MANILA – The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is committed to ending the threat posed by the New People's Army (NPA) under President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.'s "Bagong Pilipinas" brand of governance.
“The NTF-ELCAC continues to achieve significant and laudable milestones from the very beginning. Under the Marcos administration, we will carry on with these achievements and we will make sure that during his administration, we will be able to completely crush these peace-spoilers,” National Security Adviser and NTF-ELCAC co-vice chair Eduardo Año said in a statement over the weekend.
He said this is possible as the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has been successful in destroying the politico-military component of all the 89 active NPA guerrilla fronts since 2018 when the anti-insurgency body was created under Executive Order (EO) 70.
“Notably, in the last two quarters, four CTG (communist terrorist group) units have been dismantled. We're also on the verge of completely dismantling the remaining seven weakened guerilla fronts. We expect that the remaining GFs will be dismantled within the year or the next,” Año said.
He emphasized that sustained operations under the “whole-of-government” approach, meaning the close collaborations of different government agencies, local government units (LGUs), and the security sector, led to the surrender of 44,528 communist personalities, the majority of whom were supporters and sympathizers.
“This figure includes the neutralization of 37 key leaders in this semester,” Ano said.
In kinetic operations, the AFP and Philippine National Police recovered different kinds of firearms and explosives from the NPA terrorists alongside body counts and captured members.
Recently, at least 10 NPA rebels, including their leader, perished during an encounter with Army soldiers in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija.
Since the creation of the NTF-ELCAC, Año said a total of 7,587 firearms of different high and low calibers were surrendered.
“Of the said number, 738 were for this semester alone, surrendered. We hope that these numbers, threats of armed conflict across the country will also significantly dwindle,” he said.
In its report, the NTF-ELCAC’s Peace, Law Enforcement, and Development Support (PLEDS) Cluster revealed that the NPA strength is now down to only 1,251 nationwide. (PNA)
