Filipino communists go back to war

IT HAD already been looking grim: communist insurgents were saying they would abandon a six-month-old ceasefire on February 10th because the government was refusing to free some 400 captured comrades. Then, on February 1st, communist guerrillas waylaid and murdered three unarmed soldiers in civilian clothes, said the army. The police found 76 bullet wounds in the corpses. The killings enraged Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ president, who vented: “What, is a soldier a dog?” In the end it was Mr Duterte who called off the government’s ceasefire and the peace talks it had fostered.

Mr Duterte had said before that he was willing to “walk the extra mile” to end the 50-year-old insurgency. But this week Mr Duterte not only suspended peace talks with the communist National Democratic Front (NDF), but also called for the re-arrest of members who had been released from detention so that they could take part in the talks. He says he now regards the NDF and its guerrilla wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), as terrorists. “I’m asking the soldiers, go back to your camps, clean your rifles and be ready to fight,” he said. In the following days the...