Pouring money into the military to stamp out the communist insurgency is a myopic way of addressing an age-old problem that has its roots in poverty.
This is why we urge President Duterte to continue pursuing peace talks with leftist rebels. We also support his precondition, which he told a crowd of angry left-wing protesters after his last State of the Nation Address, for a little sincerity and mutual respect. He asked the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels not to attack him, referring to the recent ambush staged by suspected NPA rebels on the convoy of presidential guards in Arakan, North Cotabato. “You cannot ambush me and ask me to talk to you,” he said, somewhat echoing the words of the late rap artist Francis Magalona in his iconic song “Kaleidoscope World”: “You can’t talk peace and have a gun.”
Any social scientist worth his salt acknowledges the connection between poverty and rebellion. Of course, it is not that simple. Not all poor people end up too frustrated that they resort to carrying out armed conflict against the government; and certainly, more than a few leaders of the local Leftist movement belong to the middle and upper classes. Still, the connection between conflict and poverty is there.
The challenge, therefore, for any government, is poverty reduction and sustainable development. The economic integration of those in the margins is a powerful tool for breaking the nexus of poverty and conflict. Fill your people’s rice bowls, and you address the discontent that leads to rebellion. You go to the root of the problem to solve it.
The military solution—using the might of arms to crush insurgency—may work for a while, but the problems would remain, and they will surely spawn a new batch of insurgents and rebels to replace the hundreds or thousands who would die in the conflict.
Former Senator and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Rodolfo Biazon, a grizzled, battle-tested marine, once said any insurgency, any rebellion, cannot be quashed just by rounding up and killing the government’s “enemies”.
“First of all, we can’t kill them all,” he added. “And for every one we kill, we create three or four or five new enemies.” He meant there would always be new recruits, men and women seeking revenge for relatives the military killed, leading to a cycle of violence that can only result in mounting casualties.
No, there is no long-term military solution to the insurgency problem. Experience has already shown us that even after thousands of Filipinos have already been killed on both sides (excluding the thousands more who were caught in the cross fire), insurgency and rebellion are still very much alive in the countryside. Why? Because the same crippling poverty makes rebellion an ideal employment choice for men and women who have no stake in the status quo.
There is one more decisive element though, aside from economic integration, and that is political integration. After ousting former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the country has demonstrated quite encouragingly that if you welcome the causes of the Left in the open marketplace of ideas, it would help in nonradicalizing them, in moderating them.
Exclusion from formal political participation plays a powerful role in radicalizing movements. When you give the Left an array of political opportunities, they would take advantage of these and respond to these positively.
We have seen this in the way Bayan Muna and the other left-leaning organizations have moderated in order to enter electoral politics. They have been quite successful working for the changes they want through the political
process rather than through the option of armed conflict.
We saw this when Duterte appointed Left-leaning Rafael V. Mariano as his Agrarian Reform Secretary, Judy M. Taguiwalo as Social Welfare Secretary and Liza L. Maza as National Anti-Poverty Commission Secretary, giving them frontline responsibilities in the government so they can work for their progressive agendas.
Indeed, the democratic process is also very important in removing the impetus for armed conflict. It is always better to have more democracy, not less.