THE New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, is allegedly “re-organizing” its most elite—and dreaded— “hit squad,” the ‘Special Operations Group’ (SOG) to assassinate those connected with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
An intelligence report passed on to Pinoy Exposé averred the communist group are now gathering “information” and “intelligence” about task force officials and other individuals connected with it and who would serve as “high priority targets” of the SOG.
The report further claimed that for this operation, an SOG unit is being formed in Southern Tagalog.
“The aim appears to be to prompt the government to also respond in kind (assassination) and then they (CPP-NPA) can accuse the task force of extra-judicial killing (EJK) both here and abroad,” the report further said.
Since its creation by virtue of Executive Order (EO) 70 signed by Pres. Duterte on December 4, 2018, NTF-ELCAC has made significant gains in mobilizing an ever-widening public support against the 52-year old communist insurgency by exposing, not only the abuses of the NPA but also, the various forms of “deceptions” being used by the CPP’s front organizations to recruit fighters for the NPA, particularly in the youth sector.
Aside from serving as the main support group for other civic organizations tired of the unending recruitment of the CPP-NPA like the group of parents whose children ended up as NPA fighters, the task force has also aided former CPP-NPA cadres and fighters who have decided to go back to mainstream society.
Lately, the task force has upped the ante of its attacks against the CPP-NPA by being firm in its claim that the so-called ‘Makabayan Bloc’ in Congress is actually an alliance of CPP-led mass organizations headed by top CPP officials.
The task force also answered the dare of the Makabayan Bloc on the issue of ‘red-tagging’ by attending a Senate hearing called by Sen. Panfilo Lacson last November 3, 2020, to resolve the issue but which the bloc declined to attend.
Although the group claimed they are giving priority to helping the victims of a super typhoon that hit the Bicol and Calabarzon regions last week, it was accused of fearing being exposed as indeed being the so-called “legal democratic forces” of the CPP, the term given to the group in 1987 by CPP founder, Jose Maria Sison.
The Special Operations Group
The SOG of the NPA is considered as its “most elite” assassination squad that operates on a national level.
It takes it orders directly from the CPP Central Committee and its members are separate from the ‘special partisan urban unit’ (‘Sparrow Unit) of an NPA operational command.
Although some Sparrow Unit members are sometimes asked to become members, the SOG draws its membership from the ‘crème of the crop’ of all NPA formations nationwide, according to a source familiar with the SOG’s history.
Among the most notable urban hit squads trained by the SOG were the ‘Alex Boncayao Brigade’ (ABB) that operated in Metro Manila and, the ‘Maria Lorena Barros Brigade’ that operated in Southern Tagalog, both during the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
Among the SOG’s most notable victims were, former Quezon City police director, P/Gen. Tomas Karingal (1984), US intelligence officer, Col. James Rowe (1989), former NPA Southern Tagalog territorial commander and spokesman, Hector Mabilangan (1994), former Cagayan governor, Rodolfo Aguinaldo (2001), former NPA chieftain, Romulo Kintanar (2003) and, former CPP central committee member Arturo Tabara (2004).
The SOG also claimed responsibility for the incidents of bombings that hit the offices of oil companies in Makati City during early 2000.
However, with the sudden disappearance in May 2006 of its head, Philip ‘Ka Ador’ Limjuco, and the similar disappearance of its two other leaders, Leo Velasco and Prudencio Calubid, the CPP’s National Military Commission, the source said, decided to “disband” the SOG and re-assigned its members back to the regional and territorial commands of the NPA.
As far as the source knows, the SOG has not been reconstituted since then.
Velasco “disappeared” in 2007 and Calubid, just a month after the disappearance of Limjuco.