A Communist Philippines If... AUTHOR Lt. Col. Librato S. Ladia CSC AY 1988 SUBJECT AREA General A Communist Philippines If... An Executive Summary The paper discusses the birth of communism in the Phi- lippines, the "show window of America democracy in Asia." The pro-Soviet Communist Party (PKP) was established in l92Os, when the Philippines was still an American colony. During the Japanese occupation of the country, the PKP's Huks, a peasant anti- Japanese guerilla group played a key role in weakening the Japanese occupiers, there by making up the mopping up operations of American and Filipino forces later on. The failure of the PKP to seize state power could be attributed for its impatience in organizing a wider peasant mass base. The birth of the more radical Mao's leaning Communist Party of the Philippines in the late 6Os was an offshoot of misunderstanding between the old party members and the more radicals from prominent school campuses in Manila. With lessons learned from the struggle of Mao Tse-tung against the Kuomintang, the CPP sees the current conflict a protracted one. The Party is based on a very wide base of peasantry as well as other sectors of the society. The Party adopts a Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse-tung thought as its primary guide in its organizational, ideological, and political approach to violently overthrow the existing social order. The movement uses three main weapons: the Communist Party of the Philippines, to provide the brain; the New People's Army, to protect the party as well as provide a miltary arm; and the National Democratic Front, to provide a shield to parry obstacles. The Marcos era has really been the period when this movement became a formidable foe of the state. The faith of the country is now left to a relatively new leadership which inherited a lot of problems from the former leader. A COMMUNIST PHILIPPINES IF... OUTLINE I. Historical Background A. Pre-World War II B. Japanese Occupation C. Post Worl War II II. The Establishment of a More Militant Party III. Characteristics of the New Party IV. The Three Main Weapons V. The United Front Concept VI. The 3-Staged Insurgency Strategy VII. Conditions Contributive to Insurgency VIII. The Marcos Era IX. A Communist Philippines If... Click here to view image A COMMUNIST PHILIPPINES IF... I. Historical Background A. Pre-World War II On February 22, 1922 an American communist, purportedly representing the Philippines, attended the Congress of Toilers of the Far East in Moscow. Subsequently, American communists sent missionaries of revolt in the rural areas of the country1 as the situation then was ripe for exploitation. In a related development, the International Press correspondence, a commu- nist organ reported that the Red Labor International (Prointern) passed a resolution recognizing the importance of the Philip- pines as strategic point in the Pacific Ocean.2 In 1928, Cri- santo Evangelista and Cirilo Bugnot attended the Red Labor International conference in Moscow. Two years later, in a large rally in Plaza Moriones, Tondo, Manila, a pro-Soviet Partido Kommunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) was proclaimed with Evangelista as head of the 7-man Politburo and the 35-man Central Committee. On October 26, 1932 the Supreme Court of the country outlawed the party. In the same period a Socialist Party was organized in Central Luzon. On November 7, 1938 a merger was made between the PKP and the Socialist Party. The merger came about with the assistance of James Allen, representative of the Communist Party of the U.S.A.3 The Socialist Party was larger but its following was loose and lack the discipline of real communist cadres. In effect, this was not in line with Lenin`s concept of a commu- nist party as the advance detachment of the proletariat con- sisting of dedicated core of professional revolutionaries. B. Japanese Occupation When the Japanese occupied Manila in January 1942, the first line of this pro-Soviet party were arrested. Majority of the party members, however, fled to the various towns in Central Luzon. A month later in a conference of the Central Luzon Bureau, a guerilla army was decided, thus, on March 29, the HUKBALAHAP (Hukbong Bayan Laban Sa Hapon or People's Army Against Japan) was born. These guerillas, later on popularly known as "Huks," were the outgrowth of a communist-led popular front movement which had already established a substantial po- litical base in Central Luzon. Ably led by a group of experienced organizers, of whom Luis Taruc was the best known, they moved their combat-worthy followers into remote areas where bases could be established and training carried on. Armed with weapons scavenged from the battlefield of Ba- taan, the Huks soon launched small-scale harrassment operations against the Japanese occupiers. As the war continued, these guerillas began to concentrate upon the development and conser- vation of their own power. The relationship of the insurgent movement with the govern- ment at this time could be compared with that of Mao Tse-tung's struggle against Chiang Kai-shek-'s Kuomintang. The break bet- ween the two, manifested by the Long March, was again patched up by Japanese aggression. Mao and Chiang tacitly cooperated against the common enemy up to the end of the war. By July 1946, however, the "Third Revolutionary War"' was underway and the outcome is now what makes Communist China.4 C. Post World War II When the U.S. Army returned to the country, its attitude towards the Huks was reserved, and some of the principal leaders, including Luis Taruc, were jailed for having continued to carry out "liquidation" of collaborators despite of ban imposed by General MacArthur's headquarters. In preparation for the formal declaration of Philippine Independence by the Americans, the Huk leaders were released. Perhaps to make the country closely associated with America, the United States had sworn to grant the independence on July 4, 1946. (Please note that at present Philippine Independence is celebrated every 12th of June, having been rectified in 1962 to conform with the date General Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed independence in 1898.) Not long after this event, however, the Huks, reacting with vigor against the refusal of the new government to seat their six congressmen (including Taruc) and accept their local control in areas of Central Luzon, went into armed dissidence. In moving thus early in the postwar era they do not seem to have been responding to any external direction but to be reacting to the efforts of the new government, as they saw it, to rob them of the fruits of their efforts during the Japanese occupation. The wartime guerilla structure, along with the support organization, had not been dismantled and mere- ly needed to be reactivated. The Philippine Army and the Cons- tabulary controlled the towns, and the rebels controlled the countryside. The government forces controlled the day, and locked themselves behind barbed wire by night, leaving the vital hours of darkness to the Huks. Due to timely move by the government, particularly during the Magsaysay era,5 many principal leaders of the PKP fell un- der massive government operations. Bitterly dissilusioned, Luis Taruc surrendered to the government on May 16, 1954. The defeat of the Huk movement was attributed (at least by the new members of a more militant party, the CPP) to the party's petty-buorgeois eagerness to seize power and also for not giving due regard to the strength of the government. The fortunes of the Huks continued to decline due to mishandling of the relationship between Huk units and the people. The Huks deve- loped the tendency of the roving rebel bands and took shortcuts instead of taking pains in developing mass support. II.The Establishment of a More Militant Party The reestablishment of the present communist party is a two-phased development: the urban phase and the rural phase. The urban phase was the period between the founding of the Ka- bataang Makabayan (KM), a youth organization in Greater Manila, up to the declaration of martial law in 1972. During this phase the leadership structure of the Communist Party of the Philip- pines (CPP) was recruited and organized. The revolutionary framework mainly came from the idealist youth from the school campuses, intellectuals and professionals majority of whom clustered in Greater Manila and a few urban center centers. A large number were students and intellectuals who came from the provinces but found themselves in the urban centers due to the nature of their occupation. It was during the 75th birthday of Mao Tse-tung, December 26, 1968, that a Maoist leaning party (CPP) was formally orga- nized by Jose Ma Sison. Sison,who was indoctrinated in Red Chi- na, could not agree with the old party members of PKP. On March 29, 1969, exactly 27 years after the Huks were organized, the New People's Army (NPA) was born. This guerilla group fused with Sison's party of militant students and young professionals who were in search of an army. The communist controlled youth organization (KM) has gathered strength and in a show of fcrceorganized the violent demons- trations which rocked downtown Manila in the early 7Os. Later on the CPP attempted to established a guerilla zone in the re- mote parts of Northeastern Luzon, a shift from the traditionally Huk base in Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog. The rural phase or mobilization of CPP on the other hand is the period since the declaration of martial law by President Marcos in 1972 up to his ouster in 1986. There are those who call this period as the time democracy in the Philippines stopped. Of course martial law only forced the activist organizations to go underground. It did not destroy the movement; it only forced the now underground party to expand in the countryside. The shift from urban subversion to active insurgency in the rural areas was designed to destroy the economic base of the nation which is agriculture. This was how Mao Tse-tung defeated the Nationalists in the late 4Os; encircle the cities from the countryside. In the Philippines this is a practical approach as the weakest link of the government exists in the rural areas and where deprivations exist among the peasant population. The skeletal framework gathered flesh with sustained recruitment in the rural areas. The movement likewise started to gather momentum in Mindanao where the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) was preoccupied with the Muslim seccessionist rebels who wanted a seperate country of their own. This allowed the CPP/NPA to develop practically unmolested. III. Characteristics of the New Party The more militant movement derive lessons from the old party as well as other country victims: China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and now Nicaragua. In avoiding past mistakes, CPP strives to attain a party-led movement which is peasant based protracted war. The ideological, political, and organizational errors of the past have been replaced by a time-tested formula for waging guerilla warfare with a powerful propaganda machine which seeks to isolate the government from all sectors. Ideologically, the more militant communist party, adopts Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse-tung thought (MLMTT) as its supreme guide to pursue its revolutionary goals, an approach similar to that used in China, i.e., in a semi-colonial and semi- feudal country a protracted people's war would be the only practical approach towards capturing state power. Politically and again taking lessons from China, pursues an insurgency which is identified with the masses. It is a protracted armed struggle being launched in the countryside to encircle the cities. It is a struggle against U.S. impe- rialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. This is also similar to the one adopted by the Viet Cong, that according to their party doctrine the national democratic revolution had two missions: anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism. By organization, the old party was criticized as weak. The main disability of the old party has been its failure to build an organization that had a broad mass base and one which is national in scope. Party members and its mass organizations were relatively over-concentrated in Central Luzon and in the Manila-Rizal areas. This was so as the belief then was that when the party could have gained control in Central Luzon, the whole Luzon would follow, and a control over Luzon would mean a control over the whole country. The more militant party has now been organized as proletarian in character. Peasants, workers, and students have been organized to participate actively and on a national scale in the proletarian revolution which is essentially an agrarian revolution. The party has likewise organized a national united front as the other weapon to des- troy and isolate the government. IV. The Three Main Weapons To assure victory of the movement, the CPP uses three wea- pons. From what Mao Tse-tung said, these are the party, to provide the brains and leadership; an army, to protect the party and provide military force; and a united front, to act as a shield to parry the blows of its opponents. The Communist Party of the Philippines is the force at the core leading the communist cause forward. It is composed of a highly disciplined group of professional revolutionaries de- dicated to the overthrow of the government and the existing social system. By definition, the CPP is a party of the pro- letariat and the peasantry. Class origin is strictly adhered to in the lower echelons, however its top rank remains domi- nated by an elite group drawn from bourgeois intellectuals, professionals, and students. The expected intensity of the struggle requires the party to be lean and strong. It cannot be a loose organization which would disintegrate under a strong government pressure. Its overlapping committee membership assures the central committee a firm hold and unusual power due to its high degree of party integration and continuing intra-party surveillance. A systematic purging cleanses party ranks and maintains ideological purity. To transform the Philippine society, the armed struggle is necessary. Victory through the armed struggle assures the party absolute authority and allows it a freehand to implement its radical social programs. The armed struggle being carried out by the NPA is an agrarian revolution to maximize forces by enticing the numerous land-hungry peasants to support the move- ment. To disperse and dissipate government forces, wide battle- grounds have been opened by the rebels. The armed struggle is aimed at the overthrow not merely of the government to liberate the country from U.S. imperialism but mainly to overthrow the existing social system. To allow the CPP to expand its influence, a united front is created. By itself because it is relatively small, the CPP could not expect to overpower the government. The united front is considered as powerful and essential instrument without which the so called armed struggle in the countryside would falter. By definition, the united front is the unity of all revolutio- nary classes and strata against imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism. In other words, it is the total effort to isolate the government forces politically and psychologically. V. The United Front Concept Lenin once said that one hundred well-organized men can easily defeat one thousand who are not organized. To the CPP, organization i s a w e a p o n and the national united front is a powerful organizational weapon and shield against the state. Similar to the National Liberation Front which carried the banner of the communist struggie in South Vietnam, the National Demecratic Front (NDF) is the formal structure of the CPP's national united front concept. Technically, the NDF is people's organization for the movement. The CPP wields the united front and the armed struggle as the two weapons to destroy the state to seize political power. As the insurgency expands, the growth of one influences the other. The twin effort is designed to merge together and unleash a powerful storm to topple the political, social, economic, and military structure of the country. The united front effort provides the multi- dimensional character of the movement. Through it, the CPP aims to achieve a decisive superiority in the balance of forces which is the advantageous position of imposing its will upon the Phlippine society. VI. The 3-Staged Insurgency Strategy In the official US Marine Corps publication FMFM 8-2 (Counterinsurgency Operations) Mao Tse-tung's doctrine on protracted war has been amply discussed. These are the passive stage, the active stage, and counteroffensive stage. This doctrine is looked upon by the CPP as revealed truth and have been adopted meticulously. In the Philippine setting, these are strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, and strategic offensive. At the strategic defensive, the party, the guerillas, and the united front grow from small and weak to big and strong. It is sometimes said that insurgents start with nothing but a cause and grow to strength, while the counterinsurgency forces start with everything but a cause and gradually decline in strength to the point of weakness. 7 Strategic defensive has two substages: early substage and advance substage. In the early substage, the CPP political apparatus is developed and spreads out to every region. It is in this substage where the guerillas are deployed in most of the strategic locations of the country. In the advance substage of which the CPP has claimed to have reached as early as December of 1982, guerilla warfare is well-established and political support developed. With the united front efforts intensified, guerilla warfare is likewise intensified to increase its arms inventory. A sympathetic environment is fully developed in the countryside and urban guerilla units are deployed in population centers. In the strategic stalemate, the balance of forces is more or less even. The guerilla war becomes a conspicious tug-of-war on strategic towns, cities, and large areas. Most importantly, political paralysis sets in the decision makers. The balance of forces has tilted in favor of the insurgents at the strategic offensive. The government has been profoundly weakened and completely isolated while the insurgents gain moral supremacy. As a result, the government is forced to go on the strategic defensive. The momentum of the rebels would then be unstoppable, and like in most countries that have fallen to this threat, the situation is already considered irreversible. VII. Conditions Contributive to Insurgency From Che Guevarra we know that the communists do not necessarily wait for a revolutionary to arise; they create that situation. The favorable insurgent situation in the Philippines, however, have not all been created by the insurgents, they may have hastened their development. In FMFM 8-2, insurgency is discussed as a product of unsatisfactory conditions, social change, and a broad belief in the prospects for improvements.8 Such as the case, the aspirations of the people are not met by the government or ruling elite and there is an organized effort to discredit the existing leadership, if not the whole system itself. On reading the 14 conditions that encourage popular revolt in above publication9, only 3 don't meet the real situation in the Philippines: illeteracy, disease, and ethnic or religious discrimination, at least leaving some- thing for the insurgents to fabricate. Filipinos have one of the highest literacy in Southeast Asia; there is known sickness or epidemic that threaten the well being of the people; and religion or ethnic diversity has not been the disuniting factor in the country (except in Southern Minda- nao with some Muslims and are not targets of communist insur- gency, but seccessionist insurgency). The remaining follow- ing conditions have been the main issues raised by the insurgents: social injustice, feudalism, poverty, low pro- ductivity, unemployment, overpopulation, official corruption, government inefficiency, inequities in the distribution of arable land, and colonialism and foreign exploitation. VIII. The Marcos Era Former President Ferdinad E Marcos has been called as the biggest recruiter of the NPA. It was during his long tenure as head of the country (1966-1986) that the CPP and its military arm, the NPA, grew to a very serious threat. Marcos justified the imposition of martial law in 1972 with this Red menace. In the book Waltzing With a Dictator, however, this appears not to be so ...in 1972...Marcos had created a Red Peril that didn't exist. The Huk insur- gency had long been defeated; the commu- nist New People s Army (NPA) was an uncertain and wobbling infant.10 Be this as it may, after a decade of Marcos tenure, the CPP/NPA really became a formidable foe of the government. Con- ditions in the country called for a change in the leadership, that even some legitimate political oppositions were eyeing on tieing up with the enemy of the state just to remove Marcos from power. It was during this time that the economy of the country was destroyed and the military corrupted or politicized. Despite of this gloomy picture, the U.S. government, the alleged champion of democracy in the world continued supporting Marcos, even as he established a conjugal dictatorship. Po- licy of America towards the Philippines then could be better cited in Waltzing With a Dictator "Democracy is not the most important issue for U.S. foreign policy," explained a Foreign Service Officer who had been in the Philippines when martial law was imposed and was being asked many years later. . .why the United States had not objected. "The most important thing is the U.S. national interest, our security interest, our economic interest" ...Marcos might be a dictator, but he Washington's man in Manila. And that was to remain the policy under four American presidents and for fourteen years. . .11 America has of course two big bases in the Philippines and sizable investment since the country became a colony under the stars and stripes. These have all been well taken care of by Marcos at the expense of untold miseries in the country. Consequently, the CPP/NPA had easy and ready issues to alienate the people from the government. "Down With U.S.- Marcos Dictatorship" cried the street demonstrators. When President Corazon C Aquino took the helm of the coun- try after Marcos was unceremoniously deposed in a people's po- wer revolution in February 1986, she inherited all the problems of the dying "show window of American democracy in Asia." At first the CPP/NPA were reluctant to do things that may not be favorable to them as Aquino was, and in some degree still is, popular to the masses. As a sign of good faith, she released all political detainees, including high officials of the Com- munist Party of the Philippines. Then a dialogue/negotiation between the government and the Communists was held which did not give tangible results. Like all communists, the CPP/NPA like to negotiateas this gives them/time to group and consolidate openly because normally a ceasefire is declared on such occasion. Accordingly, Aquino has been dubbed by the military as soft on the communists and that she is surrounded by communist sympa- thizers in her own cabinet. These allegations may not be all true; she may only want to treat all dissidents through the democratic ways. She certainly has a better appreciation of the American democratic way of life as she once lived in Bos- ton as a young student then as a wife of the late Senator Ninoy Aquino. But for one, the American type of democracy may not work in the Philippines as the environment and general attitude of the people are different. IX. A Communist Philippines If. In low intensity conflict class we learned that insurgency is not military in origin, nor is it military in resolution. Military approach is merely a limited antidote to the problem of insurgergency. Figuratively speaking, it is just an aspirin that may remove the outward symptoms of a serious illness but cannot permanently cure the illness itself. It would demand a major surgery, a long-range process of excising deeply rooted socio-economic ills in the society, to cure the problem. Government cannot stand alone in the fight against insur- gency. National stability and security must arise from the unity of the people, built through the dedicated stewer of community leaders. With the right example from the national leadership, these community leaders are the ones who can effectively reach the grassroots and therefore strengthen the link of the community with the government. These are the lead- ers who can show to the people, by words and by deeds, the way of sacrifice, restraint, discipline and peaceful, collective enterprise in order that they will never take the option of violence that is being offered by the insurgents. If the Philippines will not be determined in at least eradicating the unsatisfactory conditions that breed revolt, then the country is in its sure path of joining the other victims of communist movement. A weak government will not do good to the masses as insurgency is encouraged by administra- tive weakness of the government. A strong and honest govern- ment can win back the allegiance of the people. Counter- measures should be based on sufficient knowledge of the CPP's history, doctrines, strategy, objectives, leadership styles, organizations, and its propaganda machine. To do otherwise would bring more harm than good. For the military, it is worth remembering what Clausewitz refers to war as a remarkable trinity12 in which the directing policy of the government, the professional qualities of the Army, and the attitude of the population play an equally sinificant part. The military should not be expected to solve the problem alone. If the attitudes of the people or the " passions of the people" as Frederick the Great refers to the third element in Clausewitz's remarkable trinity is not supportive to government policies, then the military have an almost impossible task to handle. With the right approachand the right national strategy, let us just hope that the Philippines will not be a repeat location of the most quoted conversation between a U.S. Colo- nel and a North Vietnamese Colonel in 1975, just after the Vietnam War, which runs as follows: "You know you never defeated us in the battlefield," said the American Colonel. The North Vietnamese Colonel pondered this remark a moment. "That may be so," he replied, "but it is also irrelevant.13 FOOTNOTES 1Geoffrey Bocca, The Philippines America`s Forgotten Friends (New York:Parents Magazine Press, 1974), p.117 2Orgellio, Aspects of CPP Insurgency (Quezon City, GHQ AFP, n.d.),pp. 2-3 3Ibid, p. 3 4The Mao Tse-tung Casyndekan (Colorado: A.B. Hirschfeld Press,1970),pp. viii-ix 5Douglas S Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance (New York: The Free Press,1977),pp.27-40 6Geoffrey Bocca, The Philippines America s Forgotten Fiends, Ibid,pp. 163-173 7Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations Subversion, In- surgency, Peace-keeping (Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1971) p. 29 8MCDEC, USMC, Counterinsurgency Operations, FMFM 8-2 (Quantico, 1980), p. 3 9Ibid. 10Raymond Bonner, Waltzing With a Dictator The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York: Times Books, 1987), p. 117 11Ibid , pp.132-139 12Michael Howard,Clausewitz (New York: 0xford University Press,1983), p. 20 13Harry G Summers Jr, 0n Strategy: The Vietnam War in Conflict (Carlisle Barracks,Pa, US Army War College,1982), p.1 B I B L I O G R A P H Y Blaufarb, Douglas S. The Counter Insurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance 1950 to the Present. New York, The Free Press, 1977 Bocca, Geoffrey. The Philippines America's Forgotten Friends. New York, Parents Magazine Press, 1974 Bonner, Raymond. Waltzing With a Dictator The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy. New York, Times Books, 1987 Bunge, Frederica M. Philippines A Country Study. Wash. D.C., Dept of the Army, 1983 Devillers, Philippe. Mao. New York, Schocken Books, 1969 (translation by Tony White, Macdonald & Co., Great Britain) FMFM 8-2 Counterinsurgency Operations. Washington D.C., U.S. Marine Corps Greene T.N. Lieutenant Colonel. The Guerilla--And How to Fight Him Selections from the Marine Corps Gazzette. New York, Frederick A. Praeger, Inc, 1962 Howard, Michael. Clausewitz. New York, Oxford University Press, 1983 JCS Pub 1 DoD Dictionary Of Military and Associated Terms. Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987 Kitson, Frank. Low Intensity Operations Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-Keeping. Pennsylvania, Stackpole Books, 1971 The Mao Tse-tung Casyndekan. Colorado, A.B. Hirschfeld Press, 1970. 0rgellio. Aspects of CPP Insurgency. Quezon City, General Headquarters, Armed Forces of the Philippines Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An. Berkeley, Univer- sity of California Press, 1972 Summers, Harry G. , Jr. On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Conflict. Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, U.S. Army War College, 1982 Von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. (edited with an introduc- tion by Anatol Rapoport) England, Penguin Books Ltd,1968
