South Vietnam

THE bolted and heavily guarded gates of Independence Palace in Saigon and the barbed wire and mine fields that protect the concrete blockhouses and family quarters of the civil guard posts in rural South Vietnam are symbolic of the nature of the “war of national liberation” by which the Viet Cong, the Communist guerrilla organization, directed from and supported by North Vietnam, hopes to overthrow the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. They are symbolic, also, of the growing isolation of the Diem Administration from the people.

An average of nearly a hundred people are being killed or wounded each day in the war that has reduced the South Vietnamese countryside to a guerrilla battlefield and all but dried up vital rice deliveries to Saigon. At a time when the crisis demands the widest possible unity among all nonCommunist and anti-Communist forces, President Diem has become more aloof and less inclined than ever to delegate authority, or to accept advice.

Some hitherto loyal supporters, who rallied to him in the days when his courage and determination routed the dissident and exotic religious sects and promised the first real hope of saving the country from what had seemed certain Communist domination by 1956, are now his despairing critics. Army officers who saved him from an abortive paratrooper coup last November no longer conceal their disappointment that the changes they hoped for have been effected only in form but not in substance.

The November coup was an important milestone in the history of the Republic of Vietnam. Most people, including some of those who took part in it, were glad that it had failed; but many, including those who did not participate, were happy that it had been attempted. For, despite the growing unpopularity of his Administration, Diem himself commands a great degree of personal affection and prestige. He is regarded as essentially a good man, and his shortcomings are put down to his Confucianism and the fact that he is and wants to be a mandarin, the “little father” of South Vietnam who knows what is best for his children. The coup, it was hoped, would have shocked him into appreciating that his children did not fully agree and wanted a liberalized and more representative form of government.

Diem’s battle for survival

Those who had such hopes misunderstood the President. Diem, now sixty, is not only Conlucianist and a mandarin; he is also a misogynist, a devout Catholic, and a pessimist. His life lias been both divorced from material reality and dedicated to the service of his country. In June, 1 954, when all seemed lost in Vietnam and Diem returned from abroad to assume full civil and military power, even those who knew him best wondered how he would survive the shocking tests that lay ahead of him.

To survive. Diem had to fight not only the Binh Xuyen gangsters, who controlled both the police and the organized vice of Saigon; the lloa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects with their own private armies; and remnant elements supporting the former chief of state, Bao Dai, who had gone off into self-imposed exile at Cannes; but also the British and French, who felt that he was the wrong man and not well disposed toward the Geneva Agreement by which Vietnam was temporarily partitioned to prepare for reunifying elections in 1956. Diem beat them all.

Ever since, he has worked an eighteenor nineteen-hour day, making all the decisions. Only his brothers, especially Ngo Dinh Nhu, his political adviser, have any influence on him, principally because he trusts them as he trusts no one else.

For years, confused and mostly ill-founded rumors have spread about the corruption of this group around Diem. That very large sums of money have been raised by some extremely dubious means is correct; but the funds were raised, at least in principle, for Ngo Dinh Nhu’s Revolutionary Labor Party, a small, secret group dedicated to the preservation of the Diem Administration. Ihe party believed it necessary to equip itself j with big secret reserves for use in emergencies, such as the cutting off of American aid, or on projects of which Washington might be expected to disapprove. No rumors of the personal enrichment of members of the family were ever proved; some — for instance, that Madame Nhu, I Ngo Dinh Nhu’s attractive and influential wife, had invested large sums in Paris cinemas and Brazilian coffee plantations — were disproved.

The stories, nevertheless, continued to circulate. They contributed, over a long period of time, to the growing feeling of unrest about the Administration and its ineffective concentration in the hands of the family circle. Cabinet ministers became little more than heads of departments, most of them terrified by Diem. Military commanders were perplexed when direct orders from Diem countermanded those of their own seniors.

Rigged elections

This state of affairs might have continued indefinitely if it had not been for the 1959 elections for the National Assembly. Diem intended the elections merely to bring together a body of carefully selected and obedient intellectuals. He wanted not opposition from the Assembly but support for bis policies, and therefore he saw nothing wrong in preventing the moderate, Harvardeducated socialist, Dr. Phan Quang Dan, whose popular appeal in his electorate proved too much for the ballot stuffers, from taking his seat. Dan is now held in detention for his ill-advised, last-minute backing of the November coup.

To many South Vietnamese, this misuse of the democratic processes was pretty shabby. To the Communists in Hanoi, however, it represented a major challenge. They were not shocked by election rigging but by the fact that the Diem Administration was beginning to sport the trappings of permanency.

An elected National Assembly in the south tended to overshadow their own Assembly, in which seats had been left vacant for southerners. Economic progress in the south had not been spectacular, but, under the impact of the U.S. aid program, which distributed SI.3 billion between 1954 and 1960, substantial results had begun to show. Rice production had increased from two million tons a year to five million tons. Rice exports were soaring, from $371,000 in 1956 to $28 million in 1960. Rubber exports had doubled. Light industries were beginning to appear to take care of local needs in textiles and other consumer goods.

The day clearly was in sight when South Vietnam might begin to look forward to self-sufficiency as a longrange attainable national goal, an achievement of note for a country which had been cut in two by the Geneva Agreement and whose population had been swollen from 11.5 million in 1955 to 14 million by a high birth rate and an influx of 800,000 refugees from the Communist north.

The Communists decided to move by activating the cells they had prepared in advance in the southern countryside. The Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam thereby became a reality. Almost immediately it produced one result: toward the end of 1 960, growing popular unrest, caused by widespread Communist guerrilla activity and army frustration, culminated in the attempted coup, which to many in Saigon provided a tragic but unique opportunity to persuade Diem to make substantial reforms.

The frustrations of the army

The tide of expectation rose sharply after the coup, and Diem seemed prepared to accept wise Western and Vietnamese counsel. He agreed to the establishment of a field-command system which seemed to promise an end to his direct intervention in military operations; he also promised a more broadly based government. Neither agreement has come up to expectations.

Of the top thirty senior army officers, fewer than half a dozen are still regarded as dedicated Diem men. That does not imply that the rest are against him; in general, the army leaders tend to be apolitical, but there are all sorts of minor dissatisfactions within the army, including complaints of inadequate pay and promotion — some long-experienced divisional commanders still hold only colonel’s rank. There are also charges that promotions come for personal rather than professional reasons.

The army has had time to mull over these frustrations and to examine the lessons of the coup. The result is an inevitable appreciation of Diem’s dependence on the army’s power and a realization that, if loyal elements had not responded to his call for help in November, the situation in South Vietnam would certainly be different, though perhaps not better, than it is today.

This is a new factor in the situation; the dissidence of hitherto loyal servants of Diem, including some whose relationship was second only to that of the more immediate members of his family, is another. The underlying concern of both these groups is whether Diem will ever succeed in bringing himself to make the changes that could rally the nation to the war against the Communists.

Although once again many Vietnamese are talking quite openly and frankly about another coup d’etat, there is no unanimity among those who want change. Civilians fear that rule by a military junta would be worse; and in all South Vietnam there is no man comparable in stature to Diem, or even anyone who could be said to command a significant personal or political following.

These divisions inside South Vietnam have produced a situation that assists only the Communists. The Viet Cong has now moved guerrilla groups to the outskirts of Saigon, and any night, only a mile or two beyond the city, the sound of gunfire is clearly heard. This does not represent an armed threat to the city, but is certainly to be taken as an indication that the Viet Cong is ready to exploit any situation that may develop, following another coup.

The insurgents

On paper, everything would scent to favor the government forces. The army of 1 50,000 men is well equipped and trained; with U.S. assistance, it is now being expanded by a further 20,000 men and given a less conventional role by the creation of a hundred companies of commandos, who will fight the Viet Cong guerrillas with their own tactics. It is assisted by 60,000 members of the civil guard. And it is opposed by a guerrilla force of perhaps 15,000, of whom only about half are armed with anything more effective than machetes and wooden rifles.

Nevertheless, the initiative is with — and is likely to remain with — the insurgents. They do not attempt to make a stand against superior army strength. They fight when they think they can win and run away when they cannot. They recognize their strategic inferiority and organize large-scale forces only when they hope to achieve tactical superiority for a specific purpose. In other words, they follow the instructions laid down years ago by Mao Tse-tung.

Their armed striking force is of secondary importance at the moment to their forces of political cadres and professional assassins, who descend on the villages to make propaganda, levy taxes, raise recruits, and murder officials who are uncooperative or unpopular. I la is is. in other words, Laos all over again, a textbook application of the theory of fighting a “war of national liberation.”

Hanoi’s hand is everywhere evident, but nowhere in a shape or form that SEA I O would accept as evidence of overt aggression. Although Phnom Penh denies it. the weight of evidence suggests that the Liberation Front and the Liberation Army have their headquarters across the Cambodian border. From the swamplands there, orders are received and transmitted in code by transistor radio to regular Viet Cong guerrilla units.

Vietnamese authorities say they have identified a Muong tribesman from the central plateau, Duong Quoc Chinh, as commander in chief of the Liberation Army. Ung Van Khiem, the southern-born Foreign Minister ol North Vietnam, is said to be secretary-general of the administrative committee of the “liberation” movement.

Some supplies arc known to be entering the south by way of the Cambodian and Laotian borders, and also by sea: but the north’s principal contribution, as in Laos, is to provide the coordination and direction and to take southerners to camps in the north, where they are indoctrinated, trained, and shipped back for action.

Capture by discontent

The central plateau, which was once regarded as the one truly secure area in the south, has become an area of dissidenc.e. The Communists have worked on the grievances, both real and imaginary, of the 250.000 tribesmen who inhabit the region, and there are already some places where the army, even in strength, docs not go.

Everywhere, in fact, the Viet Cong is putting to good effect the wellproved Communist tactic of creating conditions in which the Diem Administration is often obliged to take unpopular action. In the thirtyeight provinces where the chefs de province are experienced enough to grasp the nature of the threat, some good results have been achieved. But not all chefs de province are men of talent, and many of their subordinates act like little mandarins and are sometimes corrupt, cowardly, and even brutal.

It is not a criticism of the American economic aid program, which has had worth-while success, to note that, in the remote rural areas, its influence has not yet penetrated. Since the Communists these days are directing their “wars of national liberation” primarily at peasant communities. the lesson here is real and urgent. Revolts like this must be fought on the battlefields of the Communists’ choice — in the grass roots of the countryside — by weapons that are economic, social, political, and, only in the protection of the state, military.

The struggle, as Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer was wise enough to realize when he fought a similar but, admittedly, much easier campaign in Malaya, was primarily for “the hearts and minds of the people.” Unless that lesson is learned in South Vietnam, there may soon be few uncommitted hearts and minds left to capture.