Strategic Hamlet Program

In 1961, U.S. advisors in Vietnam along with the Diem government began the implementation of a plan to gain support from the Vietnamese peasant population. It was developed in response to an increase of guerrilla activity in underdeveloped communities in South Vietnam. Called the Strategic Hamlet Program, it attempted to isolate and protect Vietnamese rural peasants from contact with and influence from the Vietcong. The Strategic Hamlet Program, along with its predecessor, the Rural Community Development Program, played an important role in the shaping of events in South Vietnam during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both of these programs attempted to separate rural peasants from communist insurgents by creating fortified villages and forcing the peasants to take an active role in the civil war. The program backfired drastically and ultimately led to a decrease in support for Diem’s regime and an increase in sympathy for communist efforts.

In order to understand the significance of the Strategic Hamlets, it is necessary to first look at conditions in South Vietnam during the years 1954 to 1963. After the Geneva Conference in 1954, North Vietnamese forces turned to guerrilla warfare in its attempt at reunification with the South. By 1960, it is believed that there were approximately 10,000 communist insurgents throughout South Vietnam.

Along with tactics like sabotage, assassination and subversion, guerrillas attempted to gain the support of the rural populace for recruits, shelter, supplies, and most importantly, information. Northern forces saw the allegiance of the non-combatant population as paramount to their eventual success and therefore attempted to gain the cooperation of the people through either passive efforts or coercion.

Beginnings

Recognizing the danger that the guerrillas posed if they had the support of the peasants, President Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu implemented the Rural Community Development Program (later known as “Agroville”) in 1959. Based partly on the success of a similar program in Malaya used by the British to suppress a Communist uprising in 1949, the Agroville Plan endeavored to remove the “neutral” population from guerrilla contact. Through direct force and/or incentives, peasants in rural communities were separated and relocated into large communities called “Agrovilles.” By 1960, there were twenty-three of these Agrovilles, each consisting of many thousands of people.

This mass resettlement created a strong backlash from peasants and forced the central government to rethink its strategy. A report put out by the Caravelle group, consisting of among others, Bishop Thuc (a brother of Diem) 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.”

Strategic Hamlet Program

In 1961, the South Vietnamese government along with several U.S. advisors and Brigadier R. K. G. Thompson (who was closely involved with the successful Malayan resettlement) began reforming the Agroville Plan into what was to become the Strategic Hamlet Program. The new plan called for smaller communities (less than a thousand residents) erected on both existing and newly developed settlements. The GVN wanted to create a new infrastructure with the intention that the Vietnamese peasants would come to identify Diem and his regime as the legitimate government. In a speech given in April 1962, Diem declared his ultimate goal 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 the personalist revolution where social, cultural, and economic reform will improve the living conditions of the large working class down to the remotest village."

The fundamental idea was to give the peasants enough motivation to want to support the government and at the same time, fight off the Vietcong.

Problems faced by the program

In theory, the hamlets were to be heavily fortified and guarded by both residents of the communities and national patrols. Each hamlet was to have its own radio transmitter for communication with the central government in Saigon as well as an arrangement that included supply lines and medical and educational programs. Unfortunately, these programs never materialized for most of the hamlets.

The speed of the implementation of the Program is important to note, as it is one of the main causes for its eventual failure. The Pentagon Papers reported that in September of 1962, 4.3 million people were housed in 3,225 completed hamlets with more than two thousand still under construction. By July 1963, over eight and a half million people had been settled in 7,205 hamlets according to figures given by the Vietnam Press. In less than a year, both the number of completed hamlets and its population had doubled. Given this rapid rate of construction, the GVN was unable to fully support or protect the hamlets or its residents, despite the immense funding by the United States government. Vietcong insurgents easily sabotaged and overran the poorly defended communities, gaining much sought access to the South Vietnamese peasants. It is estimated that only twenty percent of the hamlets in the Mekong Delta area were controlled by the GVN by the end of 1963. In an in interview, a resident of a hamlet in Vinh-Long describes the situation: “It is dangerous in my village because the civil guard from the district headquarters cross the river to the village only in the daytime…leaving the village unprotected at night. The village people have no protection from the Viet Cong so they will not inform on them to the authorities.”

There are several other important problems that the GVN faced in addition to those created by the failure to provide basic social needs for the peasants and over-extension of its resources. One of these was wide public opposition to the Program stemming partly from aggressive propaganda campaign by the NLF, but also brought about by the inability of the Program committee to choose safe and agriculturally sound locations for the development of the hamlets. However, according to the Pentagon Papers, the most important source of failure was the with inflexible nature of the Ngo family. This, coupled with an unrealistic optimism held by the Diem government and U.S. advisors, made success of the Program virtually impossible. Facing all of these challenges, the Strategic Hamlet Program finally collapsed with the assassination of President Diem in late 1963 and the disbanding of the Committee for Strategic Hamlets in early 1964.