(3 of 4)
with bamboo fences, barbed wire and armed
militiamen to keep the predatory Viet Cong from exacting food and
manpower from a helpless peasantry. Already 8,000,000 villagers—59% of
South Viet Nam's population—are living in the 6,000 hamlets that have
so far been completed.
Problem with Peasants. Though the government admits that fewer than
one-third of the hamlets are defensible against a determined onslaught,
the Reds are reluctant to attack the villages for fear of antagonizing
the people. In some areas, thanks to higher standards of living in the
hamlets, peasants are for the first time informing government troops of
the movements of the Viet Cong. "If these people believe we can protect
them with the hamlets," says one U.S. adviser, "our problem may be
licked."
However, most South Vietnamese peasants are still either passive or
actively resentful of the Diem regime, which is often personified by
oppressive, corrupt local administrators. For all his high hopes for
the program, aloof, autocratic President Diem seldom stirs far from his
yellow palace in Saigon to visit the hinterland and generate enthusiasm
for his cause.
Sneaky Petes. The area of the government's greatest frustration is the
Mekong River Delta, where 55% of South Viet Nam's population is centered and 75% of its rice is grown.
The peasants there have resisted the hamlet program—and have often been
forcibly resettled in fortified villages—because they resent having to walk
miles to their paddies. In a successful attack on two hamlets last
month, some 2,000 villagers simply vanished. The Reds are particularly
hard to flush out of the delta because they often are impossible to
distinguish from peaceful peasants.
On the other hand, U.S. Special Service troops—"Sneaky Petes"—have
made dramatic progress in the north by winning over and training the
dark-skinned, aboriginal montagnards. Though they have for centuries
been victimized by the lowland Vietnamese, who contemptuously call them
Moi (savages), 150,000 montagnards now belong to an aggressive, native
force.
Help for Bananas. Militarily, the decisive factor in the war to date has
been the introduction of some 170 U.S.-piloted helicopter transports,
which give the government's troops the advantages of surprise and
mobility that had hitherto been the guerrillas' monopoly. The
antiquated "banana" copters have become increasingly vulnerable as the
Viet Cong learn how to use new rapid-fire weapons; in one sortie near
the delta village of Apbac last January, they downed five of 14
helicopters, including one of the 24 fast, rocket-firing HU-1B ("Huey")
helicopters that now escort most missions. Last week a second company
of 24 Hueys arrived at a new base near Vinh Long. "Operations were down
in the hundreds a year ago," says General Paul Harkins, commander of
U.S. forces in South Viet Nam. "Now they're in the thousands."
But normal battlefield statistics are largely meaningless. The Viet
Cong's casualty rate is rising, but the Reds have actually increased
their hard-core strength (to an estimated 25,000) by recruiting more
peasants. And though the Reds are losing many weapons, those that they
are capturing are modern mortars and machine guns, while those that
they lose to government forces are generally crude devices and obsolete
rifles.
Vain Pleas. As the government
