On November 8, 2024, the US-Marcos regime approved the National Action Plan for Unification, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD). Behind its lofty name, the NAP-UPD is another bogus peace plan of the reactionary government, and its latest blueprint for suppression and deception.
The NAP-UPD sells “peace and development” through militarist solutions while renouncing the fundamental roots of the armed conflict. Its main implementing agency is the regime’s notorious propaganda attack dog, the NTF-Elcac, whose immediate abolition has been demanded by many local and international human rights and concerned groups because of its record in red-tagging, instigating arbitrary arrests, and enforced disappearances.
At its core, the NAP-UPD purportedly intends to destroy the armed revolution in the Philippine countryside by 2028. It boosts the Marcos regime’s Retooled Community Support Program (RCSP) which is designed to bring the illusion of government services and development projects flowing down to targeted barangays (villages) where the armed revolutionary movement hold sway. Under this billion peso-funded scheme, economic projects are offered to the community only after they “surrender” and withdraw their support for the New People’s Army (NPA).
“Clear, hold, consolidate, develop”
Like its predecessors (i.e., Joint COPLAN Katatagan, Oplan Kapayapaan, Oplan Bayanihan), the NAP-UPD is rooted in US “counterinsurgency” doctrine. It follows the four-phase formula of “clear-hold-consolidate-develop”: crush the armed resistance, prevent its resurgence, strengthen the grip of the reactionary government, and cloak it all in “development” projects. Consistent with US imperialism’s “counterinsurgency” doctrine, which miserably failed in Vietnam and many times over in several US client regimes, the NAP-UPD uses the “whole-of-nation” approach where civilian government agencies are used to sustain focused military operations and a nationwide campaign of suppression.
Under the NAP-UPD, the AFP maintains almost the same level of deployment as in previous years – 118 battalions in guerilla zones nationwide – supposedly to prevent the NPA from regaining strength. Triad operations, combining combat, intelligence, and civil-military actions, remain central under its “whole of nation” approach.
But the plan extends beyond the countryside. It targets not only the peasant communities, but also the open legal democratic movement and organizations and formations of workers, farmers, the middle classes, professionals, progressive electoral parties, the churches and civil society organizations and service agencies. The end goal is to declare key areas under “Stable Internal Peace and Security Status (SIPS), effectively labelling them as “conflict-free” zones.
In practice, this means intensified psychological warfare and repression, forced surrenders, aggressive paramilitary recruitment, heavy military presence, and barangay-level “development” projects under the NTF-Elcac’s Barangay Development Program (BDP). As part of Marcos Jr.’s counterrevolutionary war strategy, the NAP-UPD as in previous Oplans (US-designed counterrevolutionary operation plans) wishes to deny the armed revolutionary movement, particularly in the countryside, of a lifeline in terms of urban support and resources for the revolutionary movement.
In addition, the NAP-UPD also relies heavily on state machineries of disinformation and red-tagging, primarily on the NTF-Elcac. The NTF-Elcac penetrates schools to conduct “orientations” aimed at discrediting the very concept of activism, branding it as “terror grooming.” The plan revives the infamous “Know the Enemy” document which was first used under the Arroyo regime’s Oplan Bantay Laya as part of Oplan Pagbubunyag, an intensified red-tagging and vilification campaign in the 2000s.
“Peace” through surrender
Like previous oplans, the NAP-UPD promotes a false concept of peace, one that is based on surrender and military victory rather than addressing the roots of armed conflict. Instead of resuming formal peace talks, the regime pushes “local peace commitments” that mask harassment, intimidation, and surveillance of communities accused of supporting the NPA. Those targeted are pressured to enter the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) and accept sham amnesty in exchange for token livelihood assistance.
A key tactic they employ is organizing “former rebels” into AFP and NTF-Elcac-controlled groups such as “Buklod Kapayapaan” and “Kalinaw” formations. These groups, led by turncoats, are used to discredit the revolutionary movement and create barangay-level organizations explicitly hostile to progressive groups. To keep tabs on them, the regime has established the Enhanced Former Rebel Information Systems (E-FRIS) which is a central database used for surveillance and coerctive tactics. Those who refuse to participate in government programs risk renewed trumped up charges or imprisonment.
Nearly two years since the November 2023 Joint Statement between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), peace negotaitions have made no real progress. Under NAP-UPD, the Marcos regime has no intention of reaching a just and lasting peace through dialogue, but instead dreams of crushing the NPA and forcing capitulation through surrender talks.
The NAP-UPD intensifies the use of repressive laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and the Anti-Terrorism Financing Law to harass, intimidate, and criminalize progressive leaders and organizations. They are accused of having ties to the armed movement and are charged with “terrorism” or petty crimes just to keep them in jail.
Repression breeds more armed resistance
By intensifying political repression by silencing all dissent – shrinking the democratic space, criminalizing solidarity, controlling development work, and accusing critics of terrorism, the regime wishes to end the armed revolutionary struggle without fundamentally addressing the roots of the armed conflict.
This so-called blueprint for peace in fact closes the doors to the peace negotiations with the NDFP, offers nothing but capitulation and surrender, and trashes comprehensive social and economic reforms that would address the problems of landlessness, poverty, hunger, unemployment and the absence of social and economic justice – crucial preconditions for attaining a just and lasting peace.
However, as with the experience during the US-Marcos fascist dictatorship in the 1970s until its downfall in 1986, subjecting the Filipino people to ever worsening forms of political repression, oppression and exploitation, and clamping down, restricting and eventually closing legal avenues of redress and struggle, and offering them no genuine path to peace, the US-Marcos fascist regime only incites the people to take the path of armed struggle to achieve national and social liberation and genuine and lasting peace#