Ongoing[4] Communist Party of the PhilippinesSupported by: China (until 1976)[2] Bongbong Marcos(President) Gilberto C. Teodoro(Defense Secretary) Jonvic Remulla (Interior Secretary) Romeo Brawner Jr.(Armed forces chief) Rommel Marbil (Police chief) Mark D. Pespes(SAF chief) Benito Tiamzon † Wilma Austria † Gregorio Rosal # Jorge Madlos †[7] Jaime Padilla (POW)[8] Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Philippine National Police (PNP) New People's Army (NPA) The New People's Army rebellion (often shortened to NPA rebellion) is an ongoing conflict between the government of the Philippines and the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Marxist–Leninist–Maoist[4][11] Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

[13] The history of the rebellion can be traced back to March 29, 1969, when Jose Maria Sison's newly formed CPP entered an alliance with a small armed group led by Bernabe Buscayno.

Buscayno's group, which was originally a unit under the same Marxist–Leninist 1930s-era Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 (PKP-1930) with which Sison had split, was renamed the New People's Army (NPA) and became the armed wing of the CPP.

[14] Less than two years later, President Ferdinand Marcos introduced martial law,[15][16] leading to the radicalization of many young people[17] and a rapid growth of the CPP-NPA.

[22] The year 2022 was marked with the deaths of Sison and the husband-and-wife duo of Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, the latter two being the alleged leaders of the NPA.

By 2024, the number of active communist rebels was noted to have dropped to just over 1,000 amidst a gradual weakening of the rebellion and the restarting of peace talks with the government.

[33] As a result, as security specialist Richard J. Kessler notes, the administration "mythologized the group, investing it with a revolutionary aura that only attracted more supporters."

The NPA was finally able to regain weaponry on December 29, 1970, when Philippine Military Academy instructor Lt. Victor Corpus defected to the CPP-NPA and led a raid on the PMA armory, timing the raid when most cadets were out on Christmas vacation and the PMA's senior officers including its superintendent, General Ugalde, had left the camp to meet President Ferdinand Marcos upon his scheduled arrival in nearby Baguio City.

[34] Corpus, who was PMA's designated officer of the day (OOD), guided the NPA raiding team which managed to escape with Browning automatic rifles, carbines, machine guns, and various other weapons and ammunition.

[39][40][41][42][43] More recently, historian Joseph Scalice has argued that while the Marcos government was allied with the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in carrying out bombings in the early 1970s,[44] "the evidence of history now overwhelmingly suggests that the Communist Party of the Philippines, despite being allied with the Liberal Party, was responsible for this bombing, seeing it as a means of facilitating repression which they argued would hasten revolution.

[18] The social unrest of 1969 to 1970, and the violent dispersal of the resulting "First Quarter Storm" protests were among the early watershed events in which large numbers of Filipino students of the 1970s were radicalized against the Marcos administration.

[54] Shortly after Ferdinand Marcos was ousted by the People Power Revolution, the CPLA made a "sipat" or ceasefire with the newly established Provisional Government of the Philippines at the Mt.

[55][56] After Ferdinand Marcos was deposed during the 1986 EDSA Revolution, president Corazon Aquino ordered the release of political prisoners,[57] including Jose Maria Sison and Bernabe Buscayno.

[58] Buscayno ceased activities related to the CPP-NPA[58] while Sison eventually went into self-exile in the Netherlands, ostensibly to become chief political consultant to the NDF.

This split resulted in a weakening of the CPP-NPA, but it gradually grew again after the breakdown of peace talks in 1998,[58] the unpopularity of the Estrada administration,[60] and because of social pressures arising from the Asian Financial Crisis that year.

[62] In 1998, a group which operates mainly in Central Luzon broke away from the Communist Party of the Philippines, taking up a Marxist-Leninist ideology instead of the CPP's Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

[65] The peace talks broke down soon after the 1998 agreement,[58] however, and conflict between the two parties resumed at high levels after Joseph Estrada assumed the presidency later that year.

According to Dr William Norman Holden, University of Calgary, security forces carried out a total of 1,335 extrajudicial killings between January 2001 – October 2012.

Despite the existence of the politburo, NPA's local units receive a high level of autonomy due to difficulties in communication between each of the fronts across the country.

10 on April 3, 2018, creating the Task Force Balik Loob which was placed in charge in centralizing the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), and the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) program of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP).

Despite the massive amount of aid previously received, foreign support eventually dried up following the 1990s collapse of socialist governments worldwide.

Yet others, linked with the political right (such as the members of the Reform the Armed Forces who had inadvertently played a part of the civilian-led People Power revolution), actively pressured the Aquino administration not to have peace talks with the CPP–NPA–NDF.

"[89] This political tension was in the background on January 22, 1987, when a group of farmers marched to Malacañang in protest for the government's slow action on land reform.

The parties signed the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) on February 24, 1995, assuring the safety of NDF negotiators and consultants; they then sign the Comprehensive Agreement to Respect Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) on March 16, 1998, with a promise to "confront, remedy and prevent" serious human rights violations" on either side.

[57] Peace talks resumed after Gloria Arroyo assumed the presidency, but are suspended after the assassination of Martial Law era intelligence agent turned RAM dissident Rodolfo Aguinaldo, who had since become Governor of Cagayan.

Another round of peace talks and the Joint Monitoring Committee of the CARHRIHL is finally established, but the Arroyo administration becomes characterized by redtagging and violence.

[57][91] Peace talks resumed soon after Benigno Simeon Aquino III became president and the armed forces intensify their efforts at security sector reform.

Further efforts at peace talks were made but these also broke down as the Duterte administration became characterized by Extrajudicial Killings linked to its War on Drugs.

Samar's terrain consists of densely forested mountainous areas, providing fertile ground for conducting guerrilla warfare.

[12] Prior to Ferdinand Marcos's September 23, 1972 announcement of martial law, the NPA did not have a presence in Mindanao, which was also only seeing the beginnings of the Moro separatist conflict in the form of clashes between the Ilaga and Blackshirt ethnic militias.