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Philippines Reserves and Auxiliaries
The Philippine reserve program was founded on the citizen
army concept laid out in the National Defense Act of 1935,
whereby defense would be provided by a limited professional cadre
backed by citizen reservists rather than by a large conscript
army. In 1989 the AFP claimed that active forces of about 153,500
people were backed by some 800,000 reservists. However, this
number probably included all eligible former soldiers, many of
whom might be difficult to recall. Other sources placed total
reserve strength at 128,000--approximately 100,000 in the army,
12,000 in the navy, and 16,000 in the air force. Only a small
fraction of these--less than 50,000--were thought to be active by
involved in the reserve program.
The AFP reserve program was administered by an element of the
General Headquarters staff, within the office of civil-military
operations. Reserve forces fell into two major categories:
Auxiliary Reserve Units and Citizens Armed Forces Geographic
Units (CAFGUs). Reservists of the first category were
predesignated civilians in critical public sector jobs, such as
electric power and water service, who were subject to federal
mobilization. They had no military training and were not intended
to support military operations directly in the event of a callup .
The CAFGUs consisted of both inactive military reserve forces
and militia units actively involved in counterinsurgency. Each
service had its own inactive CAFGU reserve component. On paper,
the army had thirteen divisions of CAFGU reservists, one in each
political region, including Manila. These units, however, never
trained nor even conducted organizational meetings. Instead,
Regional Community Defense Units--which administered the Citizen
Military Training program--maintained rosters of individual
reservists. A few reserve officers participated at their own
expense in annual training, but there was no individual training
for enlisted reservists.
CAFGU active auxiliaries--essentially militia who provided
for village self-defense--were the heart of the reserve program.
Under the direct control of the active military, they replaced
the Marcos-era Civilian Home Defense Force, a poorly trained and
equipped force widely criticized as being corrupt and abusive.
Members of the active CAFGUs were full-time militia who were
recruited and based in their home areas, where they were charged
with defending against insurgent attacks. CAFGU companies were
trained and commanded by active officers and NCOs of the army and
constabulary. If mobilized, the militia were to become part of
their sponsoring active army or constabulary unit. The 720 CAFGU
active auxiliary companies had around 64,000 members in 1990.
Other armed groups, labeled vigilantes, were sometimes
sponsored or endorsed by the military. Aquino initially praised
some of these anticommunist citizens' groups--such as Davao
City's Alsa Masa (Masses Arise)--for their success at
discouraging communist insurgent activity in their neighborhoods
during the late 1980s. In 1988, however, an international human
rights group charged that Philippine vigilantes had committed
"grave violations on a wide scale." Armed forces-sponsored selfdefense groups who were unarmed were not so controversial. These
civilian volunteer organizations, including Bantay Bayan (Nation
Watch), supported the military by reporting insurgent activity in
their barangays.
Data as of June 1991
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