Joma orders NPA rebels to kill visiting US troops

BAGUIO CITY — Exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison has ordered the New People’s Army (NPA) to escalate its so-called "protracted people’s war" and inflict "severe casualties on the invading US forces."

Sison, under the pen name Armando Liwanag, announced the order in a message printed in a special edition of the newsletter Ang Bayan on the NPA’s 33rd anniversary last March 29.

"We must be ready to use the social and physical terrain of the Philippines to inflict severe casualties on the invading US forces and to take punitive action against US economic and related interests," Sison said from his home in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

He made the order as Manila and Washington confirmed on Thursday that 2,003 US troops are due to arrive in Luzon on the warship USS Fort McHenry and dozens of military aircraft, most of which are attack helicopters, for the second leg of the joint RP-US "Balikatan" military exercises scheduled from April 22 to May 6 in Luzon.

Officials said the US would also bring 12 C-130 cargo planes, four KC-130 cargo planes, four F-18D fighter jets, four AH-1, four CH-53E, four CH53D, three UH-160 and three UH-60M helicopters.

Balikatan 02-2 will involve military seminars, workshops and field training exercises in various military facilities in Central Luzon where the NPA was created in 1969.

The American troops participating in Balikatan 02-2 will arrive after some 300 members of a Navy construction battalion arrives from Okinawa, Japan to drill wells, improve roads and expand the airstrip on Basilan island where Balikatan 02-1 is being held.

Some 660 US troops, including 160 Special Forces, are participating in the Balikatan 02-1 war games in Basilan and Zamboanga City.

But Sison said the NPA is not afraid of US military forces.

"The high-tech military power of the US is ineffective against a protracted people’s war," Sison said. "The way for the NPA to strengthen itself is to wipe out the enemy forces and seize firearms and other war materiel from them."

"The revolutionary forces have never feared the military might of the US, including extensive US military bases in the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship," Sison said.

Sison made the order after the intelligence community revealed that the communist movement has resumed another bloody purge which has so far resulted in the death of 232 card-carrying communists.

The military estimates the current strength of the NPA at 11,673 with 7,015 firearms.

Sison himself confirmed the purge, which he called a "rectification," warranted because of "gross errors" in the minds of its members.

Aside from doctrinal debates, intelligence sources said communist surrenderees revealed that the communist movement is also wracked by in-fighting due to "sexual opportunism" and malversation of rebel funds.

The surrenderees also disclosed the communists have stepped up its extortion activities in the countryside and have even resorted to criminal activities, including kidnapping.

Military officials said the ongoing purge appears to be the second phase of an operation, conducted from 1998 to 2000, that resulted in the death of 184 card-carrying communists nationwide.

But aside from Oplan Missing Link 1 and 2, there was also a purge, called Kampanya Ahos, from 1985 to 1986 which resulted in the execution of 600 rebels in Mindanao.

Military intelligence officials said the largest purge, called Oplan Zombie occurred in the 1980s when 2,214 armed regulars and 1,793 sympathizers were executed.

Another 1,000 rebels were supposedly executed under "Project Olympia" which was conducted in Luzon from 1989 to 1991.

Last year, the authorities exhumed the skeletal remains of 439 people, believed to be communist rebels, in different sites in Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon and Davao del Sur.