Strategic Hamlet Program
[1] Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a communist sleeper agent of North Vietnam who had infiltrated the South Vietnamese army, was made overseer of the Strategic Hamlet Program and had hamlets built in areas with a strong NLF presence and forced the program forward at an unsustainable speed, causing the production of poorly equipped and poorly defended villages and the growth of rural resentment towards the government.
[2] The Strategic Hamlet Program was unsuccessful, failing to stop the insurgency or gain support for the government from rural Vietnamese, it alienated many and helped contribute to the growth in influence of the NLF.
The failure of the Strategic Hamlet and other counterinsurgency and pacification programs were causes that led the United States to decide to intervene in South Vietnam with air strikes and ground troops.
"Pacification by Prosperity" had some success, but it was never decisive, because the settlers felt insecure, a feeling which the numerous French guard posts along the perimeter could do little to dispel so long as the Việt Minh operated at night, anonymously, and intimidated or gained the support of village authorities.
In February 1959, recognizing the danger that the guerrillas posed if they had the support of the peasants, President Diem and his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, made a first attempt at resettlement.
A report put out by the Caravelle group, consisting of eighteen signers, leaders of the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo sects, the Dai Viet, and dissenting Catholic groups described the situation as follows: Tens of thousands of people are being mobilized… to take up a life in collectivity, to construct beautiful but useless agrovilles which tire the people, lose their affection, increase their resentment and most of all give an additional terrain for propaganda to the enemy.
'[7] The U.S. believed that by developing the 'third world' through education, sanitation, and reforming their economic and political systems, it could bring countries ‘out of the phase where rural revolutionary forces could come to power’ and create a path towards democracy.
[16] The concept of modernisation relied on the belief that all societies, including Vietnam, passed along a linear trajectory from 'traditional' and economically unsophisticated, to 'modern' and able to harness nature through industrialisation, technology, and literacy rates.
[17] The practice of village relocation within the Strategic Hamlet Program, holds foundations in Rostow’s modernisation theory which recommended “destroying the external supports to guerrilla insurgents”.
[21] The US media and government spokesmen presented the Strategic Hamlet Program and its projects of village relocation and social engineering as “reflections of benevolent American power”.
In challenging communism against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Strategic Hamlet Program “revised older ideologies of imperialism and manifest destiny” stemming from notions of American Exceptionalism.
Diem's government had its own views of how to deal with the related issues of counter-insurgency and nation building, modern ideas which presented an alternative to the political agenda of both his regime's US ally and his Communist opponent.
Ngo Dinh Diem also saw them as a way of mobilizing the population politically and generating support for his regime; they were the centre-piece of the government's plans to modernize the RVN and simultaneously free it from dependence on the United States.
[25] Ngo Dinh Diem made efforts to limit foreign involvement in the hamlet programme, particularly as the United States put a great deal of pressure on the regime in 1961 to accept US policy prescriptions for defeating the insurgents.
Such demands further solidified notions within the Diem regime that its ally was overbearing and meddlesome; indeed, US pressure encouraged the Ngos to see the hamlet programme as a way to free South Vietnam from dependence on the United States for economic and military aid, as well as a way to satisfy their other political goals.
Whilst the United States eventually supported the hamlet scheme, most US officials were 'somewhat bewildered by the sudden appearance of a major activity that had not been processed through their complex co-ordinating staffs'.
[29] The ‘winning’ stage involved the construction of schools, irrigation systems, new canals and road repairs to give the impression that the U.S. government was working for the people’s benefit in a ‘permanent capacity’.
They also believed that educating the population into the modern world would counter communism, which many young men and women found appealing due to its ability to find ‘stable elements in their already unstable societies’.
[38] President Diem in an April 1962 speech outlined his hopes for the Program: ... strategic hamlets represented the basic elements in the war undertaken by our people against our three enemies: communism, discord, and underdevelopment.
In this concept they also represent foundation of the Vietnamese society where values are reassessed according to the personalist revolution where social, cultural, and economic reform will improve the living conditions of the large working class down to the remotest village.
[40] As George Kahin suggests, life in the strategic hamlets was about more than fighting communism, it underpinned ‘a deeper globalisation problem within Cold War politics’; imperialism.
[42] From the 1950s onwards, Non-government organisations (NGOs), or Civic action groups like the Peace Corps, were called into Vietnam, including in the hamlets, to help build infrastructure like dams and public roads.
[43] Kennedy believed that the provision of livestock, cooking oil and fertiliser alongside the establishment of local elections and community projects would give peasants a ‘stake in the war’.
[45] When Robert Thompson sent Filipino field operatives into local hamlet settlements, they reported that South Vietnamese peasants accepted Viet Cong propaganda as they believed that ‘America had replaced France as a colonial power in Vietnam’.
[57] Not only were the members upper class and educated women, therefore not representative of the Vietnamese peasant population, but the founder; Madame Nhu, eventually instructed the Movement to oppose U.S. intervention strategies.
[60] In 1962, Ngô Đình Nhu, President Diem's brother, headed the Strategic Hamlet Program, attempting to build fortified villages that would provide security for rural Vietnamese.
[62] There was also the compulsory labor the South Vietnamese government forced on relocated peasants, leading Noam Chomsky to compare the hamlets to "virtual concentration camps.
"[63] President Diem and his brother Nhu, who oversaw the program, decided – contrary to Hilsman's and Thompson's theory – that in most cases they would relocate entire villages rather than simply restructuring them.
Ignoring the "oil-blot" principle (establish first in secure areas, then spread out), the South Vietnamese government began building strategic hamlets as quickly as possible and seemingly without considering "geographical priorities," according to a U.S. official.
"[68] In his book Vietnam: a History (Viking,1983) Stanley Karnow describes his observations: Years later Roger Hilsman stated his belief that the strategic hamlet concept was executed so poorly by the Diem regime and the GVN "that it was useless.
