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Both sides have given top priority to a battle of the banners, symbols of territorial control. Communist directives urge troops to "be ready to paint flags when occupying territory, and hang flags everywhere when the agreement is signed; this is the way to enlarge our area and snatch people and land from the enemy. Plant flags, hang flags, paint flags, set up triumphal arches, display posters."
President Thieu is also thinking flag. He has prohibited imports of red, blue or gold cloth, the colors of the National Liberation Front banner, and issued orders that anyone caught tearing down a government flag is to be shot on sight. When a cease-fire seemed near last October, he hastily ordered more than a million red and yellow South Viet Nam banners. The Government colors now fly from or are painted on virtually every building and lamppost in Saigon-controlled sections of the country.
The Communist moves must await a ceasefire; but Thieu can act now, and he has. He has dispersed South Vietnamese soldiers to head off any Viet Cong rush into contested hamlets, and sent 5,000 young officer cadets into the countryside to bolster the villagers' resolve. He has mounted a brutal campaign against dissidents, during which Communists have been assassinated and 10,000 or more suspected sympathizers—including many pacifists and neutralists—have been imprisoned for indefinite terms. Recently Thieu secretly ordered a "reclassification" of many political captives. They are now listed as common criminals, so that they can be held beyond any cease-fire exchange.
Each side, of course, hopes to win during the cease-fire the contested territory that it could not win in battle. In this postwar war, Thieu will have the advantage of the sheer weight of government and a visible standing army. The Communists, however, may have the more imaginative plans. When the supervisory commission arrives, says one directive, "we must mobilize the people to bring flags to meet it and present it with petitions and demand that the commission give its guarantee to the people of the liberated areas."
The postwar peace may thus be won or lost in the first few days—or else the groundwork will be laid for another prolonged war, as happened in the mid-1950s. Following the 1954 Geneva accord, both sides ruthlessly prevented the International Control Commission from observing its war preparations. History may repeat itself unless a new supervisory commission is in place when a cease-fire takes effect. Otherwise the commission will likely find its job rendered impossible before it ever reaches South Viet Nam.