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Post by dodger on Mar 19, 2014 7:00:19 GMT
Civilians hurt in NPA attack get P10,000 each
Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:07 am | Wednesday, March 19th, 2014 DIGOS CITY, Philippines— Communist guerrillas on Monday paid P10,000 each as compensation to rescue workers who were wounded in a land-mine explosion set off by the guerrillas in a move that the military said was an admission of guilt.
The guerrillas apologized for the injuries that the rescue workers had suffered during the guerrilla attack on government soldiers in Bansalan, Davao del Sur province, on March 2.
The church group Exodus for Justice and Peace (EJP), led by Bishop Modesto Villasanta of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, served as a conduit of the funds.
Those who received the guerrilla compensation were Genaro Dumayas Sr., Bonita de la Cruz, Arnel Comandante Veloso and Alberto Simbajon Cabual.
They are members of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) who were on their way to fetch wounded soldiers when their ambulance was hit by a land mine detonated by New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas.
Senior Supt. Michael John Dubria, Davao del Sur police chief, said the NPA admission would help in the prosecution of guerrilla leaders involved in the attack.
“There could never be any justification for the incident. The victims are civilians and were in an ambulance but still, they were targeted,” Dubria said.
Genaro Dumayas Jr., whose father was among those wounded, said he was thankful that the NPA admitted its mistake.
“It is not the money that matters, what I am asking for is that this incident to not happen again,” Dumayas Jr. said.
Villasanta said EJP served only as a third party facilitator.
“We are undertaking the role of a mediator,” he said.
Davao del Sur Gov. Claude Bautista said he was at least thankful that the NPA compensated the civilian victims of the guerrilla attack. Reports from Allan Nawal, Eldie Aguirre and Orlando Dinoy, Inquirer Mindanao Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net/586926/civilians-hurt-in-npa-attack-get-p10000-each#ixzz2wOBdc5lr Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook |
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Post by dodger on Mar 22, 2014 8:01:41 GMT
Revolutionary justice for Romeo Capalla’s murder will be exacted upon the US-Aquino regime and its military perpetrators
March 20, 2014
Concha Araneta
Spokesperson
CPP Panay Regional Committee
Only about two months have elapsed since the RPP-ABB, upon the instruction of their military handlers, broadcasted their bloody intrigue against legal personalities of the people’s movement when Romeo Capalla was murdered right at the entrance of the Philippines National Police-guarded Oton Public Market last March 15, 2014. Simultaneously, two small-scale sugar mills of Panay Fair Trade Center (PFTC), of which Romeo Capalla served as an officer, were torched down in Janiuay town.
Such despicable extrajudicial killing (EJK) of Romeo Capalla and arson inflicted on small farmers organization’s property is the signature modus of the US-Aquino regime’s military and their special units and paramilitary outfit (such as the RPA-ABB). Such units are maintained for such ‘dirty jobs’ against people’s organization and personalities. The Oplan Bayanihan of the Aquino regime secretly sanctions such atrocities so long as they do not implicate the regime who belabors its Human Rights credentials as a victim of the Marcos Dictatorship while coddling the deposed dictator’s military hatchetmen.
And why would Romeo Capalla suffer the wrath of Aquino’s henchmen? Why would a legitimate businessman-exporter of muscovado sugar be victimized by Aquino’s hitmen?
His being an NPA commander during Martial Law was spread around by the military psychological warfare agents apparently to justify his assasination by military agents. But Romeo Capalla as a rebel was a legitimate freedom fighter who led in waging armed struggle against the Marcos Dictatorship. Even the new law of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines recognizes all those who fought the dictatorship and are so honored. He was wounded in battle and was captured by Marcos agents while convalescing in a hospital from a debilitating leg wound in 1987.
Upon release from jail, he dedicated three decades of his life to furthering the livelihood of small sugar farmers and workers by extending farm financing, agricultural extension and secure the fair market value for their exported muscovado produce in the world market. His company was granted capital by people’s organizations and fair trader entities in Europe and South Korea to put up more small-scale mills all over the island of Panay to benefit more sugar farmers and workers. Lately, the company and its workers were immersed in seeking resources from partners abroad to contribute to the campaign for relief and rehabilitation of Typhoon Yolanda victims all over the island.
Apparently such activities of Romy and PFTC rub the regime’s military the wrong way since the various civil military campaigns failed to win over the hearts and minds of a people cynical about an armed force who bludgeoned and intimidated them to death and now pretends to advocate human rights.
Romeo Capalla was arrested in August of 2005 based on a trumped-up charge of arson by the Armed Forces of President Arroyo. Along with him in the made-up case was Councilor Fernando Baldomero of Aklan. The evidences presented were so ridiculously manufactured that the case was dismissed. But even then, continuous attempt at harassing him and his business abound. The PFTC’s sugar mills in the far-flung countryside were already similarly attempted to be burned down for several times. An explosive device was thrown at the door of another mill. The extra-judicial killing of Councilor Fernando Baldomero in July 2010 opened up a new chapter of serial killing, this time by henchmen adopted by the Benigno Aquino regime from the past Arroyo administration.
In providing for the continuity of the Oplan Bantay-Laya of the fascist Arroyo regime in the form of Oplan Bayanihan, the Aquino regime provided an elaborate facade of “respect for human rights”. Riding on the coattails of the anti-Marcos dictatorship prestige of his parents, Aquino II devised Oplan Bayanihan which continued the assault on people’s rights with impunity to boot by the state security forces while claiming respect of human rights. Such pretentions and impunity are documented and denounced by various human rights organizations including the very State Department of the United States .
A case for this assertion, Romeo Capalla, himself, let on among his circle of friends that during the abduction of Luisa Posa and Nilo Arado, he and a relative approached a member of then Arroyo’s very exclusive Congressional Oversight Committee for Internal Security(COCIS) . The COCIS member matter-of-factly confirmed that the two abducted were already killed and the operation was sanctioned because of strong demand from lower military officers.
Until now these Arroyo henchmen were never investigated, much more prosecuted and those military men are the very same people that the Aquino regime remains beholden to. Therefore, the trail of blood from Capalla’s extra-judicial killing leads to the very regime’s doorstep. But it went by roundabout ways passing through the gates of Camp Peralta, headquarters of the Third Infantry Division and its Military Intelligence Battalion, handlers of most secret liquidation teams and the paramilitary RPA-ABB. Major General Baladad could now upgrade his achievements from the mere illegal arrestor of the Morong 43 (a group of legitimate health worker in training) to being the new overseer of a continuing serial political killing by military men in Panay. This he could rightly claim as the foremost commander of all counter-insurgency initiatives in Panay and Negros. No major extrajudicial killing by the forces under him could be executed unless he approves. This is not to say however , that we could rule out the fielding of a team directly from the national headquarters of the Armed Forces intelligence service.
Of course, the military could do all the dance and song routine about their innocence, demand proof of accusations from the victim’s family and associates and even offer reward money for the arrest of perpetrators. They could even ridiculously claim zero human rights violation as certified by an apologist Commission on Human Rights. The police could eventually provide a fall guy(s) who would be at large or even arrested as what happened to the killing of Fernando Baldomero. What could the public expect if one of those assigned to investigate the killing was also the intelligence officer, that Romeo Capalla claimed before as the one, together with other agents, engaged in stalking him surreptitously?
The state psywar experts aligned to some media outlets could even insinuate that Romeo Capalla’s murder was in retaliation for the execution of the Hugo by the NPA, a convicted mass murderer—armed and dangerous. But such scenario would portray then that the state military (using their surrogate, the RPA-ABB) are aping the Japanese Kempetais in World War Two. Ten innocent civilians were murdered for every Japanese soldier killed by Filipino guerrillas. We have no doubts that if the RPA-ABB was involved, it could be upon the instructions of their military intelligence handlers.
Or these top officials could let the public outcry die down and the case shelved among numerous other unsolved cases as what happened to the enforced disappearances of Luisa Posa and Nilo Arado.
The state security forces enforces such selective heinous crimes with impunity so long as the Aquino regime could claim such killings as isolated cases or its incidence had decreased after the Marcos dictatorship. The important thing is for the Aquino regime to inflict the minimum level of white terror and intimidation that could contain the growing opposition to his rule. What matters to the regime is the chilling effect to those people that denounced its inutility and criminal neglect of Yolanda victims .
But the people are not intimidated. The public are not paralyzed by white terror nor their voices stilled by the rain of bullets. The Aquino regime and its murderous minions will reap what they sow.
For one, the dastardly killing of Romeo Capalla will bring into focus the impunity for crimes perpetrated by the state security agents under the US backed Aquino regime. The regime itself is swathed in human rights pretentious bloodline. Such sharp public awareness would bring to fore the anti-insurgency model (Oplan Bayanihan) from which stem the tactic of selective liquidation of progressive personalities by state security agents so as to zap the militancy of a people swamped by poverty, destroyed property and loss of livelihood. The serial killing of Baldomero and Capalla in a three year span and the enforced disappearance of Luisa Posa and Nilo Arado three years before Baldomero’s murder highlights the fascist character of the state security forces unrepentant from the days of the Marcos dictatorship.Only this time, the Aquino regime provided the human rights trappings concealing their murderous hands.
All the preparations for the secondary Association for Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conferences, all the come-ons to potential business investors, all the multimillion spent on infrastructure and beautification projects would go to waste because the island had become one killing field of legitimate businessmen and leaders of people’s organization. As if the killings of rival drug personalities in gang wars, were national security forces are involved, are not enough.
Such political crimes, freshly awashed in Romeo Capalla’s blood, will bring out again and again, in increasing numbers, thousands of people to the streets in a public outcry that will resound all throughout Panay, all over the country and even in the countries of Europe and Asia. The death of Romeo Capalla and the deep sorrow from the loss of a dedicated person in the service of the poor and oppressed would break through the terror effect of his assassination and strengthen the commitment for justice and freedom of all comrade-in-arms, activists and the conscious masses .
Squads and platoons of NPA will be raised out of able-bodied men and women who could no longer stomach the criminal inutility of the Aquino regime in the face of widespread destitution and corruption in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda. These revolutionaries would rather opt to engage in armed struggle amidst sustained fascist attacks on legitimate protest actions and economic endeavor to assist the peasantry and farm workers as what happened in the past.
Right now, the National Democratic Front in Panay, in the midst of revolutionary struggle, will redouble its effort in the campaign of the people rising to repair the ravages of Typhoon Yolanda’s wrath and restore normalcy in their daily lives. Having acquired the organized strength and some element of empowerment, the people rising shall exact justice for the martyrs in the national democratic struggle and for the people’s oppression as a whole including that for Romeo Capalla. In so doing, the people shall march firmly in the path of ousting the US-Aquino regime and establish genuine democracy and freedom.
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Post by dodger on Apr 3, 2014 6:46:40 GMT
CPP denounces AFP for rounding up civilians for fake surrender
March 31, 2014 ![]() Communist Party of the Philippines
 The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denounced the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for using civilians, including a number of minors in staging a fake surrender ceremony last Saturday. The public ceremony was initiated by the 4th Infantry Division in Cagayan de Oro City.
“This AFP claim of a mass surrender is a hoax,” said the CPP. “It is a desperate bid to cover up its losses in the field and the steady growth of the New People’s Army, especially in the areas covered by the 4th ID in the Caraga region.”
Last Saturday, the AFP chief of staff himself presided over the “surrender ceremonies” where they rounded up scores of civilians, including children and elements of paramilitary forces from the provinces of Bukidnon, Surigao del Sur, Misamis Oriental and Agusan del Norte.
“The AFP has been resorting to such ‘surrender’ ceremonies since the time of the Marcos dictatorship,” pointed out the CPP.
“The military is resorting to fake surrenders and empty declarations amid its gross failure to achieve Oplan Bayanihan’s declared objective in 2011 to render the NPA inconsequential by 2014 and transfer so-called counter-insurgency operations to the police,” said the CPP.
As exposed by a barangay captain in Paquibato District, Davao City, AFP officials have been doing the rounds of homes and asking people to sign a document that would portray them as “NPA surrenderees”.
“These fake surrenders are also among the biggest sources of corruption as AFP field commanders pocket the reward money allocated for the firearms supposedly turned in,” added the CPP. “Most of the firearms are either the personal property of the so-called surrenderees or recycled by the military from its rust stockpile.”
The CPP further condemned the AFP for abducting a 14-year old child in Magpet, North Cotabato last March 24 and later presenting him as an NPA combatant. The boy, who was abducted by troops of the 57th Infantry Battalion while conducting operations in Barangay Bantak, is a graduating student of the Bangkal Elementary School with complete class records. The military’s sole basis for claiming that he is a child combatant is the boy’s purported ability to sing the NPA anthem and familiarity with the NPA officers in their area. He was later remanded to the local social welfare office.
The CPP also dismissed declarations made by the chief of staff over the weekend that the NPA will be a ‘spent force’ in five years time. “All previous AFP generals, current AFP chief Gen. Emmanuel Bautista included, are wont to make declarations of victory beyond their tour of duty because this exempts them from being answerable when their projections fail.”
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Post by dodger on Apr 3, 2014 7:01:37 GMT
Ka Simon Santiago for 45th NPA anniversary
Message on the 45th founding anniversary
of the New People's Army
Comrade Simon Santiago,
Spokesperson,
Regional Political Department,
NPA-Southern Mindanao Region
Let us salute and honor the martyrs who gave up their lives, and gave their time to serve the poor and liberate them from oppression and exploitation.
The New People's Army has proven and determinedly raised its capability to perform its tasks as a fighting army, an organizing army, an army for propaganda, cultural work and production
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Post by dodger on Apr 3, 2014 7:13:05 GMT
One Billion Rising, by The Red
Detachment of Women NPA-Panay
In celebration of the NPA 45th anniversary the Red Detachment of Women NPA Panay
joins One Billion Rising for justice and genuine, lasting peace
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Post by dodger on Apr 3, 2014 7:20:06 GMT
Kasamang Bill
Message of Ka Bill, Regional Operations Commander of NPA-Northeast Mindanao Region,
for the 45th anniversary of the New People's Army.
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Post by dodger on Jul 21, 2014 13:02:37 GMT
ANG BAYAN, 21 July 2014
Intensify people’s war nationwide!
Communist Party of the Philippines
The New People’s Army (NPA) in Mindanao launched a series of resounding tactical offensives this July. According to initial reports, it launched six tactical offensives in three regions in a week (July 7-15), seizing 58 firearms of various caliber and inflicting at least 30 enemy casualties.
Simultaneously, Red fighters in Luzon, the Visayas and other parts of Mindanao were also able to launch big and small tactical offensives. The more frequent tactical offensives of the NPA demonstrate that it continues to possess the initiative in the battlefield. This is especially striking in Mindanao, which has been pummeled by more enemy battalions since January in the AFP’s effort to lay siege to a number of guerrilla fronts. By keeping the initiative, the NPA is continually able to enjoy the advantages of guerrilla warfare in maneuvering, launching small and big tactical offensives and mobilizing the armed masses.
Through the Party and the corresponding NPA regional, subregional and front command’s firm leadership, the NPA has been able to continually intensify guerrilla warfare, thwarting the enemy’s attempts to encircle and besiege NPA units. The vast majority of armed encounters in Mindanao have been initiated by the NPA.
The NPA’s continuing initiative in the battlefield in most parts of Mindanao is a lesson that must be grasped by all NPA commands nationwide. They must plan at the regional level how to seize and maintain the initiative and implement this unerringly and without exception up to the most basic NPA units.
In launching widespread and intensive guerrilla warfare on a nationwide scale, the NPA must ensure that its regional commands are able to mobilize all vertical and horizontal forces as well as other centers of gravity, armed propaganda units and partisan units at the regional, subregional/provincial and guerrilla front levels. They must likewise be supported by people’s militia units.
The enemy’s regular units and deployments must be identified and regular and frequent tactical offensives launched monthly. Even more frequent tactical offensives must be launched when the enemy is mobile and penetrates guerrilla zones and bases. Red fighters must always be on war footing whenever the enemy launches military operations. The NPA must quickly plan and deploy forces in order to launch tactical offensives on short notice (ambushes, harassment, sieges) when the enemy is mobile and on the attack. When the enemy comes in and conducts operations, confronting, resisting and thwarting him becomes the main task of the NPA and the revolutionary forces.
The NPA must endeavor to launch tactical offensives that are annihilative, and that lead to arms seizures and possess high political relevance or impact. Some types are ambushes, sieges or raids, disarming, sabotage and sapper operations that require detailed preparations and which ensure the element of ruse or surprise in order to raise the probability of victory and the preservation of forces.
The NPA must combine annihilative operations with many attritive or other smaller military actions such as harassment, punitive actions on enemy intelligence assets and arms seizures from isolated and small enemy forces. Special operations must be conducted against military and police commanders and intelligence officers, destructive and plunderous businesses and industries, especially those owned by representatives of the ruling classes that are big, despotic, counterrevolutionary and in power.
Enemy forces encamped within barrios can become the subject of various forms of military and mass action. Their officers must be targeted and their forces subjected to nightly harassment operations.
Tactical offensives must encompass the plains, highways, coastal areas and town centers. Partisan-, commando- and sparrow-type operations must be revved up.
Even as the NPA launches tactical offensives, it must likewise expand and consolidate guerrilla zones and bases, mass organizations and organs of political power, advance agrarian revolution and launch mass struggles. The Party must continually be strengthened and expanded as the key requisite for success in our tasks and our further advance.
Even when at the height of launching tactical offensives and confronting intense enemy attack, sufficient time must be allocated for undertaking ideological and political agitation and education within the NPA’s ranks. Rest periods must be devoted to internal political work.
To intensify armed struggle is to respond to the people’s demand for justice against the fascist military’s rampant violations of human rights—the repeated bombings of civilian communities, massacres, forced evacuations, torture, enforced disappearances and killings, the destruction and theft of the masses’ crops, property and farm animals, intimidation and the occupation of schools, places of worship and homes.
Guerrilla warfare must be further intensified throughout the archipelago in the face of the worsening political crisis of the ruling reactionary system. This serves as the NPA’s contribution to the struggle being advanced by the democratic mass movement to oust the US-Aquino regime. The intensification of tactical offensives nationwide is a demonstration of the people’s anger at the US-Aquino regime’s rabid puppetry, exploitation, corruption and brutality.
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Post by dodger on Nov 12, 2014 16:02:15 GMT
Before Yolanda swept through the Philippines, the CPP enjoined all revolutionary forces in areas along the supertyphoon’s path to mobilize the people and bring them to safer ground. Attending to the people’s well-being, NPA units and people’s militias organized a mass evacuation, giving priority to young children and the elderly.
NPA units, local party branches and mass organizations immediately mobilized the people in order to assess the damage and plan out an appropriate course of action to address urgent needs. A communication and transportation network was immediately established in order to seek relief goods and other material assistance from local mass organizations as well as international and local relief agencies.
Disaster survivors are victims of a grave injustice. They are victims of the Aquino regime’s failure to put into place sufficient disaster-prevention measures. They are victims of corruption in so-called welfare agencies. They are victims of the oppressive and backward system that fails to provide them jobs, just wages and sufficient livelihood. It is the oppressed and exploited classes who suffer grave economic hardships after any disaster.
The struggle of the disaster survivors forms a growing aspect of the national democratic mass movement as the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system continues to deteriorate rapidly.
Englsh subtitles
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Post by dodger on Nov 12, 2014 16:36:08 GMT
CPP hails NPA for arms haul in Mindoro raid
November 10, 2014
Communist Party of the Philippines The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) acclaims the New People’s Army (NPA) for the seizure of 23 firearms in a raid last November 7 at the Paluan, Occidental Mindoro municipal hall. Moving swiftly and precisely, the NPA Red fighters successfully overpowered the armed elements of the Public Safety Battalion and the 408th Public Safety Maneuver Forces of the Philippine National Police and the 76th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army.
The raid was successfully conducted by the NPA Mindoro Island Command (Lucio de Guzman Command). According to the NDF-Southern Tagalog, the Red fighters seized seven M14 rifles, 13 M16 rifles, a shotgun, two handguns, ammunition and other war materiél.
“A new platoon of NPA Red fighters in Mindoro is set to be armed with the newly seized weapons from the enemy,” added the CPP. “The people of Mindoro, especially the mass of poor and middle peasants and farm workers and the mass of the Mangyan people, are elated at the successful tactical offensive and are determined to intensify their revolutionary armed struggle.”
“The oppressed and exploited people in Mindoro are ever determined to advance their struggles for land reform and to drive away the big mining companies and big foreign agri-business companies which are set on plundering Mindoro, poisoning the environment and robbing the people of their wealth and resources,” said the CPP.
“The biggest of these companies are in cahoots with the ruling Aquino regime and are among Aquino’s big bourgeois comprador amigos,” pointed out the CPP.
“The entire CPP, NPA and the revolutionary masses across the country are exhilarated at the successful raid of the NPA-Mindoro,” said the CPP. It was one of the biggest NPA tactical offensive this year in terms of the number of arms seized.
“NPA units in the different regions will be carrying out more tactical offensives, both big and small, in the coming weeks and months in order to seize more weapons from the enemy,” added the CPP.
“The Filipino people wish and expect to see more tactical offensives launched by the NPA as they suffer more and more under the puppet, corrupt and brutal Aquino regime,” said the CPP. |
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Post by dodger on Nov 13, 2014 19:30:29 GMT
Superb analysis of the ghastly futility of colonial wars, 7 Oct 2014 www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1S60W4KWFX1Y9/ref=cm_aya_bb_revThis William Podmore review is from: Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Paperback) Douglas Porch is Distinguished Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He has written a penetrating study of colonial warfare. He presents studies of the US wars against Vietnam and Iraq, the British wars against the Boers, Ireland, Palestine, Kenya, Malaya, Yemen and Northern Ireland, and the French wars against Syria, Vietnam and Algeria.
Porch writes of these wars, “most proved to be protracted, unlimited, murderous, expensive, total-war assaults on indigenous societies. … the true key to success was pitilessly to target anyone and anything that sustained the insurgency. In this way, colonial warfare simply boiled down to national displacement and ruining the countryside by making it unlivable.”
He points out that “World War II linked counterinsurgency more closely with special operations, which favoured ‘kill or capture’ decapitation strategies and dramatic coups as quixotic solutions to intractable political or strategic problems. … even though special operations and resistance action through intelligence collection, sabotage, disruption, diversion, and popular mobilization had played at best a minimum, even a morally ambiguous, role in the Axis defeat, World War II propelled the myth of the military effectiveness of Wingate-inspired Special Operations Forces (SOF), Lawrencian people’s war, and paratroops into the postwar.”
He notes that “despite its disastrous consequences, Palestine impelled the British tradition of police militarization in small wars, with its concomitant brutalization of counterinsurgency politics and tactics, forward into British operations in Malaya, Kenya, and Northern Ireland.”
For example, in Kenya, from June to December 1953, “20,000 troops swept the reserves, and the ‘Prohibited Areas’ of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, shooting Africans on sight. … in 1957 the British launched Operation Progress, a program of systematic beatings and horrific tortures in the camps permitted under regulations that allowed guards to use ‘compelling force’ to gain inmate compliance … ”
Porch remarks, “The financial burden combined with the highly publicized violence in the British-run detention camps during the Kenyan Emergency helped to convince Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that the lawless brutality of British counterinsurgency had forfeited Britain’s moral right to rule African colonies.”
Porch also notes that in Cyprus, “32,000 British troops aided by 8,000 mainly Turkish Cypriot auxiliaries deploying deportations, decapitations, torture, pseudo gangs, police violence, and sweeps …” and, again, that “Lieutenant Colonel Colin ‘Mad Mitch’ Mitchell, commander of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders … had entered the Aden Crater against orders and subsequently pacified it with methods that included accusations of wanton killing of Arabs in sadistic ways accompanied by widespread looting by undisciplined troops.”
The British Army’s official report into its actions in Northern Ireland acknowledged, “it could be argued that the Army did make the situation worse by, in practice, alienating the catholic [sic] community in 1970 and 1971.” Porch sums up the British state’s record, “British law, as interpreted in the context of imperial policing, aimed to facilitate and justify official violence, not constrain it” and, “imperial Britain’s small wars retained their dirty, violent, racist character ...”
In general, as Porch observes, “small war dominance institutionalized foreign occupation anchored in minority rule, political and cultural hubris, and economic exploitation, then hearts and minds quickly gave way to the cudgel and machine gun, which was the case following both world wars in a variety of bloody counterinsurgency campaigns that continue through those prosecuted most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Porch quotes the historian Isabel Hull, “Imperialism was war.”
Counterinsurgency resulted in “the institutionalization of collective punishment, torture, resettlement, internment, special night squads/ferret forces/counter gangs, and RAF terror bombing for imperial policing. The key to success was to rebrand these kinetic methods as hearts and minds and prosecute it out of public view. … villages might be bombed from the air, shelled, burned, or imply knocked down, wells poisoned, crops fumigated or destroyed, livestock slaughtered, the wounded executed, and the population displaced. Twice the weight of bombs was dropped in Radfan (Yemen) in the last six months of 1958 than the Luftwaffe had managed to unload on Coventry in November 1940.”
Porch points out, “Protection and isolation of the population from the insurgents usually boiled down to campaigns of counter-terror that included internment without trial, torture, deportation, creating refugee tsunamis, or curfew and concentration camp lockdowns supplemented by calorie control.” He sums up, “COIN [counterinsurgency] is simply updated imperialism: Bacevich quotes an American officer in Iraq who argued that, “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them,” expressing a view that would have been understood by a nineteenth-century British officer.”
He also shows how counterinsurgency is counter-productive: “Not only did the exemplary violence of COIN bolster insurgent fortunes, be they Zionists, FLN, IRA, or now, it seems, Taliban. But also, harsh tactics undermined support for COIN among populations at home shocked that counterinsurgent crusades promoted in the name of freedom, fair play, or liberté justified open-ended states of exception, torture, targeted killings, night raids, drone and air strikes, indefinite internment, a suspension of legality, and alliances with unsavoury, corrupt, and illegitimate local actors, even disappearances and massacres in the name of national security. Nations that acquiesce to counterinsurgency ‘wars on terror’ because the threat seems credible and the enemy weak and easily overcome must realize that small wars are long, dirty affairs fought most often in remote places among people little inclined to see the arrival of Western forces as liberation. Even when they are achieved, military victories in small wars seldom come at an acceptable political, diplomatic, legal, moral, and financial cost.”
Porch points to the consequences of COIN: “Because the Algerian insurrection was classified as a criminal conspiracy, POWs had no right to humane treatment. Many captured FLN were initially guillotined or simply disappeared, while the civilian population was subject to reprisals, relocation, collective punishment to include wholesale massacres of villages, and other refinements of martial law. Nor did it take long for colonial violence anchored in the freebooter mentality developed in the French colonial military to reach the French mainland. What was called the ‘Algerianization’ of the French state began when Maurice Papon, later convicted for having deported Jews to Germany during World War II, was brought back from Constantine, Algeria, in 1958 to serve as Paris Prefect of Police. Under Papon, colonial police techniques like arbitrary arrest, curfews for Muslim workers in France, the creation of massive detention centers, systematic violence, assassinations, torture, and general brutality that weakened the rule of law steadily escalated into the so-called Paris ‘police riots’ of October 17, 1961 in which scores of Algerian migrant workers were killed. Police violence was not only limited to Muslim workers in France, but was also aimed at the growing opposition to de Gaulle’s government from unions, the media, and the anti-war movement – for instance, nine people protesting right-wing OAS violence died at the hands of Papon’s police in February 1962.”
Porch concludes, “French counterinsurgents succeeded in uniting much of Algeria’s Muslim population behind the Front de libération nationale (FLN) by the war’s end. … French COIN tactics helped to transform FLN from a minor conspiracy into the vanguard of a people’s war.”
As he notes, “the insurgent is viewed as a coward and an assassin, an ‘enemy of all mankind’, not a soldier who enjoys the protection of the laws of war. The counterinsurgent, on the other hand, is protecting society, and so is performing an honourable function even as he mobilizes dishonourable means. Those who criticize counterinsurgency methods are branded as hypocrites, ingrates, fellow travellers, enemies of Western civilization and so on – in short, allies of subversion.”
Advocates of COIN argue that it failed only because the army mutinied (the French in Algeria, the US in Vietnam), but actually the army mutinied because COIN failed. Or they argue that it failed only because the civilian government, or the people, or the media were too weak to see it through, when actually the civilian government, the people, and the media stopped wanting to see it through because COIN failed. “COIN offers a doctrine of escapism for many relevant personalities and institutions – a flight from democratic civilian control, even from modernity, into an anachronistic, romanticized, Orientalist vision that projects quintessentially Western values, and Western prejudices, onto non-Western societies.”
The ideas of David Galula, an army major who took his ideas from France’s disastrous war against Algeria, inspired the US Army’s policy document FM 3-24. US General David Petraeus’ “FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency of 2006 replicates the righteousness of nineteenth-century imperialists when it brands the enemies of coalition occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘elusive, unethical and indiscriminate foes’ organized in an insurgency ‘characterized by violence, immortality, distrust and deceit’.” Porch comments, “populations of those countries who not for the first time have endured invasions and occupations by outsiders who employ indiscriminate violence, justified by trumped up security threats, and followed by occupations based on governance pacts with opportunists or sectarian and political rivals may perhaps be forgiven for failing to draw the stark moral distinctions that appear so obvious to the authors of FM 3-24.” The Pentagon spends $4.7 billion a year on PR.
“The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act has enshrined provisions that have been evolving under the previous administration of George W. Bush that undermine civil liberties – most notably, it authorizes indefinite detention of terrorist suspects; it outsources prosecution of terrorist suspects to military tribunals, stripping federal courts of most terrorist cases; finally, it bans detainees at Guantanamo from being transferred to jails on the US mainland or to friendly or allied nations who might take them.”
Porch brings his study right up to date, pointing out that, “Whatever their tactical benefits or moral justifications, SOF [Special Operations Forces] and drone attacks have served to spread anti-America sentiment and roiled the strategic relationship with Pakistan and now it seems with Yemen as well.”
He warns us, “as had been the case in post-Great War Afghanistan and Iraq, airpower proved to be no substitute for troops on the ground.” He concludes, “Small wars must end as a precondition for prosperity and so that a nation may embrace its epoch.”
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