CMO Battalion's Initial Salvo
By Raven

For almost forty years already, the government and the AFP has already been engaged with the insurgency being waged by the CPP/NPA/NDF with significant successes. However, these successes were not sufficient enough to totally eradicate the problem. In its decades of experience in fighting against the weakening insurgency, it has found a holistic approach to hopefully put an end with finality and reduce the communist insurgents to insignificant level relegating them to being a simple police matter.

The loyalty and commitment of the AFP to defend the people and the country being translated into a more meaningful and significant undertaking has put a twist in its anti-insurgency campaign. Previously focusing on the combat aspect of the anti-insurgency operations, the AFP made a paradigm shift and centered on the root causes of the problem itself.

Serving as catalysts to facilitate to concerned government agencies the valid issues and concerns   being raised by the people and help find solutions through networking, linkaging, and collaboration with non-government organizations, people’s organizations, and the local government unit’s and agencies. These very same issues are the ones being exploited by the CPP/NPA/NDF in their agitation and propaganda to gain the support of the people and possibly recruit some of them to join the armed movement unwittingly, in their violent pursuit to overthrow Philippine democracy and replace it with Communist rule.

This effort of the AFP puts a new dimension to the counter insurgency program of the government, simultaneously addressing both the RED and the WHITE AREAS. Considering that Metro Manila is the biggest White Area in the archipelago, the AFP deployed the Civil Military Operations Battalion of the Philippine Army on November 2006 to conduct community service and developmental works in the depressed communities all over the metropolis. The battalion initially deployed troops in 26 depressed communities and further expanded to other areas to address the Ideological, Political, and Organizing (IPO) works of the CPP/NPA/ NDF anchored on their Arouse, Organize, and Mobilize (AOM) strategy.

Though experiencing the usual birth pains confronting newly organized units, the CMO troopers had their initial success with the successful resolution of the issue concerning the demolition and eviction of   informal settlers along the 3.5 meter widening on both sides of the railway tracks which is part of the rehabilitation program of the country’s railway system in the Pandacan-Sta Mesa-Sampaloc area. The program is being undertaken as part of the government’s thrust for economic development. However, the CPP/NPA/NDF through its front organizations started organizing the informal settlers and slowly agitating its ranks to resist the housing and developmental project.

To address the issue, the troops facilitated dialogues between the Philippine National Railway (PNR), the office primary responsible for the developmental undertaking; the National Housing Authority (NHA), the agency responsible for the relocation of the affected residents; the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the agency to address the affected people’s livelihood and welfare concern; the Office of the Mayor of Manila City; and the affected residents to resolve side issues  hampering the implementation of the demolition and eviction.

The series of dialogues was a win-win solution to all the stakeholders eventually persuading the residents to accept the reasonable and practical solution to their problem and be relocated to provincial relocation sites thereby allowing the government to pursue its developmental project beneficial to the country and to the millions of Filipinos as a whole.

In the same manner, the CMO Battalion extended its community service through 15 engineering works such as the construction and minor repair of day care centers, barangay outposts, waiting sheds, public toilets; repainting of classrooms and barangay halls, as requested by the residents and the barangay officials themselves, in the different depressed communities all over Metro Manila.

In coordination and cooperation with benevolent individuals and institutions, the battalion extended 31 medical and dental civic actions to render free medical check-up, tooth extractions, circumcisions, minor surgeries, and free dispensation of medicines that eases the burden of the people with the rising costs of hospitalization and medicine, benefitting a total of 16,123 people. On different occasions, 128 soldiers donated blood to GMA Kapuso Foundation and the Philippine National Red Cross in their noble blood letting activities.

The troops actively participated in the annual “Brigada Eskuwela” program of the Department of    Education and assisted 24 public schools (both high school and elementary) in repairing tables and chairs, repainting of classrooms and blackboards, checking and rewiring electrical connections, repair and formatting of school desktop computers, sweeping and cleaning the school grounds, classrooms, and toilets in time for the school opening.

With the battalion’s existing Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and in further coordination with other local government agencies, the unit was able to facilitate 26 livelihood and skills development trainings/seminars benefitting 719 people. These trainings were intended to equip the many jobless people, livelihood skills to eke out a living and become more productive individuals.

As part of its poverty alleviation program, the troops enhanced the entrepreneurship of the members of Creek Land Neighborhood Association of Signal Village in Taguig City and helped them establish the Creek Land Multi Purpose Cooperative and further facilitating its registration with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA).

In cooperation with local government officials, school administrators, students, parents, residents, volunteers, street sweepers among others, the troops joined in the conduct of 240 operation “linis” all over Metro Manila.

Hand in hand with the barangay officials and health workers, the troops conducted numerous vaccination and immunization activities designed to prevent outbreaks of diseases and actively participated in defogging activities aimed to prevent rising cases of dengue and malaria.

In countering the IPO works of the CPP/NPA/NDF among the youth/student and urban poor sectors, the battalion sent its Speaker’s Bureau to conduct Education and Awareness Campaign in various schools, colleges, and universities and to urban poor communities sharing valuable and relevant information about the CPP/NPA/NDF’s evil schemes and strategies; infiltrations and deceptions; recruitment, extortion, threat, intimidation and coercion techniques; terroristic activities; its crimes to humanity and the Godless and anti-family values it inculcates to its unwitting recruits.

Exactly two years since its reactivation today, these are just among the few of the modest, honest, and sincere community service and developmental activities undertaken by the CMO battalion in the performance of its mandated mission to serve the Filipino people and hopefully, this initial salvo will contribute in its own little way to the accomplishment of the task in making the CPP/NPA/NDF an irrelevant issue.
To the CMO troopers, keep up the excellent work! Always maintain the highest standards of discipline, honesty, dedication to work, commitment to GOD and to the people and we will always be on the right track. Happy 2nd year anniversary!!! Kainan na!!!