Failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program During the Vietnam War

Five years after coming to power, President Ngo Dinh Diem proposed a solution in 1959 that was intended to interrupt the success of local guerilla rebels in South Vietnam. To Diem, rebel activists were all communists and trying to forge ties with Ho Chi Minh's communist North Vietnamese government. This was not the case. The guerilla effort in the South laid its foundation on broad support. Some were indeed communists, but many, actually, were anti-Diemists. Diem was Catholic, backed by foreigners, and truly believed that he embodied a father figure and that his authority was to be followed without question. Despite attempts by American advisors who claimed to have an idea as to how to correctly handle the South Vietnamese government, Diem often sent these men home without a chance of consideration. To the Vietnamese, Diem wore the seal of American approval, even though the US had hardly any say as to what Diem did with his power.

Diem denounced Buddhism, and did not understand the Buddhist lifestyle of his fellow South Vietnamese. Villagers only wanted to be left alone and excluded from outside aggravations. Ignoring that traditional desire, Diem uprooted South Vietnamese villagers from their homelands and ancestral graves, only to relocate them inside a tightly secure, centralized area-that was the promise, anyway. This was called the Agroville Program and eventually the Strategic Hamlet Program--Strategic because of the location, security, and society that was to be formed within the new village.

The relocation program, started in 1959, was intended to fight the war against communism. In reality, these new and unnatural villages pushed those that were thought of as under government protection into the arms of guerilla rebels. The society created within these new villages of the Strategic Hamlet program actually provided guerillas with fresh propaganda for their rebellion, and thus, was actually counterproductive to the intentions of the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. and the Diem Regime.

The insurgent forces of the Viet Cong pushed President Ngo Dinh Diem to opt for a relocation of the scattered South Vietnamese village throng. South Vietnam, unlike the North and Central regions of Vietnam, was admittedly and proudly more relaxed in its agricultural nature.[1] Numerous villages dotted the landscape, and many were so isolated from the reach of government security that Guerillas could tax villagers, instill anti-Government propaganda, and thus, count these areas as re-supply outposts for their revolutionary base.

In 1959, the CIA declared that within South Vietnam, the Viet Cong maintained practical control over various regions. Previous Government interruptions within the traditionally xenophobic countryside actually aggravated peasants toward rebel forces. Unfortunately, Diem ignored this fact. The South Vietnamese effort before 1959 did not look upon the insurgency effort with sincerity, figuring the problem would simply go away with all opposition to Saigon easily crushed. Unfortunately, reality exposed a horse of a different color. South Vietnamese Guerillas were driven to such a state of resistance that some cadres "represented an almost spiritual quest, one which absorbed one's entire being." Villagers interacted daily with such forces, and guerillas focused on churning militant supporters out of farmers.[2]

Diem and his brother pushed the Agroville programs to battle this phenomenon. Villagers were to be relocated to secure areas, and grouped together in new societies-each complete with new hospitals, schools, and other institutions. Barbed wire and booby-traps were to be the physical symbols of the government shield, while peasants were to contribute labor to build their new and better alternative society. Diems' goal was to offer what he considered as an attractive alternative to Communist rule.

"...This year I propose to create densely populated settlement areas in the countryside, where conditions are favorable to communication and sanitation and where minimum facilities for the grouping of the farmers living in isolation and destitution in the backcountry exist. These settlement areas will not only improve the life of the rural population, but they will also constitute the economic units which will play an important role in the future development of the country as a whole."[3]

The program actually began with good cheer. The Duc Hue district, near Cambodia, was to be the first place to undergo the massive transformation process. This district was to provide a strategic barrier between South Vietnam and (Buddhist) Cambodia preventing infiltration, while bringing great benefits to the people through societal reforms. People that were once 500-600 or more meters apart, and who did not even know the government, were to be corralled together in close proximity and under government officials that did not even know them.[4] Regardless, in the beginning, "one thousand families were relocated in the agroville. The government provided money to build hospitals, schools, and so forth, and also lent money to the families to start cultivation in the new area."[5]

Joseph J. Zasloff, a participant of a 1960-63 study of the Agroville program, points out that Diem hid the fact that the program was intended to be an attempt at counter-insurgency. Zasloff cites Diem instructing provincial chiefs to maintain tight security against the Viet Cong.[6] Already, Diem was sidestepping around the villagers to achieve his own personal goals. The true priorities were not mentioned to the villagers, even though it was their lives the government was trying to divert from some proposed communist evil. Diem ended up surrounding villagers as if they were animals in quarantine, and thus, security was held as the number one priority, while social reforms failed to provide any significant anti-communist alternative.[7]

At Tan Luoc, for example, Diem figured villagers would welcome the idea of intense reform. To build the new infrastructure, labor was required of the peasants. Diem refused to pay peasants for their labor, because he thought they truly believed these government reforms were a good idea. In fact, Diem was fulfilling a tradition of oppression over these people. Zasloff mentions a past littered with French imposed Corvee labor. Diem was thus hated as much as the French, because of his arrogance and ignorance.[8]

After this failure, Diem decided that the Agrovilles were a good idea, but required re-evaluation to be successful. After looking for lessons learned while recovering from the program, the next step in this trial-and-error situation brought about the bitterly resented Strategic Hamlet program, launched February, 1962. Diem claimed 3,225 hamlets were put together, while only 1,500 actually occurred.[9] Why the discrepancy? Either provincial chiefs gave false numbers to the government, or maybe Diem felt the need to make his program look a lot stronger than it really was.

The Strategic Hamlet program maintained most of the Agroville hamlets, while increasing fortifications. Many villagers were once again moved out of Southern Regions because they were heavily entrenched with Viet Cong insurgents. Homelands were again left behind, while peasants were carried further away from their ancestral graves to be together in what was seen by a few as concentration camps.[10] This time, "the government proclaimed its intention to protect the strategic hamlets by more effective deployment of Army and Civil Guard units."[11]

This outright militaristic proposal actually helped the Viet Cong propaganda drive, because they had previously called the Agroville hamlets merely government military bases.[12] With a proposal to add more troops with tighter security and even more booby traps, just what kind of community were these already government-hating villagers being forced to live in? A threat letter to a successful provincial chief called the communes "...big prisons and hells on earth." The letter accused the government of "causing bloody killing among brothers..." and further attacks the non-paid labor policy of the plan.[13]

Peasants once again were refused wages for their labor. Curfews, a visibly failing land-redistribution program, movement controls, and "a forced mobilization into mass organizations" drove villagers to either subdue and loyally work for nothing, or, join the anti-Diem sentiment that swept in and out of every village with great ease, despite the flawed anti-communist barrier put up by the government.[14] These factors (the same that hurt the Agroville program) helped the virtually encaged villagers to become ripe recruits for guerillas and provided guerillas with more ammo for their rumor cannon. The peasants hated the government even more, and guerillas drained this mistake for all it was worth.

Being separated from government influence was the way of life for South Vietnamese villagers. If Diem had shown any respect to the traditions and culture of the society he desired to follow him, he would not have imposed so much upon the proudly isolated South Vietnamese. Instead of merely assuming nationalism would justify unpaid labor, Zasloff argues, "at a minimum, food and transportation should have been provided for peasants."[15] This allowed even more VC propaganda to translate Diemist ignorance to ammunition and support. From the beginning, peasants despised the whole plan and foresaw empty promises:

"The move aroused great discontent among the Caisan peasants. They had been forced out of their traditional homesteads surrounded by gardens, trees and rice-fields; they were leaving the ancestral tombs at which they paid homage to their ancestors. They came to a new home site that was barren, without trees to provide shade against the tropical sun. The new area was a vast, bare, checkerboard of crisscrossing canals with square plots of land on which there was only uninviting, untended grass and a mud foundation. Moreover, each family was required to pay for its assigned plot, within four years..."[16]

Village communities, then, went from taking whatever side happened to be pushing influence in the general proximity,[17] to favoring any opposition to the Strategic Hamlet and further to Diem's government. This shift from apathy to opposition only occurred when the South Vietnamese government ignorantly trampled on the livelihood of each and every Southern villager who was misplaced in the new communes of the Agrovilles--and then even more so of the Strategic Hamlet program. The presence of government officials and soldiers brought to mind memories of French rule. Guerillas knew this feeling was in the air, and successfully utilized the error to the advantage of the rebellion.

Guerillas did not need the Strategic Hamlet program to gain village support. Terror tactics had always proved quit successful in the past. Guerillas frequently used terror tactics to get what they wanted from villagers, whether supplies or information, taxes or loyalty. Since these rebels where mostly South Vietnamese villagers themselves, support was not that hard to draw. They knew the minds of their fellow villagers-while Diem and his fellow urbanites had no respect for village lore and culture. Diem figured villagers would want the new society reforms, and would even contribute their labor-free, and without pay. The program was the furthering of an already failed program. Peasants were not going to stress themselves under the hot sun with any sincerity when they saw "no positive value"[18] to be achieved.

Diem did not know he was fulfilling a long tradition of Corvee labor upon the villagers. Families were pent up and held tightly by foreign hands. Thus, village sentiments only needed a slight push by Guerilla forces to join the rebel cause. To rebel against foreign rule was an attractive piece of tradition for the Vietnamese, while Diem figured the only foreign enemy in existence was the communist front of Ho Chi Minh. Ho was a national hero to many Vietnamese.

Diem failed to understand the very people that he desired to rule with efficiency. He simplified the livelihood of thousands to that of mere cattle-to be divided between communist and anti-communist. It never occurred to him that the situation created by re-location would only bring about animosity toward his own regime, because he was trying to force isolated agricultural villagers into a more crowded and intrusive form of living. Further, how could a South Vietnamese hand over to the government a guerilla that may have been a relative?

The hated new villages contained both insurgents and innocent villagers, mixing together more than they ever would have previously. One thing was for certain; the government could at least figure that amongst the milling around of hundreds of villagers they were seeing the enemy, but officials never stamped out the insurgency. The Strategic Hamlet program and its predecessor were mistakes from the beginning because of Diem's ignorance applied to action under his inept bureaucracy. The Viet Cong successfully maintained their anti-government propaganda drive with the help of Diem's failings.

Bibliography

Andrade, Dale. Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War. Lexington, Massachusetts and Toronto: Lexington Books, 1990.

Hamilton, Donald W. The Art of Insurgency: American Miltary Policy and the Failure of Strategy in Southeast Asia. Connecticut and London: Praeger Publishers, 1998.

Herrington, Stuart A. Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982.

Kutger, Joseph P. "Irregular Warfare in Transition." Military Affairs 24, no. 3 (Autumn, 1960): 113-123.

Lomperis, Timothy J. The War Everyone Lost-And Won: America's Intervention in Viet Nam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1984.

Luong, Hy V. Revolution in the Village. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1992.

Quester, George H. "The Guerrilla Problem in Retrospect." Military Affairs 39, no. 4 (Dec., 1975): 192-196.

Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: Univ. of California Press, 1972.

Trullinger, James Walker, Jr. Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam. New York and London: Longman Inc., 1980.

Zasloff, Joseph J. "Rural Resettlement in South Viet Nam: The Agroville Program." Pacific Affairs 35, no. 4 (Winter, 1962-1963): 327-340.

[1]Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: Univ. of California Press, 1972. 6.

[2]Hamilton, Donald W. The Art of Insurgency: American Miltary Policy and the Failure of Strategy in Southeast Asia. Connecticut and London, 1998. 130-31.

[3]Zasloff, Joseph J. "Rural Resettlement in South Viet Nam: The Agroville Program." Pacific Affairs 35, no. 4 (Winter, 1962-1963): 327-340. 327. Direct quote of Diem, July 7, 1959.

[4]Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: Univ. of California Press, 1972. 53-4

[5]Race, quote 54

[6]Zasloff, 328.

[7]Zasloff, 329.

[8]Zasloff, 334.

[9]Lomperis, Timothy J. The War Everyone Lost-And Won: America's Intervention in Viet Nam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1984. 59.

[10]Trullinger, James Walker, Jr. Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam. New York and London: Longman Inc., 1980. 73.

[11]Zasloff, 340.

[12]Race 173.

[13]Zasloff, 337. VC letter to Tan Luoc district chief.

[14]Race 190-1.

[15]Zasloff 334-35.

[16]Zasloff 336.

[17]Hamilton, 138.

[18]Race, 192.