The Revolt in Vietnam
TAS, SAL
The abortive coup was a rebellion against an autocratic, corrupt and ineffective regime; its failure undermines Vietnamese democratic forces The Revolt in Vietnam By Sal Tas Saigon The telephone...
...This eyewitness article on the "revolt against the Mandarins" of Ngo Dinh Diem emphasizes the increasing autocracy and corruption of Diem's Government and how seriously it has compromised the struggle against the Communist North...
...But the failure of this year's summit conference in Paris seems to have liberated them from the fetters imposed by the Geneva peace agreement...
...This is obviously Diem's call for a counter-coup...
...The Government has asked the populace to put out flags, but after three hours no one has done so...
...The Government now controls only the big cities...
...By respecting the ancient forms of village democracy, the Communists gain great sympathy...
...The situation in the countryside is much worse than in the cities...
...The fighting goes on, then dies down...
...As a result, Diem ultimately estranged the entire elite...
...No attempt at revolutionary propaganda is made...
...and the entire free world is involved in this point on the globe...
...The 1959 elections were completely rigged and the resultant Parliament is completely subservient to Diem and of no political significance...
...In a communique the Government calls the insurgents Communists, but this is manifestly untrue and no one believes it...
...So long as they sympathized with the Government, the people accepted them, but like all measures entailing sacrifices, the "Agro-villes" were increasingly resented as the people lost confidence in the Government...
...They talk about prices, harvests, working conditions, rent, etc., but rarely about Communism...
...insecurity begins only 10 miles from Saigon...
...The Vietnamese Army is certainly not inferior to the Viet Minh one, but is powerless against underground political infiltration...
...The report had impressed competent observers in Saigon and had been circulated at high diplomatic and political levels, but it had not reached Diem...
...aid and sound advice could quickly be restored to normal...
...Again, Diem has proved himself the most powerful personality in Vietnam...
...New negotiations start but this time it is Diem who demands capitulation— from the revolutionary committee...
...The only hope remains with the Army...
...The only opposition member elected was evicted from the Parliament at Diem's request, which really completed the parody of parliamentarianism...
...The radio now pours forth programs of military marches and Diem pep-talks, programs whose artificial gaiety completely contradicts the sullen mood of the people who once more fill the streets...
...It is a power lever, essential for Diem's politics and position, and for continuance of the Vietnamese state...
...In the interim, two factions developed in Viet Minh, one pro-Russian under Ho Chi Minh, and the other pro-Chinese...
...Same sound of rattling machine guns...
...This may well explain the intensified Communist activity, but not its success...
...Sorry...
...And those leaders, like simple boy scouts, let victory slip out of their hands...
...Diem, in his palace, surrounded by insurgent troops, is manifestly negotiating...
...Strategically, the idea was sound, but these "Agro-villes" look suspiciously like Mao Tse-tung's peasant communes...
...The farmers' passive resistance then forced the Government to sterner measures, which increased the passive resistances, etc., until the usual vicious circle was exploited by Communist propagandists...
...Also, thanks to his uncompromising attitude to Bao Dai and the French, Diem had won considerable prestige and popularity...
...In the first years following Geneva, Diem consolidated his power and, though few people believed the state was viable, Diem created a state and gave it an administration...
...That member, the well-known and respected Dr...
...He was helped by a team of young, dedicated Vietnamese intellectuals who understood that consolidating Vietnam was the only way to save the entire peninsula's future...
...Nepotism inevitably created corruption, for in such Oriental despotisms the distinction between public and private funds no longer exists...
...The second is to prevent Diem from wreaking vengeance on his opponents...
...If they pass that limit, that would provoke direct U.S...
...Nothing else happens that day...
...The insurgent leaders had issued a communique Friday morning which was a plainly anti-Communist declaration...
...They resented the fact that the Geneva agreement gave Vietnam an opportunity to stabilize itself as a state and to make the demarcation line firm...
...Since peaceful coexistence was now in doubt, the North could start attacking Vietnam as a preliminary to reconquest of the South, and so the Viet Cong's activities were stepped up...
...But this put stringent obligations on members of the Government to restrict those methods and not to use them for personal gain...
...In the Rue Catinat, Saigon's famous shopping center, empty now and somber in the half-light of daybreak, I see a soldier squatting behind the trees, a machine gun pointing ahead of him...
...Add to this the political police's activities, the almost total control of political parties by Diem—even the Socialist party, a member of the Second International, has had to accept a Diem puppet as a member of its executive committee—and you can see that there is not much chance of building a normal, healthy, vigorous opposition in Vietnam...
...However, these new projects are introduced to the villages, and even imposed on them, by Diem's group, and in the countryside Diem partisans are almost exclusively former landowners, so that the villagers see the reappearance of the ancient ruling class...
...Sal Tas is a regular New Leader contributor and the chief foreign correspondent for He Parool, a leading Dutch newspaper tionary committee, has gone silent...
...from autocratic, it turned personal...
...Putting forward new demands, withdrawing concessions already made, he prolonged the negotiations until he had stationed a sufficient number of troops around Saigon to be able to challenge the leaders of the coup...
...After several hours, Diem broadcasts a communique calling on all troops in the country to march on the capital...
...The radio is in their hands, the telephone under their control...
...Only a few days before the coup, they had rebuffed a surprise attack from some Viet Minh battalions on the northern plains...
...Same picture of soldiers behind the trees, but this time they come from another regiment and they are wearing red ties...
...But no effort is made...
...For example, take the "Agro-villes...
...Hard-headed, not very gifted with psychological insight, but with tremendous will power and very much persuaded of his own indispensability, Diem refused to listen to the mounting criticism...
...After three hours of wrangling he gets it...
...For some years after the Geneva Conference (which established the border between Communist Viet Minh and pro-Western Vietnam), the Communists in Viet Minh respected the Geneva peace treaty...
...Sometimes the peasants revolt, but terrorist actions, unchecked by the powerless regional police, silence the anti-Communist opposition in the villages...
...But the work can best be done by the Army generals...
...The generals know that their weakness is political, not military, which is why a part of the Army on this Friday morning, November 11, has revolted against the Government's political leaders...
...They have every reason to be worried by the actual situation, but the difficulty facing them is: How can they reform the regime without breaking it...
...I suddenly realize that the thuds I had heard in my half-sleep an hour before, and which I had taken for some faraway traffic noise, in reality had another cause...
...Same time...
...People are much too cowed and they will be more cowed now that the coup has failed...
...The Government is aware that the Viet-Congs— the Communist clandestine organization, sent and supported by the Viet Minh Communist state in the north —controls a number of villages and even collects taxes for the Viet Minh...
...Communists who work in the villages are very cautious in the first phase of their operation...
...Once that Friday morning surprise was over, Diem began to negotiate—but only to win time...
...The Army consists mainly of soldiers who have emigrated from the North, staunchly anti-Communist, vigorous and excellent soldiers...
...The prestige of the U.S...
...A split second later the rattling starts...
...and finally, from personal rule, it became family and even clan rule...
...WHY THIS DETERIORATION...
...They started the coup, they said, to liberate the country from a regime obviously incapable of successfully resisting Communism, a statement whose truth everyone can verify...
...All their hopes of unifying the country under Communist aegis seemed to evaporate...
...Surrounded by people who keep harsh truths from him, he never gets that kind of gloomy on-the-spot information...
...military advisors who are in contact with them could easily explain how interested the West is in a stable, healthy Vietnam, a popular regime, capable of moblizing all the people's potential...
...Such a statement would also have a very healthy effect on the Communists for it would signify that there is a limit set to their activities...
...But after some years, Diem's regime acquired a peculiar character: From authoritarian rule, it became autocratic...
...Slowly, like great reptiles, the naval ships cruise back and forth on the river to ward off any efforts to disrupt the landing operation...
...I jump out of my bed...
...Diem had the idea, reasonable in itself, that one of the best ways to protect the countryside against Communist infiltration would be to regroup a number of dangerously exposed villages into a larger and stronger farm community where work could be done collectively and under Army protection...
...The more he revenges himself, the more the people will be embittered, and the more he will sap their resistance to the Communists, destroying those elements who represent the last hope for a corrective...
...On the other hand, it is obvious that some Americans sympathize with any effort to reform Diem's regime...
...For two years the Communists have been advancing in Vietnam and in the last six months this advance has been so accelerated in tempo and gathered so much momentum that responsible Vietnamese circles have become alarmed...
...and the building at the end of the Rue Catinat which houses the National Assembly...
...They are brought over by landing boats under the protection of the gray naval vessels that have at last gone into action to guard the landings of Diem's troops...
...Saturday morning...
...It is 4:30 a.m...
...its failure undermines Vietnamese democratic forces The Revolt in Vietnam By Sal Tas Saigon The telephone rings...
...For years anyone who criticized Diem's Government was accused of being a Communist...
...Obviously the Vietnamese Government had to take some authoritarian measures to resist Communist infiltration from the North and no one would blame it for that...
...The military situation is far from hopeless and with U.S...
...For a long time people respected Diem but criticized his family, his clan and those around him...
...to make clear that it is not willing to stand idly by while others cause defeat in Vietnam...
...There's a revolution going on here...
...Curious revolt...
...This leads to further distrust...
...Again I jump out of bed...
...Diem resents any opposition...
...I found, for example, some forceful personalities in the trade union movement...
...On the river encircling the town, the gray boats of the Navy lie silent and motionless, an ominous symbol of neutrality...
...Under the cloak of a more or less modernized administration, Diem's regime became an old-fashioned Oriental government, nepotistic and despotic—or as they call it here: a Mandarin regime...
...Where-ever possible, they provoke a village council session which deals with their proposals, discusses them and eventually pronounces itself on them...
...One on-the-spot observer gave me his opinion of why—from the Communist viewpoint...
...This Communist activity must be compared with Government behavior in the countryside...
...If this is the case with measures devised to help the farmers, it is much worse when the Government comes up with (inevitably unpopular) measures dictated by the fight against Communism...
...I found no proof of it...
...intervention that might even lead to a second Korean War...
...FRENCH CIRCLES HAVE hinted that the Americans, or at least some Americans, had a hand in the revolt...
...The Vietnamese, traditionally not very aggressive, submitted, but such submission to Diem's political police only prepared them for subsequent submission to the Viet Cong's terroristic bands...
...To have those elements and to protect them—in short, to salvage the future—is almost as vital as restoring the military situation...
...Obviously, this is the first thing to be done...
...I received a report from an agricultural expert who had studied Communist infiltration tactics in the countryside...
...The substance of the report is as follows...
...Phang, was at the head of the revolutionary committee of Friday...
...Two hours later the loyal troops have completely reconquered the town...
...Mister Tas, did I wake you up...
...Once they have conquered the region, however, they tighten their grip...
...The telephones work and even the lines to the palace have not been cut...
...The radio, after announcing some communiques issued by the revoluJust returned from a long journey to the Far East, Sal Tas visited Korea, Japan and Vietnam, among others...
...By not doing so, they not only compromised the Government, but the ideals of the entire resistance to Communism...
...Consequently, they have little confidence in the Government proposals...
...Western trade unions would do well to keep their eyes on those men and to show their interest in them publicly...
...Diem would no doubt resent such intervention, but it is necessary for the U.S...
...The Government has a number of excellent projects, and land reform especially has been a success...
...The spectacle is perhaps the most impressive plebiscite against the Government...
...The latter group represented the younger, more dynamic and impatient elements in the Communist party...
...The village council continues to function but its proposals, though discussed and accepted, are always completely Communist...
...Moreover, the Mandarins of the countryside, installed by the Saigon Mandarins, do not hesitate to defend their personal interests...
...Slowly but surely a mood of discouragement settles on the streets...
...His capitulation is momentarily expected, but the hours pass and no news comes...
...The fighting continues and is soon concentrated around two points: the palace where President of the Vietnamese Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem, lives...
...It is now full daylight and the Rue Catinat is white with people, chattering gaily, looking thrilled and excited, literally in a festive mood...
...now virtually all the intellectuals are against him, and with them the bulk of the people...
...All critics were persecuted and accused of being Communists, and the political police cracked down especially on the intellectuals...
Vol. 43 • November 1960 • No. 46
