[Reuters]

Published date: 29th Oct 1987

29 October 1987

Reuters News

English

(c) 1987 Reuters Limited

MANILA, Oct 29, Reuter – Philippine Communist guerrillas appear to have launched a major offensive with the killings of 14 people in two days, political analysts said on Thursday.

For the first time in the 18-year-old Communist insurgency, the victims included U.S. servicemen, two serving and one retired. They were shot dead near the Clark Air Base north of Manila.

No one has claimed responsibility for the assassinations, but they bore the trademark of the Communist “sparrow units” — swift attacks, mostly with . 45-calibre revolvers, and quick getaways.

“The attacks were all beautifully coordinated,” a U.S. businessman said. “The logical assumption is that the killers were sparrows and that they have launched an offensive.”

A recent issue of the Communist organ Liberation described the establishment of an urban guerrilla network in Manila by the Communist New People’s Army (NPA).

Propaganda groups would build up mass support in Manila and prepare people for “a higher stage of struggle”, Liberation said. Other support groups would provide logistics and funds, while intelligence units “draw the profiles of all targets.”

Since January, the sparrows have claimed responsibility for the deaths of more than 30 soldiers and police in street ambushes in the capital.

The young men and women who form NPA death squads are indistinguishable from the people around them, blending with crowds in everyday clothes.

The sparrows usually act in teams of three — a triggerman, a backup gunman, and a lookout.

Despite much-publicised “eagle squads” set up to hunt the sparrows, the military has scored no major successes.

One officer admitted that In a country where an estimated five million civilians own guns, about one-third of them illegal, there had also been a tendency to blame any murder on the sparrows.

But a Western diplomat noted that the latest wave of urban terror broke out a week after President Corazon Aquino swore she would get tough with the Communists and rejected suggestions the government was prepared to open peace talks.

Aquino’s fighting speech on October 20 to the country’s business leaders has been widely seen as restoring direction to a government adrift after a bloody coup attempt two months ago.

“There was obviously a pressing need to counteract the new confidence,” the U.S. businessman said.

The Clark Air Base killings coincided with a new low in Philippine-U.S. relations. On Wednesday, Washington recalled from its Manila embassy a military attache accused of interfering in the August 28 coup attempt.

The diplomat said the attacks also followed stepped-up U.S. military aid to the Philippines and assurances by Washington that it fully supported the embattled Aquino government.

The analysts pointed to several recent signs that the NPA would go on the offensive.

At a clandestine press conference on October 14 in Nueva Ecija province, north of Manila, NPA spokesman Ruth Firmeza said U.S. military and diplomatic personnel would be attacked if Washington backed growing talk of martial law.

“The U.S. is now hurrying to replace Cory (Aquino) or declare a military junta because of the successes of the NPA,” Firmeza said. “If the U.S. directly intervenes … then our response would be to directly hit (American targets).”

Earlier this month, after the Philippine military sent five battalions into the central Bicol region to counter an upsurge of NPA attacks, the guerrillas vowed to intensify their campaign against the military and “other enemies of the people”.

John Carroll, a Jesuit priest who heads the Institute on Church and Social Affairs, said the latest “sparrow” attacks occurred a week after Aquino visited Davao and proclaimed her support for controversial military- backed vigilantes who are credited with an effective anti-Communist drive.

“Two weeks ago a visitor from Davao casually remarked that all the sparrows from there are now in Manila,” Carroll said.

He said vigilante groups would only worsen the problem.

“To try to balance the intransigence of the left with the fanaticism of the right only leads to a war of extermination,” he said. “The NPA is now trying to make Its presence felt.”