Unnegotiated

Freshly minted Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro is always clear when he speaks – especially when he says bold things.

Among the first policy pronouncements he made since taking office is his disinclination to resume “peace negotiations” with the Maoist CPP-NPA-NDF. It might have been more politic to fudge the issue and let it dangle for eternity. But that is not Gibo’s style.

On a related matter, he expressed disinclination to even open the possibility of reviving the trashed UP-DND agreement that prohibited the state’s security forces from entering the university campus without the latter’s explicit consent. Hindsight instructs us well. This is a silly agreement. How any self-respecting government might have agreed to this should long be a source of bewilderment.

The UP-DND agreement is dead. It died when government came to its senses and realized this agreement infringes sovereignty. It served only the goals of radicals who hole out in the university and expect to enjoy a secure rear base within its premises. In practice, this agreement hampered police operations and cramped law enforcement.

The matter of the “peace negotiations” requires a more elaborate discussion.

By way of disclosure, I served the GRP negotiating team in a very marginal role in the mid-nineties, during the Ramos administration. When we asked the former president what his instructions were about what was open to negotiations and what was not, he simply replied: “Better to talk and talk than fight and fight.”

That was not much of a strategic guideline. But it was given with the wisdom of an old warrior wearied by war. The team felt free to craft the parameters of the “negotiations” as we went along, adjusting to the disposition of the counterparty. Our mandate was to keep the talks going as long as feasible, hoping against the odds to stumble upon a political settlement.

My involvement with the government team was brief. I traveled to Utrecht only once.

As soon as we arrived there, the communists made it known they did not want me on the panel. Then executive secretary Ruben Torres, head of the team, was taken aback. The communists wanted to exercise veto power on who would constitute the GRP panel. He decided he did not want to meet with them face to face. Only the eternally optimistic Silvestre Bello sat down with Joma Sison and company.

My “crime” it appeared was that I once wrote an essay describing Joma Sison as a plagiarist. His principal treatise Philippine Society and Revolution was lifted from the work of an older Indonesian communist leader.

That was a pity. I would have wanted the counterparty to state that a political settlement was at all possible in their orthodoxy and if peace was such a serious matter that it is being discussed down the rank and file of their movement.

At any rate, the “negotiations” went on and off for about two decades. The CPP pushed a document that addressed what they said were the grievances fueling rebellion in our land. But that document never explicitly stated that a political settlement was on the agenda.

In addition, the CPP demanded scores of leading cadres be granted safe passage and immunity from arrest as they served as “consultants” to the negotiations. Government actually agreed to this demand, testament to its anxiousness to keep the talks going. Many of these “consultants” were eventually killed in battle or arrested for other crimes.

Whenever a senior CPP official was arrested for crimes such as murder or arson, their comrades pointed to the list of “consultants” in demanding their immediate release. It was clear this concession was useful to give their cadres freedom of movement and hamper the counterinsurgency effort.

Government received no concession at all from the communists. There might have been agreement forged on, say, implementing a ban on landmines in accordance with international law. But the communists would hear nothing of it. The communists were interested in the talks merely as yet another platform for their propaganda effort to spread the false narrative that armed rebellion was the response to people’s grievances.

In a moment of pique over treacherous attacks on government troopers, then president Rodrigo Duterte scrapped the talks. It was clear from then on that, without a major political concession from the communists, the talks will never be restarted.

In the course of over two-and-a-half decades, the battlefield situation has dramatically altered. Many of the doctrinal leaders of the Maoist rebellion were either killed in encounters or died of old age. Today, no one of any stature is recognized as leader of this movement. The CPP Politburo and Central Committee have all been practically wiped out by government’s sustained counterinsurgency effort.

The once numerous “guerrilla fronts” of the NPA have all shriveled. What we have now are isolated armed bands living off extortion to finance their operations. They have become more of a nuisance than a serious insurgency.

As the guerrilla units are taken out one by one, the battlefield situation is bound to change dramatically against the communists. More and more government troops are now able to bear on less and less guerrilla zones.

Meanwhile, government has tirelessly innovated on its tactics. The NTF-ELCAC has proven to be an effective mechanism for denying the rebels secure bases.

Given the unfolding battlefield dynamic, it would be folly for government to reopen negotiations with what is left of the self-exiled leaders of the insurgency. This will only gift them with a platform for their deceptive propaganda.