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Thread: Charles Bohannan and Guerrilla warfare in the Philippines (1939-1954)

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    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    It could be argued that the Huk rebellion was less defeated than suppressed, and that it re-emerged later, in a much more sophisticated form, as the New People's Army. The extent to which the restoration of the decaying feudal status quo ante that generated the rebellion in the first place can be considered "victory" might be seen as debatable. Magsaysay's promises of reform had some impact on the course of the rebellion, but the reality on the ground never lived up to the promise, leaving the area ripe for further insurgent organizing. Anyone treating the Huk rebellion as a case study of "victory" in COIN should also treat it as a case study of how failure to follow up a transient military victory with real changes in governance simply generates "rebellion 2.0"... often a much more difficult rebellion to manage, as rebels tend to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

    Many reviews of the Huk period, especially from the US and Philippine military side, focus on the role of counterinsurgency tactics in degrading the rebellion and overlook the internal friction within the Huk side. Luis Taruc and Casto Alejandrino were undoubtedly communists, but they had the ability to present doctrine in terms that made sense to the less ideological, more reform-minded peasantry that formed the backbone of the Huk fighting force and local leadership. This ability was not shared by the Lava brothers and the urban ideologues that gained influence in the leadership ranks as the rebellion progressed. This largely educated, doctrinally rigid clique was rooted in urban labor organizing and, while they were able to maneuver their way into leadership positions in the Huk movement, never really connected to the peasant masses and alienated much of the local leadership. The eventual decline in the influence of the Huk leadership was largely driven by this split, though many analysts at the time had a vested interest in attributing it to successful counterinsurgency tactics.

    It's certainly on your list already, but Benedict Kerkvliet's work on the Huk Rebellion is almost a mandatory starting point. Unlike much other work on the rebellion, it's based on field research and extensive direct contact with people who participated in and were affected by the rebellion, often at the ground level. This perspective is notably missing from much other scholarly work, which often gets mired in cold war stereotyping or the personal bias of various "leaders" and "experts", from both sides of the fence, that are relied on as primary sources.

    One aspect of the roots of rebellion that has, to me, been inadequately treated is the extent to which the MacArthur/Roxas alliance and its insistence on restoring the prewar feudal elite to power actively participated in creating the conditions that allowed the rebellion, and to some extent the later rebellion of the NPA, to flourish.
    Last edited by Dayuhan; 06-26-2011 at 01:33 AM.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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