For the Philippines, at war with itself for decades, peace is a faint hope despite bold pledges by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to end conflicts with communist and Muslim rebels during the six years of her new term.
The insurgencies, one of the main brakes on economic growth and investment, have very different faces and demands.
One, the world's oldest communist rebellion, is a throwback to the Cold War era and Maoist revolution. The other is born of centuries of Muslim humiliation in the mostly Catholic country.
But both the communist New People's Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) thrive on the poverty, corruption and institutional weaknesses that bedevil the Philippines.
Without addressing those issues, peace talks will struggle to yield meaningful breakthroughs, analysts say.
"I don't think Gloria's going to be any more successful at finishing off the NPA or the MILF than any of her predecessors," said Scott Harrison, managing director of the Manila-based risk consultancy Pacific Strategies and Assessments.
Arroyo, a stalwart ally to Washington, has welcomed about 1,000 US special forces troops since early 2002 to train and advise local units in counter-terror tactics.
As part of a formal alliance dating from 1951, the United States also sends equipment and funds to Philippine forces that lack modern weapons, communications gear and even decent boots.
But even as the largest recipient of US military aid in the Asia-Pacific region since the September 11 attacks on US cities, the Philippines still struggles to weaken the NPA, the MILF and smaller Muslim groups holed up in the jungle and rural villages.
With an MILF cease-fire holding on the southern island of Mindanao, the 10,000-strong NPA has become the biggest security threat with attacks nearly every day on police and politicians who failed to pay fees to campaign in elections on May 10.
The communist guerrillas routinely extort "war taxes" from local businesses and target officials they deem to be corrupt.
The military put deaths from NPA activity at around 200 since December, just over half of them communists and the rest soldiers and politicians. The 35-year-conflict has claimed 40,000 lives.
"The communist problem is a very serious problem, especially as they have learned to use to their advantage our electoral process," Arroyo's national security adviser Norberto Gonzales told Reuters in an interview.
Procommunist parties, some of which the military has accused of being NPA fronts, doubled their seats in Congress to six in the elections, underlining the injustice felt by millions of rural poor even if they have little time for Marxist rhetoric.
"It certainly isn't driven by revolutionary fervour," said Harrison. "It's all anger and frustration with the inability of government to pay any attention to the poor."
The latest round of peace talks between Manila and the NPA, brokered by Norway, ended without progress last month, stymied partly by the US listing of the communists as "terrorists".
There is slightly more optimism over the prospects for peace in Mindanao, where the MILF has fought for an Islamic state for three decades at the cost of more than 120,000 lives. All the while, poverty has deepened on the resource-rich island.
A truce has largely held since mid-2003 and talks brokered by Malaysia, a majority Muslim nation, are still on track. People in Mindanao are war-weary, as are many soldiers and rebels.
Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia expert at Boston's Simmons College who just visited Mindanao, said the MILF leadership may be ready to accept a deal that fell short of full independence.
"I think the MILF is going to make a major concession when the talks begin," he said.
Still, many obstacles remain.
The army refuses to budge from the MILF's former stronghold in Buliok, which troops overran last year in the last major fighting before the truce, infuriating rebel leaders who see it as a deliberately humiliating occupation of their spiritual home.
Another sticking point is the MILF's repeated denial that it allows foreign Muslim militants to use its bases for training, despite charges by Manila and Washington to the contrary.
There is also the uncertainty caused by strong military autonomy in the south and decades of bad blood. The MILF often blames ambitious generals for starting trouble.
"The MILF really believe the military is going to go on one more offensive before peace talks resume," said Abuza.
With much of the poorly funded and equipped army pinned down by the MILF, the NPA often faces little resistance elsewhere.
"At any one time, 60 to 75 percent of the army is in Mindanao and Sulu," said Harrison, referring to the island chain south of Mindanao. "That leaves this tremendous power vacuum in rural areas outside Mindanao."
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