The War with No End

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In late 2005, the rebels launched hundreds of raids across the country in what Victor describes as "the first nationally coordinated N.P.A. attacks since 1992." He claims 200 firearms were seized in Mindanao alone. With the violence intensifying, Giegie's sister Lenlen, 19, has already survived three shoot-outs; she was almost killed during an N.P.A. attack on an army post in Agusan del Sur province in 2005. One bullet hit her neck and ripped an exit through her armpit, while a second drilled into her thigh. "All I could think was, 'If I die here, I die for the people,'" she recalls. But within weeks Lenlen had recovered—young flesh heals fast—and by December 2005 she had joined a weapons raid by 43 rebels on a police headquarters in nearby Loreto town that netted a dozen firearms and killed two policemen. Their deaths don't bother her. "They tried to fight back," she shrugs.

Lenlen says she is happy to have joined a group that is "guided by Marxist-Leninism and Maoist thought." But as a high-school dropout from remotest Mindanao, it's not clear how much she truly knows or even cares about such matters. By contrast, Victor—a well-educated cadre from a "petit-bourgeois family" (his words)—gives an eloquent if specious defense of the N.P.A.'s core ideology. No communist state has ever collapsed, he argues, because none has ever existed. East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia—none had "true" communist governments when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, while the Soviet Union and post-Mao China "were socialist in name but capitalist in practice." The same jungle that has shielded the N.P.A. from military defeat has also isolated its fighters from a modern world where their cherished ideology is deader than disco.

While outright victory is not a possibility for the N.P.A., neither is extinction. Victor asserts that Arroyo's "all-out war" is unwinnable. The Philippine army is thinly dispersed, he argues, capable of engaging only a quarter of the N.P.A.'s 120 "fronts" nationwide while remaining vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics. "We have learned a lot about guerrilla warfare in 37 years," he warns. Felipe Miranda, a political-science professor at the University of the Philippines, agrees: "The military does not have the capability, in terms of both logistics and manpower, to deal with an insurgency that has been around for close to half a century." Officials in Manila admit troops are stretched, but insist they are gaining the upper hand. Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo says there has been a "major reduction" in N.P.A. troop strength, from 12,000 five years ago to 7,000 or so, and that the armed forces are seizing more N.P.A. weapons than ever. "The Filipino people and the government are working together to reduce all threats to the state, including the N.P.A., while spreading the bounty of economic development nationwide," says Saludo.

Military success against the rebels in Mindanao also depends on restarting peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. After all, the Philippine army would be hard-pressed to fight the M.I.L.F. and the N.P.A. simultaneously, especially at a time when more than 6,000 government troops are already involved in a third entanglement—attacking Abu Sayyaf's jungle strongholds on Jolo Island. Adding to all this bloodshed is the other war: in recent years, but especially in 2006, hundreds of antigovernment activists across the Philippines—labor leaders, lawyers, journalists, even priests—have been assassinated. Many were members of legal left-wing political parties that senior state officials have publicly accused of supporting, and even fighting for, the N.P.A. Local and international human-rights groups suspect the military is involved in the killings, though last month an Arroyo-appointed commission cleared it of blame for a slew of murders in Negros, an island north of Mindanao. The efforts of a previous government task force were stymied by what the New York-based Human Rights Watch called "a climate of fear and a lack of cooperation by military authorities." Human Rights Watch said that victims' families were "afraid to cooperate with police for fear of becoming targets of reprisal." Officials deny soldiers are behind the extrajudicial deaths, while Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez says the N.P.A. itself might be responsible in the hope that such killings might "destabilize" the government.

Yet even without the N.P.A., Arroyo's administration is under siege. So far she has survived two impeachment attempts over allegations of election fraud and human-rights abuses, as well as three coup attempts involving government troops. Some see her declaration of war against the N.P.A. as a concession to the military top brass, which she desperately needs to stay in line. "The military, rather than Arroyo, is pushing the political agenda," says Southeast Asia security expert Abuza. "Arroyo wants to keep the military on her good side. She's always concerned that it will at some point withdraw support for her."

She is right to worry: both Marcos and Arroyo's predecessor, Joseph Estrada, were toppled by popular protests after the army withdrew support for them. Yet Arroyo's reliance on the armed forces could backfire. "There's a lot of concern from Filipinos about their democracy being rolled back," says Abuza. "These military-driven policies certainly play into those perceptions." Ermita counters: "Don't forget that the commander-in-chief is a civilian, and that there is a chain of command which is strictly followed. You cannot militarize the country because this is a democracy, not a military government."

What is beyond dispute is that the government is in seemingly perpetual conflict with a significant portion of its population. The N.P.A. should be a cold war relic, a forgotten insurgency rotting away in the Southeast Asian jungle. Instead—and despite its bloody purges, its "sparrow unit" death squads and its defunct ideology—it remains an enduring symbol of the failure of successive governments to improve the lives of ordinary Filipinos. Deep in the mountains, Comrade Victor has no doubt that his "protracted people's war" will outlast Arroyo's presidency, although in one sense he'll be sad to see her go. Government opponents who now fear for their lives "are being encouraged to take the great leap to join the N.P.A.," he says. "Arroyo is our greatest recruiter."