Tet and the'Other War'

...Destruction of factories and wide swaths cut through densely populated slums and apartment blocks in and around Saigon and other centers left countless thousands both jobless and homeless...

...Unfortunately, the Saigon government has not appreciably increased its lethargic pace despite the formation of a relief committee, a fund-raising campaign, recruitment of student volunteers, and the like...

...Corruption is the major obstacle that hinders every improveNGUYEN CAO KY ment of the society and progress of the nation...

...Large cars move among poor people with not enough money for eating...

...Huge buildings hover over dirty shacks...

...The people are too frightened...

...A veteran of six years in Vietnam, including a previous tour as senior province adviser in Hue, Kelly had suddenly been ordered back to the city after Donald Kirk reports from Southeast Asia for the Washington Star...

...As for "modernizing" the cities where bombs and artillery had knocked out old buildings, that idea remains largely in the imagination of a handful of planners in Saigon...

...Then, in late February, a senior diplomat admitted at a briefing that the program had suffered "considerable setbacks," but said they were "not as bad as they looked in the first dark days of the offensive...

...Indeed, the main reason for suspending classes in most schools was that rooms were filled by refugees, many of whom still have not been moved elsewhere...

...The enemy, although his losses may have been exaggerated, suffered heavily...

...The result, in some cases, has been that the allies have had to fight all over again for these areas, in the process destroying some of the schools, bridges and other installations built by the peasants with government aid...

...When a reporter approached him for a briefing on the city's efforts at recovery, he turned and snapped, "I don't owe you nothin' and you don't owe me nothin...

...The cities and towns that suffered the most during the attacks present somewhat different problems...

...Kelly's whole approach, the opposite of that usually taken toward reporters by professionally optimistic senior province advisers, reflected the frustration of attempting to revive a city laid waste for nearly four weeks by a combination of American artillery and air strikes and Communist terrorism...

...Thieu may rail against "dancing bars and nightclubs...

...Food prices, down from the high points reached after the opening of the offensive, are still above pre-Tet levels and would be higher in major cities were it not for massive imports from the United States, Thailand, Taiwan and other countries...

...The pacification program, contrary to early reports, was not killed by the Communist offensive...

...While officials such as Robert Kelly understandably smart under the faintest criticism, it also seems inevitable that society in Hue, Saigon and other cities will continue to degenerate until South Vietnam's leaders fully awaken to some of the realities of war...

...The difficulty is that the business districts of some towns, such as Mytho, Vinh Long and Ben Tre in the delta, were so hard hit as to make recovery impossible without massive infusions of government assistance and compensation...

...All we can do is try to spread propaganda among villages near the provincial capital...

...REPORT FROM VIETNAM Tet and the 'Other War' By Donald Kirk Saigon It was the last day for Robert Kelly as acting senior American province adviser in Hue and his nerves were understandably strained...

...But many of the city's residents are still afraid to return to their homes...

...What is the point of rebuilding our houses when they might only be destroyed again...

...We are all afraid of a second wave of attacks...

...Now we can seize the initiative against the VC," said one American adviser here...

...There is nothing we can do here until the country is at peace...

...These measures," he went on, "will be pursued in a continued fashion, and will not have a demagogic, spectacular and temporary character...

...The recipients of this largesse, however, complain that it is not enough, that it isn't suited to their needs and that many peasants in the nearby countryside are equally desperate but cannot get to the city to receive even what is being distributed...

...I do not think the city can be rebuilt until after the war is over...

...You want to write that kind of trash, that's your business, but I don't have to talk to you...

...Thieu did dismiss about a dozen province chiefs, habitual plunderers of public treasure, but observers were sceptical as to whether their replacements would demonstrate more integrity once they had become accustomed to their enervated surroundings...

...The problem of corruption, he admitted in a recent major speech, is "a shame for the whole population...

...Seat of the last Vietnamese kingdom before the French occupation, and a symbol of unity and nationhood for the entire country, Hue was probably the hardest hit city in the offensive...

...In other cases, pacification projects have had to be shifted to new locations relatively free of Communist forces...

...Senior officials in Saigon claim the main highways are open, yet vehicles are so often mined and ambushed that many of the roads can be used only by armed convoys...

...Top-level American officials have maintained a stiff upper-lip in assessing the effects of the Tet offensive upon pacification...

...The one consolation, in the minds of some of the younger people, is that Vietcong recruiting and terror techniques alienated otherwise neutral peasants—but how much difference that will really make in waging the war is a matter of debate...

...Two months after the Tet offensive, the government had not announced a program of compensation and loans for businessmen, and informed sources doubted that small shopkeepers would ever be eligible for such attention even if large owners eventually got it...

...Despite the influx of American aid and advisers, it is not surprising that the city of Hue today appears to have settled into a semi-permanent state of hopelessness and apathy...

...One difficulty outside the cities is that American civilian advisers and Vietnamese pacification teams can only visit areas protected by South Vietnamese or American forces...

...Politicians privately charge that an honest crusade would result in the arrest of high-ranking military officers and Cabinet ministers, some of them allegedly involved in the gold and opium trade, others in simple bribery and theft of government funds...

...One Vietnamese, after speaking to men waiting in a line for tin roofing and cement, said they planned to sell the hand-outs on the market rather than use them for their homes...

...Only speculators and black marketeers can exploit American aid, and officials abuse their positions by collaborating with speculators for their own benefit...

...While struggling "just to stay alive," as Kelly put it in the middle of the battle, he had to face the almost impossible task of both revitalizing the American aid mission, halved by casualties, and advising a local government that completely collapsed under the Communist onslaught...

...We still do not think we have enough security...

...Government agencies have been slow in distributing badly needed food and clothing, overstocking some refugee centers while neglecting others...

...It's speed that counts...

...Now, as schools reopen here and there, as pacification teams return to hamlets, and as farm programs resume in some places, top officials insist the prognosis is even better than it was six weeks ago...

...sumptuous homes of the rich," and black marketeering on the streets, but there appears to be little he can do about all this...

...True, the civil servants who were not killed by Communist terrorists have returned to their desks in partially bombed-out buildings, and the shops that were not totally destroyed or looted have opened for business near the market place on the north side of the Perfume River...

...Corruption is inevitable...

...Deputy Ambassador Robert Komer, the pacification czar, said immediately after the battles in Saigon and 40 other cities that Vietcong and Communist forces had ignored the countryside while focusing on urban areas...

...On the contrary, the recovery effort rapidly became a political football, with Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky resigning as chairman of the relief committee after politicians spread the word he was using his position to undermine the authority of his arch-rival, President Thieu...

...Communist troops are outside the city...

...Pressed for a fuller explanation of this quadruple negative, Kelly snapped again, "I don't like the kind of trash you've been writing...

...Perhaps the greatest irony of Vietnam's plight—and proof of the superficiality of steps to improve the lot of peasants in the countryside and workers in the cities—is that wealthy merchants and government servants continue to live as lavishly as ever...

...they appear largely uninterested in rebuilding them, or repairing the gaping shell holes in walls and ceilings...

...While American and South Vietnam officials concede that virtually every city is susceptible to a "second wave," they believe the urban areas are essentially secure except for mortar fire and occasional snipers...

...Forty officials accused of bribery and embezzlement, he declared, would be punished with sentences ranging from suspension from duty to death...

...It's not enough, and it's not the right kind of material...

...American officials in Saigon, trying to fish good tidings from the sea of destruction created largely by U.S...

...It would be foolish to work on them now," said a businessman, sitting behind a counter in a shop just beyond the walled citadel where the heaviest fighting raged...

...The same problems of apathy, hopelessness and fear were apparent, though, in virtually every other city and town I visited during trips from the Mekong River delta to the demilitarized zone, around which both the United States and North Vietnam have positioned their heaviest troop concentrations...

...to restore vital services and clean up some of the rubble...

...to give cement, tin and money to families whose homes were damaged...

...And with the Tet offensive, when the allies were fighting for the cities, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were able to run wild over territory once regarded as "secure...

...The United States has created in South Vietnam a society in which luxurious living contradicts the war situation," editorialized one Saigon paper...

...The only really heartening consequence of the Tet offensive is that finally, under pressure from the American Embassy, President Thieu has promised not only to mobilize more troops but to fight the cancer of corruption that permeates every layer of the Vietnamese government...

...If they sell it, perhaps they will have enough money to get what they want somewhere else...

...They say they have no use for the stuff," he said...

...The "nightclubs" still flourish by day although closed at night, black market stalls reopened on the streets two days after Thieu ordered them shut down, and the wealthy have never wanted for good food, drink and other amenities...

...They recruited, spread propaganda, set booby-traps and often remained in supposedly secure areas even after American and South Vietnamese troops started returning...

...The great flaw in Thieu's anti-corruption campaign was that virtually all those arrested were on a relatively low level in government...

...The faster we work, the worse the Communists will look...

...They will face a million temptations," said one politician...

...Dozens of young American aid representatives who are assigned to the provinces, and had spent much of their time in the field before the attacks, take a different view from their elders...

...the last senior province adviser was captured and possibly killed by North Vietnam Army troops on the first day of the Tet offensive...

...planes and helicopters flushing out Vietcong and North Vietnam intruders, note that the South Vietnamese government has an opportunity to modernize the cities, provide better living quarters for the people, and generally improve urban standards...

...They must succumb sooner or later...

...And I'm telling you to get out of this building and not talk to any one else here either...

...American advisers on Kelly's staff talk enthusiastically about efforts by the South Vietnamese government to help the refugees...

...The Tet offensive has set pacification back two years," said one man in the southern delta province of Bac Lieu...

...Still, these points hardly compensate for the fact that the United States and South Vietnam currently face infinitely more trouble in winning the loyalty of the people than before the Communist drive launched in late January...