• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The campaign against communist insurgency in Visayas, especially in Negros, is practically “on the end game,” declared Visayas Command chief Lt. Gen. Benedict Arevalo yesterday.
Stressing that the New People’s Army are now just a handful left, Arevalo said he always told the troops and the people “that we cannot be too confident.”
“Even if there is a handful left, they can recover. So we don’t have to relax,” he stressed.
For the 303rd Infantry Brigade, all the encounters were government initiated and were practically won, and not a single win for the NPA, Arevalo noted.
We expect the trend to continue for 2024, he added.
Arevalo assessed that Negros Island is ready for declaration to be placed under a state of Stable Internal Peace and Security (SIPS), following dismantling of all the existing guerilla fronts.
In this stage, the provinces are categorized as cleared, unaffected, and are relatively peaceful. The LGU and PNP acknowledges and accepts that only Law Enforcement Operations (LEOs) are needed, and will signify that the province is already normalized, according to Maj. Mervin Rosal, Civil Military Operations officer of the 303rd Infantry Brigade.
The PNP, in its lead role to LEOs, performs its normal police functions and conducts purely law enforcement activities, while the AFP, in its support role to LEOs, primarily performs normal military functions, Rosal further said.
But declaring a state of SIPS does not mean we are insurgency-free, as Arevalo said there are still remnants who will be the subject of relentless focused military operations.
But they are as weak as we can make them, he said.
Arevalo said he was informed that the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division is not moving out troops from Negros, which he supported.
I suggest that, considering we don’t want to be too confident, as we have learned in our history, when we became confident, on leaving the area, he stressed.
In 1995, all the Army battalions stationed in Negros were pulled out and redeployed to Mindanao. They were replaced by two battalions of the elite PNP Special Action Force.
Three years after, the Army troops were returned to Negros, following the resurgence of the communist insurgency problem.
Arevalo said that military operations will now be focused on preventing the resurgence of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) in communities already cleared of insurgency.
After the devastating blows against the CPP-NPA in February, he ordered troops to ensure that insurgents could not take any foothold in areas where development is inevitable.*
