The army believes that the NPA and communist party, cut off from much of its overseas financial support, and burdened by decades of ineffective resistance, are in sharp decline. The NPA is hiring more teenagers for their combat units, and many villages and neighborhoods previously hospitable to the NPA, now contain many informers, who are tolerated and protected by their neighbors. The NPA increasingly relies on banditry to survive, and the Communist Party of the Philippines is split by debates over what to do next.