Strategic Hamlet Program

The Strategic Hamlet Program was a plan by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War to combat the Communist insurgency by means of population transfer.

In 1961, U.S. advisors in South Vietnam, along with the Diem regime, began the implementation of a plan attempted to isolate rural peasants from contact with and influence by the National Liberation Front (NLF). 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 create new communities of "protected hamlets". The rural peasants would be provided security, being physically isolated from Communist insurgents and support services thereby strengthening ties with the central South Vietnamese government (GVN). It was hoped this would lead to increased loyalty by the peasantry towards the government. In the end, the program led to a decrease in support for Diem’s regime and an increase in sympathy for Communist efforts.

After Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup in November 1963, the program greatly waned and peasants moved back into their native areas. Future counterinsurgency programs focused on accessing peasants in their existing communities rather than through forced relocation.

Background and Precursor Program
Starting around 1954, Viet Minh sympathizers in the South were subject to escalating repression by the RVN. In December 1960 the National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam was formed and rapidly achieved de facto control over large sections of the South Vietnamese countryside. At the time, it is believed that there were approximately 10,000 Communist insurgents throughout South Vietnam. 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 beginning in 1948, 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."

In late 1961, President Kennedy sent Roger Hilsman, then director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, to assess the situation in Vietnam. There Hilsman met Sir Robert Thompson, head of the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam (BRIAM). Thompson was a veteran of the Malayan counter-insurgency effort and a counter-insurgency advisor to the Diem government. Thompson shared his revised system of resettlement and population security, a system he proposed to Diem later in the year and that would eventually become the Strategic Hamlet Program. The program was implemented on the American side by CIA operative (and later CIA director) William Colby.

In Vietnam, strategic hamlets would consist of villages consolidated and reshaped to create a defensible perimeter. Relocation was to be minimal. The peasants themselves would be given weapons and trained in self-defense. Moreover, the strategic hamlets would not be isolated; instead, they would function as a network. The first hamlets would be placed in secure areas, free of the enemy; new hamlets would then be added slowly to create a secure, expanding frontier in what was known as the "oil blot" principle. But, Thompson said, it was important that the strategic hamlets provide more than just physical security. The hamlets should be used as an administrative tool to institute reforms and to improve the peasants’ lives economically, politically, socially, and culturally.

This would strengthen the tie between the peasants and the central government. Hilsman later summarized this theory of the Strategic Hamlet Program in a policy document entitled "A Strategic Concept for South Vietnam", which President Kennedy read and endorsed.

President Diem also liked the idea of Strategic Hamlets. In an April 1962 speech, he outlined his hopes 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."

Problematic implementation
Although many people in both the U.S. government and the government of South Vietnam (GVN) agreed that the Strategic Hamlet Program was strong in theory, its actual implementation, beginning in early 1962, was criticized on several grounds. Roger Hilsman himself later claimed that the GVN's execution of program constituted a "total misunderstanding of what the [Strategic Hamlet] program should try to do."

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 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 interview, a resident of a hamlet in Vinh-Long described 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 an aggressive propaganda campaign by the NLF, but also brought about by the inability of the 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 inflexible nature of the Ngo family.

Forced relocation
In the best case scenario, restructuring peasant villages to create a defensible perimeter would require the forced relocation of some of the peasants on the outskirts of the existing villages. To ease the burden, those forced to move were supposed to be financially compensated, but they were not always paid by the GVN forces. To make matters worse, their old homes were often burned before their eyes.

President Diem and his brother Nhu, who oversaw the GVN side of the Program, decided—contrary to Hilsman's and Thompson's theory—that in most cases they would relocate entire villages rather than simply restructuring them. This decision led to unnecessary amounts of forced relocation that was deeply unpopular among the peasantry. The mostly-Buddhist peasantry practiced ancestor worship, an important part of their religion that was disrupted by being forced out of their villages and away from their ancestors' graves. Some who resisted the resettlement were summarily executed by GVN forces.

Corruption
As stated previously, promised compensation for resettled peasants was not always forthcoming and instead found its way in the pockets of GVN officials. Peasants were also promised money in exchange for working to build the new villages and fortifications; once again some corrupt officials kept the money for themselves. Wealthier peasants sometimes bribed their way out of working on the construction, leaving more labor for the poorer peasants. Although the U.S. provided materials like sheet metal and barbed wire, corrupt officials would force the locals to "buy" the materials intended to provide them with protection.

Security shortcomings
Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of the Strategic Hamlet Program as implemented on the ground was its failure to provide the basic security envisioned by its proponents. This failure was partly due to poor placement of the hamlets. Ignoring the "oil-blot" principle, the GVN began building strategic hamlets as fast as possible and seemingly without considering "geographical priorities," according to a U.S. official. The randomly placed hamlets were isolated, not mutually supporting, and tempting targets for the Vietcong.

Each hamlet was given a radio with which to call for ARVN support, but in fact ARVN forces were unreliable in responding to calls for help, especially when attacks occurred after nightfall. The villagers were also given weapons and training, but were only expected to hold out until conventional reinforcements arrived. Once it became clear those forces could not be relied upon, many villagers proved unwilling to fight even small Vietcong detachments, which could then capture the villagers' weapons. "Why should we die for weapons?" asked one Vietnamese peasant.

Eventual Failure
Despite the Diem regime's attempt to put a positive spin on its execution of the Strategic Hamlet Program, by mid-1963 it was becoming clear to many that the Program was failing. American military advisors like John Paul Vann started criticizing the Program in their official reports. They also began expressing their concerns to reporters who began to investigate more closely. David Halberstam's coverage of the Program's shortcomings even caught the eye of President Kennedy.

The Strategic Hamlet Program was exposed as an almost complete failure in the aftermath of the November 1, 1963 coup that left Diem and his brother Nhu murdered. US officials discovered, for example, that only 20% of the 8600 hamlets that the Diem regime had reported "Complete" met the minimum American standards of security and readiness. The situation had passed the point of possible recovery. The program officially ended in 1964.

On the ground in Vietnam, the demise of the program was much easier to see. By the end of 1963, empty hamlets lined country roads, stripped of valuable metal by the Vietcong and the fleeing peasants. According to Neil Sheehan, "The rows of roofless houses looked like villages of play huts that children had erected and then whimsically abandoned."

Years later Roger Hilsman stated his belief that the strategic hamlet concept was executed so poorly by the Diem regime and the GVN "that it was useless, worse than useless."