A woman who joined the New People’s Army while still an adolescent yielded, along with her 21-day old child, to a military unit in the seaside Kalamansig town in Sultan Kudarat after learning that her companions who had returned to the fold of law had been reintegrated into mainstream society.
The 22-year-old Ading Fanagey Kian, trained in fabrication of improvised explosive devices and boobytraps rigged with home-made bombs, and her child, are now under the protective custody since Sunday, July 20, of the Army’s 37th Infantry Battalion and the 603rd Infantry Brigade covering a number of towns in Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato provinces in Central Mindanao.
Local executives and traditional leaders of indigenous groups in Sultan Kudarat’s adjoining Kalamansig and Lebak towns were instrumental in connecting Kian to officials of the 37th IB, led by its commanding officer, Lt. Chrisopherson Capuyan, who immediately accommodated her in their battalion headquarters and provided her with food and milk for her three-week-old daughter.
Brig. Gen. Michael Santos, commander of the 603rd Infantry Brigade, said on Tuesday, July 22, that Kian shall be reintroduced to the local communities with the help of local officials and different government agencies.
Kian had told reporters that she decided to leave their small group hiding in the hinterland border of Kalamansig and Lebak towns after she was secretly informed by municipal officials that the more than 200 NPAs from across Sultan Kudarat province who had surrendered in batches to different units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in the past three years are now with their families, thriving as tricycle drivers, farmers, fishermen and construction workers.
6th ID’s commander, Major Gen. Donald Gumiran, told reporters on Tuesday that they will request the offices in Region 12 of the social welfare and labor and employment departments to extend to Kian essential interventions needed to boost her productivity once reunited with her parents.
Kian is the 47th amazon who had renounced membership with the NPA since 2022 through the intercession of different units of the 6th ID, whose headquarters is in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Norte.
The 37th IB and the 603rd Infantry Brigade are both under the 6th ID, which has regional reconciliation programs for members of the NPA and the outlawed allies Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters that are being implemented with the help of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity and the regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Photo show the entrance to Camp Siongco in Maguindanao del Norte, where the headquarters of the 6th ID is located. (July 22, 2025)