Viet Cong

The Viet Cong formed something called the National Liberation Front (NLF). Ho Chi Minh and his North Vietnamese politboro (the rulers of North Vietnam) claimed they had no connection to the Viet Cong early on, although it was clear that they were sending them supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and influencing their activities, such was the level of co-ordination between Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) operations.

As well as fighting the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and U.S. Army, the Viet Cong were very much involved in South Vietnam on a political level in the villages. If a village wouldn't let them into the leadership structure, they would assassinate village chiefs or other important figures until they could get in. Getting in wasn't always a problem anyway - the Viet Cong were seen as patriots, and they drew in most of the young people. A lot of guerilla strength in South Vietnam was locally recruited, although infiltration through the Ho Chi Minh Trail was also significant.

And this was America and the ARVN's problem in South Vietnam - before the Tet Offensive the Viet Cong controlled about sixty per-cent of the villages in South Vietnam, and the countryside was considered essentially enemy territory. It wasn't safe to travel from city to city at night. How to kill them?

Unfortunately, a guerilla looked pretty much like a South Vietnamese citizen. General William Westmoreland's strategy to provoke the guerillas into conventional combat by sending out essentially blind (ever tried getting aerial intelligence through a three-layer jungle canopy?) patrols of combat troops through the jungle was leading to a fair few American deaths, and all evidence showed that the Viet Cong were not being attrited as Westmoreland intended.

Often the American solution was brute military force. B-52 strikes on entire villages which were thought to have Viet Cong sympathies occured, and CIA-funded Southern Vietnamese Special Forces went mad in arresting, detaining, torturing and killing suspected Viet Cong. The program had been going nicely at first, but when prisons started overflowing and the South Vietnamese got a little too eager to please their CIA paymasters, the murders started happening.

Then there was the amnesty program, or Chieu Hoi. It offered to reintegrate guerillas back into the South Vietnamese society; to clothe and feed them, and not put them in prison. It was claimed by the South Vietnamese government that over 27,000 guerillas had defected to Saigon's side by 1968, and it was also claimed that 79,000 had defected from 1969 to 1970. That's more than took part in the Tet Offensive (which had effectively exhausted the Viet Cong's rural cadres), and the Americans began to smell bullshit about the South Vietnamese government claims. Director of the CIA William Colby later estimated about 19,000 had defected in this period. It was cynically suggested that perhaps the 79,000 figure was the number jailed or killed by Phoenix.

The Viet Cong were highly trained and politically motivated soldiers - most of the officers and noncoms were Party members, and most were patriots. As always in any fighting force you get those who are just along for the ride and excitement, but in general they were an effective and motivated force, which lived through often harsh conditions to pursue their goal of a united, Communist Vietnam.

They could smell victory when they formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government in 1969. Ho Chi Minh summoned southern guerilla leaders and recognized them as a seperate government of South Vietnam. Although Ho Chi Minh was to die in September of that year, he lived to see the establishment of the entity that would be so much help in re-uniting Vietnam. The PRG concerned itself with the social governing of South Vietnam, as the Communists tried to win the hearts and minds of the villagers. The U.S. responded in kind by dispatching specially-trained groups of men to lead village reform, but their attempts were often hot-headed and didn't work very well.

It was the will of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong that defeated the Americans. They had set out to achieve the goal of a united, Communist Vietnam, and would not rest until it was achieved, no matter how many years and dead this took. The strategy of attriting them until they gave in would not work. The strategy of clumsily trying to win their hearts and minds would not work. And the strategy of dropping bombs on the very people whose confidence you needed would certainly not work.