Taganito Mine Attack by the NPA---all for nothing

More than 300 NPA guerillas reportedly attacked Nickel Asia Corporation's mine in Surigao. Three security guards were killed and multi-million peso worth of properties went up in smoke. The question really is--so, what was the goal of the New People's Army in staging this very costly military offensive? What was the strategic objective?


A newspaper headline, saying that 3 innocent guards got killed and NPA's were able to raise their automatic rifles in the air, like Japanese soldiers during World War 2, is that it?


Is it to show to the world that the NPAs still exist in that part of the archipelago? Was it a political statement or something else? Did they capture sensitive military equipment or what? Nothing, really. It was all for nothing.


It just reinforced the belief that our friends have now shifted from regular revolutionary work to banditry. 


Did that attack cripple the national or even the local economy? No. It just harassed a local company. 


Did the attack send even a ripple in the superstructure? None, no such thing really. No political or military effect, none at all. It did not even probably boost the morale of the rebels. 


Fact is, the image that the public conjured when they learned of the attack is the image of savage hordes with automatic rifles bringing their force hard on a hapless group of breadwinners cum security guards guarding a legitimate mine operation. 


It was an image of camouflaged armed men attacking a defenseless area and torching the place like they are servants of Bacchalian rites instead of self-respecting Marxist Leninist Mao Tsetung advocates. Even the People's Liberation Army of Mao's time did not spend their time and their bullets attacking a local mine.


That attack really is a shame. I dare any member of the Mindanao Commission to justify to me that attack. Even tactically, that's a shame. IMagine killing three innocent breadwinners all in the name of shouting "Mabuhay ang CPP-NPA-NDF!"


Mabuhay for what?