Futile

Recall that it was the CPP-NPA that intermittently threatened to withdraw from the peace talks before those talks were finally shelved in 2004. Government’s decision to shelve the talks was reached after the communists mounted treacherous attacks against isolated police outposts and other vulnerable targets.

Now it is that CPP-NPA that is asking Norway to use its diplomatic influence to broker a resumption of the talks. It is not coincidental that the communist movement’s newfound interest in the peace talks comes after government took a clear policy position making the early termination of the insurgency one of the primary goals over the medium term.

The talks have been going on since 1987 to no avail.

The CPP-NPA since then had not conducted any dialogue with its rank-and-file in order to prepare a consensus for a political settlement. On the contrary, the CPP mounted a "rectification" campaign that resulted in bloody purges of cadres and guerrillas who questioned the movement’s central orthodoxy about seizing state power by means of a "people’s war."

The fundamentalist Maoists had taken firm control of the movement. Many of the movement’s leaders who had shown openness to other strategies have been assassinated by their own comrades. Among those killed by NPA gunmen are Felimon "Popoy" Lagman (who once headed the powerful Manila-Rizal Commission of the CPP), Rollie Kintanar (who was once chief of the NPA), Arturo Tabara (who once chaired the CPP’s Visayas Commission) and, most recently, Sotero Llamas (once head of the NPA in the Bicol Region).

Taken together, these assassinations served to consolidate the leadership of the CPP-NPA under the old guard faction headed by Jose Ma. Sison. The victims of these assassinations were denounced by the Utrecht-based communist mafia before they were finally killed.

Quite clearly, the CPP-NPA’s strategy was to merely use the peace talks as a means to win belligerency status or what might approximate it in the movement’s diplomatic standing in the community of states. To achieve this, they tried to draw foreign governments into providing "good offices" as mediators of the negotiations, dangling the distant possibility of a peaceful political settlement the communists never aspired to enter into.

Possessed by his own megalomania, Jose Ma. Sison imagined himself replicating the feat Arafat won for the Palestinian Liberation Organization – although that accomplishment has now been undermined by the radical Hamas faction.

The only "triumph" the Philippine government can lay claim to as the fruit of its patient peace initiative is that the CPP-NPA failed utterly in duping everyone into granting this lost movement that status of belligerency. The possibility of the CPP winning belligerency status is now more distant than ever after the US put this movement in its list of "foreign terrorist organizations" and asked her European allies to freeze all bank accounts traced to the Utrecht group.

That does not say very much, however. From the onset, as shown by internal CPP documents, the communists took a cynical view of the peace negotiations. The self-exiled leaders warned their local cadres against falling into the illusion that there is a way other than "people’s war."

With that insight into the thinking of the CPP leaders, it would have been completely naïve even for the most fervent peace advocates to be completely hopeful about the communists’ intention.

Nevertheless, government did everything short of falling into the trap laid out by the CPP-NPA to keep the peace talks going. Offensive military operations against the rebels were reined in for years. "Safe conduct passes", demanded by the communists, were granted by government. The CPP used these passes to enable their local leaders to move around openly under the guise of being "consultants" to the peace negotiations.

Entertaining the very distant possibility of a political settlement with the CPP has not been cheap. Year after year, government has spent millions of pesos maintaining a negotiations panel, keeping an office here and regularly sending negotiators to Europe for endless (and futile) rounds of talks with the communists. One military wit once quipped that had that money been used instead as reward for the capture of senior communist leaders, the insurgency might have been over by now.

These negotiations have been used by the communists to mount propaganda. The talks have also been used as leverage to win minor concessions from government, such as getting some of their detained cadres freed.

Among some of the concessions that many in the national security agencies now regret is the scrapping of the Anti-Subversion Law. That was done as one of the confidence-building measures in the hope that some progress might be achieved on the negotiating table.

All the concessions given by government since the peace initiative began a generation ago have not been reciprocated by the communists. During that period, the communists have set up a sophisticated network for extortion that has delayed the development of areas where they exercise some influence. They have mounted incessant "tactical offensives" that killed many soldiers, policemen and civilians. Their assassins roam freely.

Lately, the communists have played footsies with other conspiracies trying to overthrow government and produce yet another episode of political chaos for the country. Yet those guys nestled comfortably in Utrecht have the temerity to demand a resumption of the talks so that they can threatened to withdraw from them once more.

Clearly, the CPP’s newfound interest in the peace talks was sparked by the comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign government has decided to undertake. There is public consensus that this be undertaken. The communists are desperately looking for a tool to break that political consensus by again offering peace.

The offensive comes on the eve of an election year, the period when the communist movement is able to raise much of its funding by extorting from politicians as much as they extort from businessmen.

It is right for government to ignore the CPP’s demand for talks to resume until such time that the communists are ready to imagine the possibility of a political settlement and prepared to for once offer a confidence-building measure. A ceasefire might be good enough.