NPA shifts recruitment strategy to urban areas

ZAMBOANGA CITY – To survive the annihilation two years from now from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the New People’s Army has shifted from ‘red’ to ‘white’ area by massing its civilian support through political activism, according to a military official.

The NPA shift of strategy was noted after several of its political fronts, tagged to have links with the National Democratic Front (NDF), have been recruiting in many key and urban places.

Maj. Gamal Hayudini, Armed Forces’ 4th Civil Relations Group commander, said the fronts are enticing its recruits with its so-called social programs. Hayudini declined to identify the NPA’s legal front conducting the recruitment but disclosed that active group is holding a seat in the congress.

He said in this port city alone, at least 10 villages have already been infiltrated and recruitments were made by the hundreds. This excludes the other key places in the region and the country as a whole.

“The NPA has shifted its strategy from ‘red’ area (offensive operation in the mountain) to ‘white’ area (urban recruitment),” Hayudini said.

“They are massing their recruitment to masses in the urban areas to increase the fronts,” according to Hayudini. However, he can not say if the mass recruitment in the urban places is the NPA strategy to counter the AFP Oplan Bantay Laya which is to neutralize the reds by 2010.

But Hayudini said the NPA has shifted recruitment from the rural to the urban locales due to its loses in the ongoing government operation.

“Their strength in the rural areas has decreased already,” Hayudini said.