the go signal of Malacañang, with the AFP flagrantly defying even the orders of the courts and the human rights commission.