DAVAO CITY

Side Bar Story Duterte keeps his hands off Paquibato

The city?s largest district of over 40,000 people, Paquibato has become a virtual garrison these days. People cannot move around the place without identification cards bearing the signature of soldiers. On the veranda of the village hall of barangay Mabuhay, government soldiers mounted an M60 machine gun, a menacing reminder among its residents of the silent war in their midst. In a place called Crossing Hasil towards the border with Panabo, soldiers at a checkpoint stopped all vehicles for inspection. Earlier this month, a fuming Mayor Rodrigo Duterte had declared he will keep his hands off Paquibato, raising fear that rights of civilians might be violated in the resulting armed clashes between government and rebel forces in the area. Paquibato has long been considered battleground between the military and the Communist New People?s Army. Its hinterlands have been a stronghold of NPA leader Leoncio Pitao, the elusive Kumander Parago whose 20 year old daughter, abducted and killed on March 4 in Davao city, was buried last week. Duterte has kept ?good rapport? with the rebels through the years, a policy that relatively kept peace in the area in the past but which apparently clashed with army?s thrust to crush the 40-year old insurgency through military might. Read on.