Viet Cong Five Years Old, 20 Times Stronger

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30939, 21 December 1965, Page 26

Viet Cong Five Years Old, 20 Times Stronger

(KX. Press Assn — CoggrigM) SAIGON, Dec. 19. The South Vietnam National Liberation Front, the political arm of the Viet Cong, will celebrate its fifth birthday tomorrow, United Press International says. More than 20 times as many insurgents are under arms than when the organisation was formed five years ago. In 1960 it led about 10,000 hard-core guerrillas and claimed control of half the Vietnamese countryside. Today, Washington estimates the Viet Cong number 230,000, with as many as 4000 reinforcements pouring into South Vietnam every month from North Vietnam. The front claims control of four-fifths of South Vietnam’s territory—an area containing 10 of its 16 million people. There will be no cake or candles at tomorrow’s birthday celebration. The N.LJ. has called on

its army to celohrate the event with “practical deeds” —which moans bombs and bullets. There was a marked increase in attacks within Saigon preceding the anniversary. Communist claims depict the front as being born at a meeting of patriots, hiding in the Jungles and driven to desperate revolt by a cruel regime and its American “im-

perialist” backers. The Americans say the front was created at the direct order of North Vietnam aa their political agent for the conquest of South Vietnam. In theory dosens of different front organisations choose members of the N.L.F. central committee, who in turn guide the fortunes of the Viet Cong army. In practice, the local or ganisations and the Viet Cong are both run by the same small cadre. The thread that really binds the front together is a littleknown, Communist-dominated group called the “People’s Revolutionary Party.” The party rarely issues any public statements, and it has

i never published the names of 1 it. leaders. But it has a cadre in every Viet Cong unit, usually down to platoon level. ’ There are party snoa wortr ing in the hierarchy of each village, and h each of the ; Überatton Front’s component organisations. i It is firmly believed in Saigo that, behind the scenes, the North Vietnamese Communist Party in turn controls, the southern-based People** . Revolutionary Party from its t headquarters in Hanoi. An identical system was used by the old Communist , Party of IndoChina to control , the nationalist Viet Minh ; rebels in their successful i fight against the French.