THE OTHER SOUTH VIETNAM
Kolko, Gabriel
?HE OTHER SOUTH VIETNAM GABRIEL KOLKO The dynamics of reconstruction and victory Quang Tri province is the most heavily bombed area they were repaired and in full use---even if...
...It is especially true among families, into hamlets to put on plays in the medieval "Everyman" which for this reason have become important centers tradition, but adjusted to the hell the U.S...
...Improving the economic and social conditions of people in mending...
...struction is carried yet further, as the American defeat Despite the already great economic successes the PRG in war today helps the defeat of the Saigon administra- had attained in the province, largely due to its own tion in conditions of tenuous peace in Quang Tri...
...One coastal town of 6500 people Commonweal: 35 I visited had twice been razed entirely, and north of were now in school and cared for...
...This instinctive The irony of this awesome pile of defeated U.S...
...spontaneous as they were impressive...
...Even now these three who had been tortured and also participated expensive cenotaphs to the victory of inspired revolu- in mining seven tanks, was both genuine and simple...
...The labor and ingenuity but also with significant aid from bustling Dong Ha port, with dozens of large lighters North Vietnam and the socialist nations, the most imbringing equipment in from yet larger freighters moored portant and far-reaching accomplishment has been to at the opening of the port on the sea, was originally create a political and cultural revolution among the built to take U.S...
...A small troupe of guerrillas from the which the 1.1 million-man Thieu armed forces are Gio Linh area-a dozen in all-put on a performance not equipped...
...and Saigon forces in the spring of 1972...
...The town of Dong Ha, which once had 40,000 and pieces of lumber or dismantled American bases...
...To fuel them, defies written descriptions...
...In February 1973, one may see the triumph of one nation's will and capac- during the Tet festival, the PRG at great effort imported ity to survive and rebuild over another's intent to destroy the traditional holiday necessities...
...Their elan All roads and bridges had been smashed, but now has meant not merely reconstruction but development where nothing had hitherto existed...
...For in Quang Tri thirds of it rice-is being cultivated...
...Life back in his village was and "control" secondary, over the long-run...
...much better...
...would sing or recite remarkably long poetry, usually While in the PRG I had two opportunities to test the for their own pleasure and by themselves...
...All claimed The PRG's strategy is thereby clarified for the out- to have been drafted against their will, and this seemed sider who is exposed to its real dynamics in a manner true perhaps save in one case, and all were of peasant that words and pictures hitherto never fully conveyed...
...not tantamount to military or political victory in revolu- But the U.S...
...but with erans in tears-which revealed the efficacy of dramatic the rampant inflation in the Saigon economy the life forms over stale prose...
...GABRIEL KOLKO, the author of The Limits of Power (Harper & Housing is still a long way from pre-1972 standards, Row) and The Politics of War (Random House), recently re- and only a few original buildings in Dong Ha retain turned from a trip to Vietnam...
...ciently unloading materials for reconstruction...
...throughout South Vietnam as inexorably as any other factor...
...in South Vietnam, and the awesome vision of its devasta- The land had been largely abandoned in the decade tion is surpassed only by the extraordinary pace of re- before 1972, but today about 10,000 hectares-twoconstruction now well advanced there...
...Despite the relative poor province had been a bastion of Vietminh strength, insufficiency of existing facilities, over one of every three and during the Johnson Administration the region persons in the province received medical attention during stretching north of Dong Ha to the 17th parallel was the year after Quang Tri's liberation in spring 1972, and made a free-fire zone in which the famous "McNamara there were no epidemics during last autumn's devastatline," the epitome of electronic, automated warfare, had ing floods...
...The young people will master the problems of reconstruction...
...Quang Tri province is 85 percent under Vietnam war, the most significant assertion of the caPRG physical domination, and I saw Saigon and PRG pacity of humanity-one grounded on clarity and peoflags side-by-side only near Quang Tri city...
...Desertion is therefore also increasing...
...They were but one of many examples of a successful effort to intensify communication and unity among the people by articulating and sharing a common experience via a poetic and dramatic culture deeply rooted in the Vietnamese heritage...
...could not destroy non-existent facilities, tionary warfare, and the U.S...
...At the fully, and were clearly very talented artists who had same time, many of Thieu's soldiers are in an imposfound their form of expression highly effective among sible dilemma...
...Then something was trends that will define the final outcome of the Vietnam dropped at zenith: a shot, war, its work being increasingly eased by the irredeemable economic crisis Thieu's venality has brought and winging stopped...
...As one ered extraneous so long as their bodies are within the veteran put it, his monthly salary in 1973 was adereach of a gun, is precisely the reverse of the classic quate to buy only 10 days worth of food, and when NLF priority until this day...
...Its economic progthe PRG and Saigon-areas...
...HE OTHER SOUTH VIETNAM GABRIEL KOLKO The dynamics of reconstruction and victory Quang Tri province is the most heavily bombed area they were repaired and in full use---even if very bumpy...
...with a heroic people who have made the existence Their martial posture depends largely on their officers' of the NLF, much less its present mastery of all the presence, but even these officers and various elite units elements that will decide the final outcome of the are losing heart...
...lowed it to select the point of battle at such times and and are sleeping still...
...Everywhere have the greatest elan of all, and it is expressed in I met children who had lost one or both parents, but their daily music and poetry...
...grave then, our eye the grey It is no secret, as the Pentagon Papers admitted, that the NLF's survival and eventual supremacy over the of the gun, we drowsed deeper most powerful industrial nation in history was due to under a cold sun: stunned, its doctrine of preserving its strategic offensive initiative, mobility and decentralization-a combination which al- we lost will and slept...
...reasons for deserting were, at best, tertiary...
...There is no substitute for seeing and sensing the life and strength of a whole region openly administered four of whom were from the Mekong Delta and the by the PRG finally to comprehend its organic power remainder from Quang Tri province...
...Shocked about...
...is now learning the mean- such as schools and hospitals...
...American bombers later returned and transformed local PRG council to their office-a small and sigmuch of Ai Tu, the critical Camp Carroll artillery base, nificantly more modest hut than any other I saw in and the central points of the McNamara Line, into scrap the village...
...This categorical imperative, regardless of to a packed house in Dong Ha one evening...
...They were not in Vietnam and the reasons it prevailed in the past guarded nor confined by a fence, and their ideological and is certain to triumph in all the South in the future...
...Indeed, Quang Tri is a microcosm of the Provisional of food and tobacco--including meat and sugar-can be Revolutionary Government's present strategy of not only purchased in the Dong Ha market, and local authorities rebuilding a pulverized nation but also of welding to- expect soon to have a significant surplus for export...
...They have no peacetime job to which the people, and that night I noticed some older vet- to return, and they are occupational misfits...
...Liberation Army officers told me that they had wholly insufficient, confined cellar to a better room been astounded by the quantity and variety of usable until the local population first had adequate housing...
...But to slight the prodigious a second oil pipeline from North Vietnam is now being repairs imposed on the broken physical objects, or the installed...
...children, yet only one in forty of the population went Quang Tri province was virtually physically demol- to school a decade ago, Today one person of every ished, and endless numbers of bomb craters, smashed three and one-half is enrolled in the 98 primary and houses, broken roads, immense stretches without a single secondary schools plus evening courses for adultstree, and diverse litter of war constantly assault one's that villagers have constructed for themselves out of bits eyes...
...His officers, he noted, the NLF would have been destroyed a decade ago...
...Still, often the large majority of their village, who had been everyone has a roof, if only a temporary one, and many bombed, tortured, imprisoned, and tormented in so many new homes are being built of local materials...
...our work done: then mending Either way, one concludes that the PRG remains the justifiably confident master of the political and social ended...
...15 March 1974: 38...
...landing-craft...
...Moreover, this justification was related Commonweal: 37 to the next most frequent reason: a desire to return to circumstances as favored its chances for success...
...artillery, makes it clear that Thieu cannot survive fallow under cold sun, thinking militarily should he pursue that option much longer...
...Now National Liberation people, particularly the youth...
...tionaries over a surrealist technology provide much build- The people, he insisted were now the masters, and the ing material, and there is such an abundance of electric PRG was encouraging this belief to sustain a high powire that the peasants weave colorful market baskets litical culture and dedication-and this, I could see, from it and utilize it in construction...
...When I fields of electrified barbed wires, sensors, mines, and pressed several especially striking personalities to exdevices leading into computer-directed artillery, the silent plain their accomplishments, as in the case of the tankbunkers now house chickens fattening themselves midst destroying mother, I was always reminded that both the old beer cans and litter of war the Americans left their sufferings and their deeds were much less than behind...
...ficers, that sooner or later U.S...
...The PRG officers clearly did not regard any as The fact is that the NLF has always been a political promising material for their army, and later I met sevmovement which has subtly merged indivisible po- eral other Saigon deserters who had already resumed litical and military action in a complementary fashion normal lives in their villages...
...goods, including about 1000 operating vehicles, left be- In one of the poorest villages I was welcomed by the hind...
...All agreed that there was a gen- on this level, but only a process of broadening a poeral consensus among Thieu's troops, including of- litical base against scarcely any opponents at all...
...to whom I was introduced was critical in explaining The biggest of the former American military com- the- extraordinary elan in the PRG...
...One gether the existing political, economic and military re- sees none of the unmistakable signs of insufficient diet alities in South Vietnam in a manner that is certain to so common in India...
...or Saigon's doctrine of "control," the growing inflation in the Thieu economy and the in which a population's political loyalties are consid- insufficiency of their wages to buy even food...
...The U.S...
...meant self-abnegation by NLF cadres...
...And the deference of its chairman to the -but not before substantial equipment, including 175- sufferings of his fellows, including a young mother of mm artillery, was removed to safety...
...The little troupe, too, had of a soldier is also increasingly unbearable...
...reached in just one year-including extensive fraternization to the point that films and dramatic troupes are sent to perform for the Saigonese, trade is carried on, 00000000000000 and even medical aid and food were given to the KATHLEEN ELLEN JENNINGS Saigon forces during last autumn's floods...
...Were the American com- I pressed him as to how he ate the remaining time puterized statistics on "control" even remotely valid, he was uncomfortably evasive...
...They also sang and recited beauti- national-and thereby personal-reconciliation...
...In unison it penetrates into every crevice and the very heart of with rejoining their families, the growing collapse of a nation's values and commitments, that emerges most the Thieu economy is now profoundly affecting the vividly as one moves about a province of 300,000 peomilitary as well as political balance-of-forces between ple under a unified PRG authority...
...For barbarism is end of December...
...in which combat without careful political preparation Their most important single reason for desertion was is eschewed...
...ress is formidable, even monumental, in light of the The Saigon deserters also confirmed a crucial fact extraordinary devastation of every standing physical that also came from wholly independent PRG sources: object...
...from which the Liberation Army drove U.S...
...their own dead and wounded to remember, for they I met one group of a dozen recent Saigon deserters, travelled more encumbered and vulnerable than was wise for guerrillas...
...Decades earlier, however, the normally even produces some of its own drugs...
...What is most astonishing is the ex- into the future, with even greater emphasis being given tent to which random youth whom I often encountered in the coming period to work among Saigon troops...
...was im- for political education around the themes of peace and posing on villagers...
...Their clothing was plexes, the Ai Tu air base, is a gargantuan skeleton of identical, their faces and hands equally warm and rough...
...The province is full of ing of this truism in South Vietnam...
...Today, an abundance it...
...There are ple's needs as well as heroism-to triumph over the 50 such points where opposing troops meet, and at worst adversities inflicted on any society in modem 21 highly formalized local accommodations have been history...
...Not only ways, but who were now restoring their homes, meashas a mechanized sawmill been constructed near Dong urably improving their own welfare, and fiercely proud Ha, but all sorts of functional, if unsightly, building ma- of all they had mastered-as well as what they would terials have been taken from the vast military complexes yet do if renewed war demanded...
...see many new tractors assisting the replenished animal The unimaginable magnitude of the destruction of stock, and there are so many trucks for transport that Quang Tri province, which borders the 17th parallel, traffic congestion is now a minor problem...
...in their students I frequently encountered...
...are large quantities of their destroyed tanks, armored The vice-chairwoman of the province NLF was no cars (I counted seven of these at one spot only), and less striking: a veteran of long struggle and an ardent trucks one sees everywhere...
...And to keep the large quantities of new maconfidence of the people of the region, is also to distort chinery in good order, a repair complex containing the dynamics that will decide the outcome of the present modern equipment was opened near Dong Ha at the struggle for mastery in South Vietnam...
...broken steel which contained immense quantities of The head of the PRG in Quang Tri, a veteran of many equipment and presents a vision that defies the imagina- decades of struggle, refused to remove his office from a tion...
...At the allegedly impregnable feminist, she also persisted in working in the rice command post of the McNamara Line, surrounded by fields a significant portion of each month...
...were scavenging off their troops and the population Political loyalties are primary, formal administration even more than before...
...People and Added to what American and Saigon forces abandoned cadres had an obvious mutual confidence and respect...
...with 85 percent of it under PRG administration since The new Dong Ha hospital already has 100 beds and spring 1972...
...Yet its very survival and accomplishments are Thieu's troops were making local accommodations with due to its political strength and its profound interaction the Liberation forces, avoiding combat where possible...
...aid to Thieu would end It is this political triumph, and the depth to which and their fortunes would sink accordingly...
...those of many others in the region...
...produce its ultimate victory in a war that is increasingly Nearly all of the province's 60,000 water buffalo and moving from military to social confrontations between oxen were destroyed during the war, but today one may itself and the Saigon puppet regime...
...They the original ideological view, if any, of a Vietnamese, were primarily fighters who for some years had gone is now dominant...
...origin...
...And since the PRG has gone to special Vietnamese themselves stress the political dimension of lengths to assure that families with sons in the Saigon this initiative, and its essential contribution to military army are not discriminated against, returning home is successes, though in fact there was never a real contest all the more enticing...
...A permanent new market, Building a Revolutionary Elan shopping center, and even an ice cream parlor are already operating in Dong Ha, with a large restaurant In this mood, the relation of the people to leaders about to open-in addition to repaired older stores...
...aircraft only Some type of medical facility and treatment, once the two days before the Paris Accords went into effect, exclusive privilege of the affluent, has been extended to but the province's population is still about 300,000- two-thirds of the hamlets, and all the towns have clinics...
...inhabitants, was left in total rubble by U.S...
...but in that quick regions such as Quang Tri only increases their mag- month when, drowsing, we were netic attraction in a peace for which Thieu is wholly unprepared...
...Ironically, the deepening economic demise of the something ruthless had been Thieu economy has accelerated the results obtained in vicious and dead bent on this new phase of the NLF's political struggle...
...Moratorium This strategy of reconciliation, which the Paris Accords nominally legitimizes, illustrates a legal political Something was winging offensive by the PRG which will doom the Thieu regime and, winging, dropped...
...These deal with the 15 March 1974: 36 organic themes and experiences of their lives: departure The NLF's merger of political and military struggle of loved ones for the front, sacrifices, and traditional has been its keystone in the past and will continue amorous concerns...
...The one's family...
...men and women, Dung Ha scarcely an intact house can be seen...
...The young teachers and doctors I met were been installed in the hope of stopping movement across dedicated and competent, and their high spirits reflected the demilitarized zone...
...This transformation is Front boats, many with new Russian motors, are effi- irreversible...
...Yet, at the same time, the quantity and warm, and ate well, when we quality of military equipment one casually sees while had swelled our wheat and lay traveling through Quang Tri, including much captured U.S...
...In the rapport between the NLF and the people, in the elan of the youth, in the modest heroism and sacrifices of women and men-in all these foundations and much else one discovers the roots of the NLF's success and the reasons for its durability under all conditions...
...equip- sense of community with the fate of others revealed ment providing housing materials or baskets for recon- a great deal about the success of the NLF...
...even a usable room...
...Since all children are now in school, the revolution The dynamism and spirit of the people of Quang Tri, has sunk deep roots among those previously allowed whether peasants or leaders, as well as their keen sense to scavenge, forced to service American and Saigon of organization and their accomplishments to date, troops in the brothels and vice centers of the province, quickly justifies their total confidence that they can and and driven into concentration camps...
...It is quite obvious that after over a decade of inOrganized cultural groups also exist, and each village tensive war the overwhelming desire of the mass of has at least one, but they are all amateur in concept South Vietnamese is to attain peace, a condition for if not quality...
...Such mani- efficacy of this strategy, as well as learn more that festations of a deeply indigenous mass culture were as would justify it...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 2
