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John Unson - Philstar.com
December 30, 2025 | 6:04pm
The 700 new members of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographic Unit were immediately deployed in far-flung areas for community peacebuilding engagements.
Philstar.com / John Unson
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The peacebuilding activities of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division got a boost, having 700 newly-trained members of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) under its control, to help restore normalcy in conflict-ravaged former bastions of the New People’s Army.
The 700 CAFGUs, who finished on Sunday, December 28, a basic military training course at the 10th ID’s Division Training School in Barangay Tuboran in Mawab, Davao de Oro, were sworn in to duty by officials of the division, led by their chief of staff, Col. Silas Trasmontero, then representing their commander, Major Gen. Alvin Luzon, to the event.
Luzon told reporters in Cotabato City on Tuesday morning that the new CAFGUs under the 10th ID shall help push forward the division's civil-military projects in cities and provinces in the adjoining Regions 10, 11, and 13 that are under its jurisdiction.
The 10th ID, local government units and leaders of indigenous communities are together rebuilding isolated areas in the three regions where soldiers and NPAs figured in gunfights in past years and whose residents, members of the now defunct rebel group, collected money from at gunpoint on a periodic basis.
“These new batch of CAFGU members shall be utilized in implementing programs meant to restore normalcy in areas that our units have cleared from occupation by those terrorists,” Luzon told reporters.
Units of the 10th ID have secured the surrender of 1,323 NPA members in the past six years, through backchannel dialogues, supported by LGU officials and leaders of the indigenous communities in towns and cities under the jurisdiction of the division.
“This big CAFGU group shall also be utilized in helping reintroduce to the local communities the former NPAs who have returned to the fold of law through the joint efforts of the division, local executives and tribal leaders in our area of responsibility," Luzon said.
