Strategic Hamlet Program

The Strategic Hamlet Program meant different things to various South Vietnamese and American groups. It was not simply building the hamlet that would carry out a strategy, but the context in which they were built. There was a good deal of agreement that it had to be phased:

1. Clearing enemy forces, the responsibility of the regular ARVN, coupled with some level of "holding"
2. Maintaining security, by various civil guard organizations and regional reaction forces
3. Hamlet self-defense capability, enabling economic development and strengthened local government

U.S. basic concept

The U.S. political leadership focused on the latter part of the program. The U.S. military somewhat regretfully focused on the first, with concern that the ARVN would bog down in "holding", when the ARVN was needed to take the initiative away from the enemy, so the VC were defending, not attacking. Both, however, did not see long-term success without reforms in the Diem government.

Diem and Ngo's conceptual view

Diem, however, was more concerned with preserving than reforming his government. American appeals to form a "partnership" may not have been seriously considered. See Operation SUNRISE for a representative early attempt to create a hamlet (March 1962).

Absentee landlords formed a significant part of Diem's power base, in a quasi-feudal system that contained resentments the NLF could exploit. Much of Vietnamese rural culture was tied to the ancestral lands where they were located, yet the villagers did not own their fields and homes. Gibson quotes a landlord interviewed by Samson:

In the past, the relationship between the landlord and his tenants was paternalistic. The landlord considered the tenant as an inferior member of his extended family. When the tenant's father died, it was the duty of the landlord to give money to the tenant for the funeral; if his wife was pregnamt, the landlord gave mone for the birth; if he was in financial ruin, the landlord gave assistance; therefore, the tenant had to behave as an inferior member of the extended family. The landlord enjoyed great prestige vis-a-vis the tenant.

During this period of paternalism, the landlord also received 40 to 60 percent of the tenants' crops as rent. When the Viet Minh fought the French, they also fought an economic war, and drove large landowners into the cities, or variously lowered or ended rent payments. According to Gibson, when Diem's ARVN forces established security, they put landlords back in control, often demanding back rent.

Separarately from the land reform and economic issues, the Government of Vietnam were unable to provide security for the villages. The Diem government response was to create defensible "strategic hamlets" and forcibly move the villagers to them. The strategic hamlet might have government-appointed or military leaders; the villagers' locally chosen leadership was destroyed. The tombs of ancestors was abandoned, in a culture where it was proper to show ancestral respect.