Posted on 01/10/2004 10:12:13 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
COMMUNIST rebels attacked government and other targets with impunity on Friday and Tuesday, destroying a cell site, burning buses and a cargo truck and putting a power plant under siege.
Four Air Force soldiers were killed in the attack on the National Power Corp. Plant in Calaca town, Batangas province.
While in Dumarao town, Capiz province, the guerrillas destroyed a cell site of the Globe Telecommunications firm.
The guerrillas burned three buses in Canlaon City in two separate attacks Friday and Saturday.
On Tuesday, guerrillas burned a cargo truck owned by a sugar planter in Silay City, Negros Occidental province.
Captain Norman Zuniega, public information officer of the Armed Forces' Central Command (Centcom) based in Cebu City, said the attacks were the rebels' way of demanding revolutionary taxes.
Airman Ryan Cabilda, sergeant Edgardo Micos, T/Sgt. Carlito Paraiso and another still unidentified soldier were killed in the Calaca attack.
As the raid on the plant went on, a group of about 50 guerrillas attacked a detachment of the Philippine Air Force's 740th Combat Group also in Batangas.
At least 60 guerrillas were involved in the attack on the Globe cell site.
The guerrillas, many of them women, disarmed two security guards of the Globe Compound in the hinterland village of Ongol-Ilaya, around 5 km from the town proper, according to Senior Superintendent Norlito Bautista, Capiz police director.
The rebels who entered the fenced compound poured gasoline at the base receiver system, a steel box three meters tall and five meters wide, before throwing two hand grenades at the small building housing the communications equipment.
The explosion destroyed the equipment and shut off Globe's signal in Dumarao. The signal was still not restored as of noon Friday.
The Globe tower and that of the Islacom beside it were undamaged by the explosion, according to Bautista. A Smart cellular site, 500 meters from the Globe cell site was not attacked.
Bautista said the rebels withdrew before they could destroy the two towers in the Globe Compound because policemen and Army troops immediately went to the area.
Policemen and troops from the Army's Task Force Panay, 3rd Infantry Division and the 47th Infantry Battalion, exchanged fire with the tail end of the rebel group who fled to the forested areas surrounding the compound. There were no reported casualties from both sides.
Bautista said the rebels were from the Eastern Front Committee and the Central Front Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on Panay Island. They are believed to have divided into smaller groups and fled to hinterland villages of the towns of Dumarao, Dumalag, Tapaz and Cuartero.
The attack could be part of the demand of the NPA for private firms to pay the rebels' "revolutionary taxes," Bautista said. But he said Globe representatives who went to the area did not say if they have received demands from the rebels.
In the past few years, the NPA has burned equipment of private firms that refused to pay the amount demanded by the rebels.
"This could be also part of their (NPA) propaganda campaign to show they are still a force to reckon with in the coming elections," Bautista told the Inquirer in a telephone interview.
The CPP and NPA on Panay Island earlier said they would intensify offensives this year. They claimed they have frustrated the military's counter-insurgency campaign last year.
At around midnight of Saturday, another group of rebels attacked the Canlaon City bus terminal and burned three buses owned by the Ceres Bus Company.
Zuniega said the attack was staged by 14 suspected rebels, including a woman, who came armed with an M-60 rifle and other high powered firearms.
On Tuesday, 10 rebels burned a cargo truck owned by sugar planter Federico Locsin in Hacienda Macamig Uno, Barangay E. Lopez, Silay City, Negros Occidental.
Lucero added the power plant is a crucial part of the electrical grid serving Luzon, including Metro Manila, and heavy damage to it or its destruction could trip the distribution lines and blanket the metropolis in darkness, similar to accidental trippings before.
But rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal told dzRH radio the attack was “in response to the directive of the party to intensify tactical offensives” and to “punish the soldiers based in the area for human rights violations,” which he did not specify.
“The attack was directed at the detachment. In truth they did not do anything to [the facility],” he added.
Rosal had said earlier in the week the rebels would intensify guerrilla operations ahead of the May 10 elections to help bring down President Arroyo’s administration because of her strong ties with the United States.
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Air Force spokesman Maj. Restituto Padilla said the rebels, riding a truck, fired at least two volleys of light antitank rockets.
A firefight ensued for almost an hour until the arrival of reinforcements that forced the rebels to withdraw.
Lucero said the rebels had anticipated reinforcements and had set up ambush points along the way, waylaying responding troops, but there were no casualties from the ambush and the troops successfully reached Calaca.
There were also no confirmed rebel casualties in a fierce gunfight at the ambush but blood trails and abandoned rebel backpacks indicated many guerrillas were killed or wounded.
Troops found at the scene one M14 rifle, two tubes of RPG-type [antitank rocket launcher] weapons, numerous packs and personal effects left behind by the rebels.
Monday, January 12, 2004 By Joel R. San Juan, Reporter and Anthony Vargas, Correspondent
The military on Sunday sent out more than 1,000 soldiers to pursue a group of communist guerrillas who attacked a power plant in Calaca, Batangas, and killed four Air Force men.
But the communist New People’s Army struck elsewhere, planting explosives at a cellular site in Capiz, torching three buses in Negros Oriental, and bombing a motor shop in Cabanatuan City whose owner reportedly failed to pay “revolutionary taxes.”
Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero, Armed Forces Public Information Office chief, said security has been tightened in other key installations throughout the country following the Calaca attack.
Four rebels were killed and 12 others wounded when Air Force men and militiamen guarding the plant repulsed the raiders.
Lucero said the National Power Corp., which runs the plant, had been receiving extortion letters from the NPA since June, prompting it to request for Air Force men to reinforce the plant’s security force.
Lucero said the rebels’ mission was to destroy the plant and trigger a Luzon-wide blackout.
“Our men recovered containers of gasoline with wicks, proving that the real intent was to destroy and impair the plant,” Lucero said.
Napocor officials said Luzon would have suffered a 12-hour blackout had the rebels disabled the plant.
Lucero said checkpoints have been set up by 202nd Infantry Brigade to catch 12 rebels believed to have been wounded during the encounter.
On Friday night communist rebels set off an explosive device at the Globe Telecom cell site in Dumarao, Capiz, but failed to take out the main communication tower because of the timely arrival of government reinforcements.
Shortly after midnight Saturday, about 15 heavily armed rebels on motorcycles set fire to three buses parked at the Ceres Bus terminal in Canlon City, Negros Oriental.
Two of the buses were destroyed.
A bus driver was treated at the Canlon Primary Hospital after suffering slight injuries in the incident.
Police officials said the attack could be the result of the bus operator’s refusal to pay a tribute to the rebels.
In Cabanatuan rebels hurled an improvised bomb at the Royce Suzuki Motors on Maharlika Highway. The device exploded but no one was hurt.
Another bomb was recovered outside the shop’s branch on Burgos Street.
Lucero noted that although the NPA’s strength has dwindled to less than 10,000 since last year, the group has intensified its intelligence, propaganda and organizational setup.
Unperturbed by the almost-simultaneous attacks, Malacañang told the NPA and its political arm, the Communist Party of the Philippines, to accept the government’s offer to negotiate or wait until 2010.
Expressing confidence that President Arroyo would win in the May election, the President’s spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the NPA would be wasting its time if it chooses to negotiate only with the President’s rivals, the actor Fernando Poe Jr. or Brother Eddie Villanueva.
“[The NPA] would have to wait for long because we are confident that the President would still win in the election. If it is willing to wait, it will have to wait until 2010,” Bunye said in a radio interview.
The NPA’s spokesman, Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal, said last week they would no longer talk with the Arroyo administration and negotiate only with the administration of either Poe or Villanueva.
Bunye said President Arroyo is always open to talks with the NPA.
“The government is doing all it can, all that is necessary so that we could have a final peace agreement,” he said.
Peace negotiations with the NPA collapsed when the NPA gunned down Representatives Rodolfo Aguinaldo of Cagayan and Marcial Punzalan of Quezon in 2002.
Exploratory talks were held early last year but was halted after the National Democratic Front insisted that the terrorist label pinned by the United States and the European Union on the group be removed.
Bunye said President Arroyo has condemned the attack in Calaca and ordered intensified military and police operations against the rebels.
“We strongly condemn this attack by the NPA in Batangas. This is a clear act of terrorism and the President extends her condolences to the family of the victims,” Bunye said.
The attack was the first major offensive by the NPA since Jose Maria Sison, the CPP chair, ordered stepped up raids on government targets this year. It was also launched at the end of a Christmas truce called by the communists. --With Anthony Vargas and Ma. Theresa Torres
By Karl B. Kaufman and Ma. Theresa Torres, Reporters
THE antitank weapons used by New People’s Army guerrillas who raided a power plant in Calaca, Batangas, on Saturday came from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, confirming the tactical alliance between the two rebel organizations, Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said on Tuesday.
In an interview at Camp Aguinaldo, Ermita said military intelligence had long established that the milf has become one of the NPA’s arms suppliers.
“These antitank weapons indicate that [the NPA] may have bought them from the secessionists in the South, because it is the Muslim secessionist group that has these weapons,” Ermita said.
Troops recovered two light antitank weapons left behind by the Calaca raiders. The Law, or the M72-series, is described as “a lightweight, self-contained, antiarmor weapon consisting of a rocket packed in a launcher.”
Ermita said these weapons were leftovers from the Afghanistan War in 1995, in which several milf fighters trained and took part.
Stressing the alliance between the NPA and the milf, Ermita said, “[The two groups] go by the dictum that the enemy of my friend is my enemy. Who is the common the enemy of the two groups? The Armed Forces of the Philippines.”
Ermita has urged the milf leadership to stop supporting the NPA rebels “because it is destroying the atmosphere of peace.”
Milf spokesman Eid Kabalu admitted that the milf has an existing alliance with the NPA but denied that it is supplying the guerrillas with antitank weapons. “Our alliance doesn’t include the sharing of weapons,” he said.
“The alliance was forged merely to prevent our group and their group from clashes in areas where we both operate, particularly in Central Mindanao,” Kabalu said in an interview.
Four soldiers were killed and six others were wounded before dawn Saturday when more than 50 NPA rebels stormed the National Power Corp. plant in Dancalao village, Calaca.
Military intelligence also showed a delivery of an undetermined number of Laws on Mindoro Island in early 2003. Ermita suspects these were the same weapons used in the Calaca attack.
On December 23 the military monitored the landing of about 20 communist rebels in Balayan Bay, Batangas. The group reportedly came from Mindoro Island, a known bailiwick of NPA insurgents.
Military troops were sent to the area to check but the operation was frozen when the government called a Christmas truce with the NPA.
“Their operation was limited to small unit patrols and intelligence gathering as the government cease-fire had already started,” the declassified report said. “Likewise, sightings of armed communist terrorists also ceased perhaps due to the CPP unilateral cease-fire.”
Despite the Calaca attack, the government is determined to resume formal talks next month with the NPA and its political arm, the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Details of the talks are being ironed out by both parties and the government of Norway, which is the third party facilitator.
“This is a new source of momentum for our political and economic security,” President Arroyo said.
The chief government negotiator, Silvestre Bello 3rd, said the government is waiting for the National Democratic Front to sign the joint statement, which would pave the way for the resumption of talks.
The NDF is the political umbrella of the CPP and the NPA.
Bello said the NDF’s chief negotiator, Luis Jalandoni, had committed to signing the statement. “I have no reason to doubt his words,” he said.
The talks are expected to resume either on the first or on the second week of February, and will be held either in Thailand or in Vietnam.
Eighty-six safe-conducts have been issued to officials of the communist negotiators, including Gregorio Rosal, CPP-NPA spokesman, who accused the government of stepping up its efforts to reopen the talks to attract votes for the May 10 national election.
“The jasig [joint agreement on safety and immunity guarantee] is in effect. The 86 names submitted to the government are covered by the safe-conducts issued by the government,” Bello said.
He warned that despite the safe-conducts, those who have them could still be arrested if a crime has been committed.
“We had to know and we had to tell you that the jasig or safe-conduct pass is not a permit to commit an offense. It is intended only to provide unhindered passage to those involved in the peace talks. If you commit a crime, you can still be arrested,” Bello said.
The government panel noted that the terrorist label pinned by the US government and the European Union on the cpp-npa and its political consultant, Jose Maria Sison, would not hinder the negotiations.
“They agreed to conduct the negotiations without any precondition,” Bello said.
Part of the joint statement, according to Bello, pertains to the terrorist label.
He said the government is prepared to deal with whatever the NDF proposes, which includes asking the US and EU to strike the NDF off the list of terrorist organizations.
Last year an attempt to reopen talks with the NDF was halted after the group insisted that they be delisted first.
But with the participation of the Norwegian government as a third-party facilitator, Bello said, “They are now eager to talk peace with us.”
Before the signing of the joint agreement, exploratory talks were held on October 9 and 10 and November 20 and 21 both in Oslo and on November 23 and 24 in Utrecht.
The government hopes to reach a peace settlement with the communists before the May election.
“If not, I think the fact that the present administration succeeded in putting back on track the peace process is already a major accomplishment of the Arroyo administration,” Bello said.
Negotiations could continue until June, but Bello said the government would push for a marathon negotiation.
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