Communist Terror in South Vietnam

...Communist terrorism is not confined to attacks on individuals or families loyal to the Ngo Dinh Diem Government in Saigon...

...New roads and new canals trace rapidly developing communications patterns the length and breadth of the Republic...

...Government aide in Vietnam for five years...

...Between January 24 and February 4. a period which appears to have marked a crest in terrorist activity, the Vietnamese press reported 26 separate acts of Communist terrorism, with casualties among the Government forces and loyal population totaling 140 killed and wounded, plus 15 others kidnapped or "missing...

...the mails or by being left at his gate during the night...

...before the end of 1960 the Government expects to have 16 of them finished...

...By the light of pressure lamps two of them were busily engaged in typing documents while the third ran a small duplicating machine...

...Sixteen died of knife wounds and grenade explosions...

...However, it is perhaps suggestive of their reliability that the Vietnamese Communist newspaper, Nhan Dan...

...It is, in fact, their failure to enlist strong popular support in the South that reportedly has caused the Red regime in the North to resort to intensified infiltration as a means of bolstering a faltering Communist machine...

...Some of their acts are apparently well-planned and systematically executed...

...The President argues, however, that the security peril is so great as to preclude any fundamental loosening of restraints on political activity at this time...

...It is also likely that the Government's success in unearthing these caches is a principal reason for recent Communist attacks on free Vietnamese military posts...

...The number of persons killed by Communist action since the beginning of this vear has risen to a current rate of more than three per day...

...It is difficult to say how accurately these press reports reflect the exact situation...

...Sabotage, terrorism and murder have been their primary techniques...

...Each of these new rural towns is planned to be built astride a known corridor of Red infiltration or subversive activity...

...With the Communists out to hinder or cripple the country's recent progress, Ngo Dinh Diem and his advisors have decided on bold measures to meet the challenge...

...The actual assassination takes place as threatened, and the tale of Communist omnipotence is then spread by the terror-stricken widow and children...

...The same engagements were also reported to have resulted in the deaths of 53 Communist agents, and the arrest of 323 other Viet Cong or suspected Communists...

...The importance of this fact is that it alleviates the fear that the Saigon regime is facing the sort of warfare that destroyed French power in Vietnam: where the people rose up against the colonial rulers, the farmer in the fields by day becoming the guerilla warrior at night...

...The recently publicized petition to President Ngo, signed by 18 persons, most of them prominent in Vietnamese political life during the latter days of French rule, focused attention on the question of whether the Vietnamese Government is doing enough at this time to win popular support for its programs...

...New buildings are being constructed in the cities and towns of Vietnam, and new low-cost housing is being built for urban workers and their families...

...During the preceding night a Civil Guard detachment, patrolling a swampy area some 10 miles to the north, happened upon a scarcely' visible trail that led into the heart of the marshes...

...There is no question but that the capture of these weapons stores by the Saigon regime has hindered Communist activity...

...For the first time, the people in each agroville area will have help available for them just a few yards away...

...The Diem regime has undertaken bold measures to stem COMMUNIST TERROR IN SOUTH VIETNAM By Wesley R. Fishel SINCE THE END of the rainy season in South Vietnam last October, Communist activity in that little Republic has been intensified several-fold...

...Available evidence suggests that the large majority originate in Ho Chi Minh's so-called Democratic Republic of Vietnam to the north, and have infiltrated into free Vietnam across the Laotian and Cambodian borders, or have landed on some undefended beach...

...Machine-gunning and other gunshot techniques accounted for 70 of the dead: nine were decapitated publicly by the Viet Cong, while their neighbors were held back at gunpoint...

...Now a professor of political science at Michigan State University, he headed a public administration advisory group and was a U.S...

...The bandwagon effect sought in these cases is to convince the inhabitants of the village that they had better obey the Viet Cong, or the same fate may be theirs...

...The object, according to documents captured by the Republican Government, is to undermine popular morale and to convince the rural population that the regime in Saigon cannot protect them...

...Since 1955, the Vietnamese Government charges, 307 Viet Cong caches of arms have been uncovered on the territory of the Republic...

...of Hanoi, asserted last December that during the preceding 10 months there had been 3,500 armed skirmishes between "patriots" and Republican security forces in southwest Vietnam...

...Imaginatively conceived and grimly executed, the agroville solution is the regime's determined answer to the problems posed by Communist infiltration and terrorism...

...Captured and brought into town with these three Viet Cong cadres, who had operated a well-concealed headquarters in the same place for nearly two years without being detected, were three typewriters, the duplicating machine, plates for printing false South Vietnamese money, revolvers...

...Rubber plantations, which are usually located many miles from any city or town, have been raided by Viet Cong armed bands numbering as many as 100 men...

...Apart from the sheer terrorist aspect of such activity, these attacks seem to have as a main purpose the acquisition of funds, food supplies, office machines, and other articles useful in subversive warfare...

...The technique in such cases usually is for the local Reds, meeting in secret, to condemn a prominent personage in a village...

...From the standpoint of social welfare, they will bring the agrarian population governmental services, hospitals and schools, which until now have been totally lacking or many kilometers distant...

...The death sentence, "signed" by the party agent in charge of the area, is then sent to the condemned man, either through WESLEY R. FISHEL is an old Far East "hand...

...Communist party flags and insignia, and nearly half a ton of party records and other documents...

...It is clear in any case that Communist terrorism in South Vietnam has reached a grim peak...

...Only a small minority are currently resident in the South...

...To counter it, Ngo Dinh Diem's Administration has embarked on a vast program of reorganizing the balance of population in the rural areas, and trying to block known paths of entry into the territory of the Republic...

...Not only have exports of rice and rubber increased steadily and to significant totals, but hundreds of acres of new land are being planted in rubber— a sure sign of confidence in the stability and future of the country because the rubber tree is not tapped for seven years after planting...

...Thus far one has been dedicated...

...While he points with pride to the voluntary nature of the now successful resettlement programs, President Ngo nevertheless observes that, given the nature of the Vietnamese peasant's attachment to his little house and the land on which it stands, and given also the vital necessity of effecting a regrouping of the rural population to bring them greater safety—to say nothing of the other material and psychological benefits inhabitants of the new towns will gain—some element of leadership or coercion will be required...

...The President notes that coercion has had a vital role in most change, historically, and he believes firmly in its value in bringing about sociological and economic change in an underdeveloped society such as Vietnam...

...Their prime targets are local officials, police officers, village guards and their families...

...Following the path across the soft, spongy muck, the patrol discovered three men hard at work in a small clearing...

...Heartened and stimulated by the success of its 1957-59 program of opening new lands in the plateau areas bordering Laos and Cambodia, and by its campaign of resettlement in the abandoned rice lands of the south and southwest, which together have taken more than 130,000 Vietnamese from the overcrowded and underproductive coastal plain and given them a new life in new surroundings, the Government of Ngo Dinh Diem has begun an ambitious program of building towns in the country...

...Seemingly spurred to stronger efforts by their failure to sabotage the National Assembly elections in South Vietnam last August 30, the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists) have undertaken an increasingly sanguinary program...

...whether perhaps increased areas of political freedom might not go further toward building active public opposition to Communist subversion than the militant means adopted by the regime...

...Strategically, President Ngo considers them to be indispensable...

...Where do these terrorists come from, and what does their activity signify...

...Government leaders in Saigon are seriously concerned over stepped-up Communist terrorism in the countryside, although they claim to be encouraged by the apparent desperation that lies at the root of the trouble...

...Economically significant also will be the fact that the agrovilles will constitute centers for economic exchange and will have central markets...

...The importance of typewriters and other office machines is suggested by an occurrence whose denouement I witnessed in a town near Can Tho, South Vietnam, last August...

...Again, he hopes that these population clusters in the countryside will have the eventual effect of choking off what has become almost a parade of Communist assassins, saboteurs and terrorists who have been crossing into South Vietnam from Laos and Cambodia...

...Each is intended to service an immediately neighboring population of about 25,000 peasants...

...In addition, they will mark the initiation of a program of rural electrification, a step forward which is expected to have economic as well as social consequences in the Vietnamese countryside...

...The past four years have seen South Vietnam make striking economic and social advances...

...Previously, isolated householders were sitting clucks for marauding Communist bands, their nearest protection often several miles away, and no radios or telephones with which help could be summoned...