Vietnam Civil Aid Plan In Jeopardy

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31382, 30 May 1967, Page 15

Vietnam Civil Aid Plan In Jeopardy

<N.Z. Preu Association—Copyright.)

SAIGON, May 29.

Pacification in the strategically important five northern provinces of South Vietnam has come to a stop, and in some areas is falling back, reports the “New York Times” news service.

This is the opinion expressed by many informed civilian and military officials in Hue and in Da Nang. However, the men at the top, like Mr Henry Koren, the director of the Office of Civil Operations for the five provinces, and officers on the staff of Lieutenant-General Lewis Walt, the Marine commander, still see signs of progress. One such sign, said Mr Koren, a former Ambassador to Brazzaville, was “the attitude of the people.” “We have asked them if they were glad that there was a revolutionary development team in their hamlets,” he said, “and the overwhelming answer is ‘yes’." Pessimistic View But the views of officials at lower levels, those closer to the work of pacification, are pessimistic and even despairing. There are several reasons for the failure of the revolutionary development programme to live up to expectation, but it is agreed that the major reason is the failure of the South Vietnamese Army to carry out its assigned role of providing security for the member teams assigned to the hamlets. The situation in the Thua Thien province, of which Hue is the capital, is the most serious in the area and probably in the entire country. While General Walt and Mr Koren say that the new chain of command in the pacification programme, which gives the military at least nominal authority over civilian officials, will not substantially change thdir relationship. Other officials are frankly hoping that, with centralised responsibility, the Marines will be able to provide the security that the South Vietnamese Army failed to give. Teams Attacked

Thua Thien has 113 teams. In March there were 24 attacks against them and in April there were 19. Twentysix team members have been killed and 25 wounded. The effect of the attacks has been devastating to the morale of the teen-agers who largely make up the teams. While figures are not available, it is known that desertions are high. Whole teams have begun violating one of the cardinal rules of their training by leaving their hamlets at night to sleep in the relative security of military outposts.

Even more harmful in the long run, perhaps, is the fact that at least a dozen teams have been transferred from the hamlets because of repeated attacks. “Leaving the people like that,” said an American captain, “is a lot worse than never having been there at all. It’s just another time that they figure they’ve been lied to when we said we weren’t going to let the Viet Cong drive us away.” Corruption Blamed

Mr Robert Kelly, the chief of civil operations in Thua Thien and a man who has worked in Vietnam for five years, believes that the failure of security is a symptom of a larger, more pervasive and perhaps insoluble problem.

That is the “overwhelming corruption” that infects every phase of Vietnamese official life.

“It’s more than just stealing,” he said in his office in Hue.

“It’s a corrupted, diseased attitude. There is simply no sense of unity, no feeling that winning the war must come first, no understanding that until there is a contented peasantry there is no room

for the opulent society of the Government of Vietnam.”

For example, Mr Kelly and some of his colleagues see a “coldness” in the Army toward the young revolutionary development in cadres. As a result there is little inclination to provide more than nominal assistance—-and sometimes there is not even that. Punishment Theory The Army, in turn puts the blame on the Central

Government. It is widely believed in Hue that the Saigon regime is withholding assistance of every sort new weapons for the troops, books for the library, beds for the hospitals, money for civic improvements—to punish the city for being the seat of the Buddhist struggle movement that briefly threatened to topple the Government last year. It appears also that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army are following complementary tactics in the area, which add to the security problem. The North Vietnamese presence forces the Marines to divert troops that might be used to provide hamlet security to operate against the regiments that slip across the border.

The main force guerrillas

can. then move with a relatively free band against the remaining Vietnamese battalions and the lightly-armed popular and regional forces militias that are supposed to be shielding the hamlets.