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Bohol’s ‘War Of The Flea’

Bohol Province. The mere mention of the place stirs an image of the palm-size Philippine tarsier clinging on twigs, wide-eyed as you click your portable camera. Or perhaps, the splendor of the thousand or so hillocks seasonally changing from green to yellowish brown would captivate your imagination and summon your Muses as you wax poetic. Those giant mounds called Chocolate Hills—supposedly once home to colossal ants, as tall as one could ever imagine—have attracted nature aficionados to the province. Yet behind Bohol’s magnificence is a seething social volcano—of peasants and the unlettered taking up arms against the government.

BY BONN AURE
Bulatlat.com

The proverbial hinterlands of Bohol—once the abode of Filipino revolutionary Francisco Dagohoy—again teem with guerilla activity. In a recent National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Central Visayas Regional Report, the government identified Bohol as the prime hotbed of the communist insurgency in the region. NEDA’s conservative estimates say Bohol hosts some 313 Marxist guerillas, followed by Negros Oriental with 78 and Cebu with 70 in 1999. In the same year, 410 barangays were “threatened by insurgency” region-wide.

Since then, however, the New People’s Army (NPA) has grown both in armed strength and in the breadth and depth of its mass base.

Armed Forces officials admit that Bohol guerillas have expanded their base of operations. They named Carmen, Catigbian, Clarin, Corella, Danao, Guindulman, Inabanga, Mabini, Sikatuna, Sierra-Bullones, Sevilla, Candijay, Bilar, Batuan, Alicia, Pilar, Anda, Sagbayan, Antequera, San Isidro, and Balilihan as the towns with—or potentially with—revolutionary base areas. Add to the list Talibon, the site of the latest government offensive against CPP-NPA guerillas, which reportedly left six guerillas dead.

Without a single shot

Bohol as a turf of active NPA operations stepped into the limelight on June 11, 1999 when the people’s army’s Chocolate Hills Command raided the headquarters of the 7^th Philippine National Police (PNP) Regional Mobile Group Combat Support Company (RMG-CSC) in Brgy. Rizal, Batuan. Without firing a shot, the raiders seized 80 high-calibre firearms, including an M60 assault machine gun. In response, the government deployed hundreds of AFP and PNP troops to Bohol.

The following September, Task Group Bohol was set up under Col. Gilbert Cayton combining all the available counter-insurgency operatives. A battalion of the Army’s Special Forces unit was pulled out of Basilan to augment the government forces on the island province despite the increase in the terroristic activities there of the Abu Sayyaf.

After replacing deposed president Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pledged to change her predecessor’s “total war” policy with more peace efforts. Whether this shift in government policy to rebellion has made a difference in the provinces is yet to be seen, however. Definitely not on Bohol island though where, farmers say, every goat path is marked with military boot prints.

The large concentration of government forces apparently has not stemmed the NPA's expansion in the province. If Silvino Clamucha, spokesman of the NPA Central Visayas region, is to be believed, the Red army has instead expanded “step by step” and has “regained initiative and freedom of movement paving the way for the...development of the armed struggle, the implementation of the revolutionary land reform, and mass base building.”

‘Needle in a haystack’

Even the PNP and AFP admit that hot pursuit operations have gone awry due to the mass support enjoyed by the guerillas. As one AFP officer remarked, finding the NPA is "not as simple as looking for a needle in a haystack." The people, particularly the peasants, are the real forest where guerillas hide, recover, muster strength, and launch attacks, the NPA spokesman said.

Government’s spy machinery in the rural areas–the Barangay Intelligence Network (BIN)–has been rendered useless, Clamucha said. Many BIN informers have been persuaded not to take their work seriously “without firing a single shot,” he said. A few diehards though were singled out for punitive actions.

In Bohol, government’s “total approach” to the insurgency problem appears to be a total failure. Although it considers poverty as the prime recruiter of the guerilla movement, the approach is still steeped in the hawkish policy of “pinning down the enemy.” Former Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita even lauded the previous strategy called Oplan Lambat-Bitag, which he said “effectively combat the insurgents’ manpower and firepower surge, bringing down the rebel’s strength to below 6,000 level in 1995-96.”

Rectification

Yet, many years back observers said the guerilla movement was on the verge of collapse. Its apparent comeback is the result of a rectification campaign, a “back-to-the-basics” program which was waged in the early 1990s to weed out ideological misfits and to reaffirm the principle of protracted struggle.

To date, the Philippines is the only country in Asia confronted with a resurging and vibrant revolutionary movement. In the era of Pax Americana, armed struggle retains its appeal particularly among the poor Filipinos.

Robert Taber, author of War of the Flea, aptly describes the Philippine situation: "People whose only contact with the government comes in the form of bullets and rocket attacks can scarcely be expected to feel sympathetic to the government's cause, whatever it may be. On the other hand, they have every reason to feel solidarity with the guerillas usually recruited from their villages, who share their peril and their hardships." Bulatlat.com

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