The Shadow of Arms

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “It is practically the same as giving up the entire highlands region of central Vietnam to the NLF and the North Vietnamese. It is a development of deep significance, meaning, in effect, that from now on nobody can be neutral. What you’re saying is, you will take no responsibility for whatever happens to people who have not moved into the hamlets or into our zones of control. What you’re saying is, those villages that had joined with the NLF in the past can and will be annihilated.”

  The chief of the agricultural section in the local government was an ARVN major on reserve status and senior to Pham Quyen. He cautiously supported the comments of the mayor of Hoi An.

  “All of this is, of course, a by-product of the agonizing war we have been through. We’ve witnessed the wretched fate of many farmers who’ve been deprived of their land and livelihood by the establishment of free-fire zones. If you go up in a helicopter and cross the metal fences at the boundary of the division defense zone, then you’ll see the parade of refugees slowly creeping along under the hot sun. No one knows where they come from and they themselves don’t know where they’re going. The old men have pots and pans on their backs, or a couple of chickens, their entire property, and the children ride in rickety wooden carts, many of them already sick. On the outskirts of all the cities, Da Nang included, tens of thousands of refugees have swarmed in, making slums of shacks on a giant scale, and they keep on growing, too.

  “The Americans have provided these refugees with vast quantities of relief supplies and have tried to find jobs for them, but they couldn’t possibly have understood the various problems presented for these Vietnamese people by such transplantation. Putting aside the two most important things, carrying on permanent family life and worshiping one’s ancestors, they think of their own villages as an entire world in microcosm and their worlds are lost.”

  As usual, Pham Quyen found himself cast in a sort of master-of-ceremonies role, and he felt a need to move in a direction different from their pessimistic, impractical pleas.

  “Our Developmental Revolution Committee and the US—Vietnam Joint Committee are anti-war organizations founded basically to fulfill the hopes of the Vietnamese people to be free from hunger and terror. In other words, furthering self-reliance and realizing peace have been the permanent goals of the projects of our organization. So, our goal is not to expand but to end the fighting. If, as in the past, our enterprise exists and is seen merely as a derivative part of a strategy to achieve military goals, then it is bound to fail. Hence, I would very much like to focus on the fact that this self-reliance project must take the lead on all policy fronts, and the military operations policies need to be supportive of our enterprise.

  “Earlier, the advisor reminded us of the characteristic intensity of headquarters’ operations in the run-up to the Tet Offensive, and we now hope that experience would help us to stabilize our project so it can take root and be transformed into a process of securing strongholds that one by one can be expanded. In that respect, General Liam, our committee chairman, upon receiving the report I submitted on the deficiencies in the old strategic hamlet project and the causes of its failure, instructed us to carry out an organizational reconstruction and recruitment of new personnel in the course of planning the phoenix hamlets project. Consequently, I hope this meeting will be devoted in large part to the differences between the strategic hamlet and the phoenix hamlet projects that are expected to improve the prospects for the new initiative. We each can voice our opinions, beginning with the divisional commander, here, please.”

  The Second Division commander was from Hue. A young general in the Rangers, he won a field promotion to general when the ARVN First Army was reorganized following the ousting of General Nguyen Chanh Thi in 1966. He had no knowledge whatsoever about pacification techniques on the civilian level. Thumbing through the project plan that had been typed up and distributed, he spoke falteringly:

  “To be honest with you, I know almost nothing about the strategic hamlets project. But within the limits of my knowledge, I’d like to mention a few things I think could be helpful for such a pacification project. Adjutant Pham just mentioned that as a project pursuing peace and stability, military operations should be subordinated to the project. However, we are not facing, as our main resistance line, the seventeenth parallel, which looks like the neck of a sack tightened from the sides, Laos and the ocean. There is no front line—the enemy is at our flank, in the rear, beneath us, everywhere. So, just because phoenix hamlets are being established, we cannot stop other operations and devote our forces only to protecting and securing the hamlets.

  “Rather, it seems to me that the phoenix hamlets project brings various setbacks for our operations. In my view, the rural areas must be subdivided and communities drastically broken down according to the use of the land. Then, a small number of cultivators and teams of agricultural technicians should create large-scale production complexes, and the military can demarcate operations units for each such complex. And many people who are moved back onto the rural land, after going through a camp-like assembly process, can be set to work on industrial projects, with a good number of factories set up in the environs outside the cities. We have to correct and control the misdistribution of population and efficiently utilize the workforce, then military operations will be able to function better. Unless it is preceded by such a reorganization of settlement patterns, the concentration of the rural community in its present positions will bring no good practical results. Unless more effective control as well as improved security systems are introduced, it will be hard for us to expect victory.”

  On the surface, the division commander’s remarks sounded quite reasonable. Pham Quyen felt this honest presentation of a rather extreme functionalism was not very far from what the Americans actually had in mind. A kind of domino theory in which, if one falls down the rest will tumble one by one; each individual domino is not likely to be seen as a distinct entity alive with its own thoughts and dreams, but just as a cube assigned a simple material value.

  As though he were moving pieces and jumping squares on a black-and-white checkerboard, the division commander was talking of the land as the flat plane he was used to seeing whenever he looked down at his maps. That square frame, containing streams drawn in ballpoint pen, with the elevations of mountain ridges appearing as connecting ovals, could not show the forests, the birds or the fish, nor could it show the hearts of men stooping over in the rice paddies or their rejoicing at night in the embraces of their wives and children.

  The chief of the agricultural was to the left of the commander and this position earned him the opportunity to speak next. He was slightly outraged by the general’s remarks and had been looking at him with contempt. He spoke:

  “A mechanistic mentality, to be sure. Of course, I have no doubt about the division commander’s remarkable ability as a combat commander. But it was precisely such thinking that guaranteed the failure of the strategic hamlets project. As Adjutant Pham aptly explained, the establishment of free-fire zones by the US military command in the course of setting up the phoenix hamlet project has been a fundamental impediment to our enterprise. To rectify these problems is why we are meeting here today.

  “We have in our possession accurate information on the startling changes that have accompanied the social revolution that has unfolded in North Vietnam since the 1950s. What is startling is how effective were the strategies and techniques they employed to acquire and hold the hearts of Vietnamese farmers. Americans must realize, first and foremost, that they have entered into a cultural sphere that has nothing in common with their own. Material support cannot be the key for solutions. As the Developmental Revolution Committee is now recognizing, the most urgent thing is the realization of social justice.

  “People should be paid for their labor, and a land reform of sweeping breadth must be accomplished in the pacification zones. However, based on our experience, once the government forces move
into a new pacification zone, the pattern has been that the farmers see their land seized by new landlords, vile opportunists with relatives or friends in the military or other speculators with military connections. The Vietnamese are people who follow the teachings of Confucius. Unlike Western people, we attach more importance to seeing rightness put into practice than to the fulfillment of material desires. The Liberation Front focuses its concern on the corruption endemic on our society. . . .”

  “Chief, couldn’t you use some other expression?”

  Pham Quyen interrupted in the nick of time, for he was conscious of the first lieutenant who was busily taking down all of the remarks of the proceedings. The contents of the conference would be reported later, and Pham Quyen did not relish being questioned by the Da Nang internal security agency later. Of course, as Liam’s right-hand man, and with Liam having a direct family line to the president, they would not dare do anything to Pham, but all the same he wanted to avoid any mutual unpleasantness.

  Sitting next to the Americans was an interpreter they had hired who was translating for them every word spoken. The chief of the agricultural section mopped his brow with a handkerchief and continued. As far as Pham Quyen knew, he had been a sincere and outstanding student in his younger days. He was from Quang Ngai. Though he had graduated from the officer candidate school, he was scarcely cut out for the military. He had once worked for USOM, where he impressed his superiors, so they had sent him to the Philippines for further education. There was no doubt he had superior knowledge and skills in agriculture, but to Pham Quyen he was a stubborn idealist. He did not fit the reality in Vietnam, and now it seemed he had almost gone crazy over this phoenix hamlet project. For some time Pham Quyen had been thinking that the man was showing signs of becoming dangerous.

  “I suppose I could speak more circumspectly, but I believe we must be ready even to quote the expressions of the enemy, if necessary to accomplish our mission successfully. The Way of Ho Chi Minh includes plenty of ethical and ascetic elements. These are the features that make it possible for them to approach the traditional Vietnamese manner of thinking, as I said before. The North Vietnamese leaders made no wild promises, nor did they allow bribes to distort their plans. They only showed the blood, sweat, and pain of toil, and implanted an image of leadership with a bold and spartan manner.

  “In the first place, through the phase of political struggle, they consolidated their foundations for the so-called internal class struggle. And before they launched the land reform, they had orchestrated a movement for reducing farm rents. Through the rural party cells, their cadres got acquainted with the poor peasants who farmed land they did not own, asking their permission to live with them. Next, they practiced what they called the ‘three cooperations’: they worked without pay with the farmers, they ate together and slept in the same beds, and when the men got married, often a female agent came in and slept with the farmer’s wife.

  “They usually stayed at least three months, gaining the trust of the peasants because they worked without demanding pay. Depending on the season, they helped the farmers out with all kinds of agricultural labor, tilling, sowing, weeding, and harvesting, and they even cleaned the house and cared for the children, engaging in constant discussion with the man of the house. They tried to understand all the minute details of the farmer’s existence and especially when they heard of troubles and hard times, they showed great concern and sympathy.

  “Soon the farmers came to trust them instinctively and bared their hearts to them. In the end the agents enter deep into the farmer’s soul and drag out his hatred for the landlord who is, in effect, their own personal foe. Through this process the farmers become ready for the class struggle. The agents call these farmers ‘roots’ and the process ‘sprouting roots.’ All their social reforms were made with the roots sprouting in the hearts of the people themselves.

  “Therefore, our phoenix hamlet project likewise must start from the actual living conditions of the farmers. If it is done from the standpoint of military conveniences, it will certainly fail. To have a sanctuary from terror and hunger is not enough, they need to be able to choose their own leaders and also to denounce those leaders when their trust has been betrayed. At the outset, the Developmental Revolution Committee should have set up structures at the township level, the administrative front line, as well as at the level of autonomous villages, through elections in which the residents themselves can vote.

  “That we were not mere puppets is certain, but then our government did not exactly have the stature of an independent nation. The Americans criticized us for lacking a highly developed government structure, but they should realize this is a situation in which people in Saigon still find it natural to refer to the American ambassador as the ‘Governor General.’ We were a colony until the French armed forces were defeated and withdrew, and even if there are no longer any interventions by the French, we’re now going through a war with the colonial elements still intact in many ways. Today, without the economic support of America, we can’t carry on the war for a single day.”

  “Just a minute, that’s only natural. America has the responsibility to protect Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia from communism. Isn’t the American army the shield of the whole Free World?”

  The division commander interrupted the impassioned remarks of the chief of the agricultural section. Then the AID mission chief spoke with a gentle smile.

  “Well, I find the criticisms of the section chief very useful. The insight to look straight into a problem is also quite important for the success of our pacification settlement project.”

  That idiot, Pham Quyen thought worriedly, he does not realize that even when individually the Americans seem lenient toward criticisms and infinitely sincere in accepting them, the American organizations will drive the millions of teeth in their saw blades home and American corporations will leave not a single screw loose when their interests are at stake.

  Pham Quyen had been entertaining a plan to seek endorsement of a bold expansion of his own mandate. If the atmosphere of the meeting continued to unfold along the same lines, he would seize the moment to propose more autonomous execution of the project plan. Autonomy! What a seductive and beautiful word! It would mean laying his hands on power reaching from distribution to consumption of the full range of goods. For instance, if the task is one necessitating a payment in good old green US dollars, in the name of autonomy you can have a briefcase full of clean, crisp freshly printed mainland US dollars brought straight from the window at the Chase Manhattan Bank in Saigon to the provincial government office. The ultra-sincere chief of the agriculture section, his face flushed by the encouragement he had received by the AID mission representative, resumed his lecture with renewed emphasis.

  “The support we’re receiving at present has too many strings attached. These conditions, indeed, can aggravate corruption in the course of utilization of the support. We have the chief of the education section here today, and we all know that a large quantity of milk is being received for the grammar school children. In this case, for example, the price for the milk is supposed to be paid in dollars from our allotments of hard currency aid, but milk procurement has become very complicated because of two factors. First, due to the contract arranged by the US government, the milk is shipped from the east coast of the US instead of the west coast. That makes the transportation expense extremely high. What makes it even more intriguing is that we can easily buy the same quality milk from Singapore at about half the price.

  “Even if the American government will not let us use dollars to buy the goods from Singapore, they could at least let us buy at a cheaper cost from the west coast. I’m inclined to think we are looking here at the results of manipulations by American businessmen of the US Congress. Problems of this nature should be closely examined when we plan procurements of necessary supplies with aid funds for the phoenix hamlets project.”

  Pham
Quyen had a feeling that the section chief was trying his best to make a strong impression on the AID mission, hoping the Americans would be favorably impressed with him as a conscientious government official. But Pham Quyen knew very well that neither the Americans nor the Vietnamese would touch on the deeper and more fundamental issues. He cleared his throat and spoke.

  “The section chief’s comments are so candid and pertinent that I feel my mind unburdened. I am not sure how many candid opinions must be exchanged and impediments discussed in order to promote the pacification resettlement project. Due to time pressure, in any case, we must move on to the main topic. From now on, please restrict yourselves in your remarks to the phoenix hamlet project. Does the chief of the education section have any other comments to make?”

  “Yes, I’d like to reflect on a few points of trial-and-error I observed in the past with the strategic hamlets program. I’m a man who is fond of comedies at the movie theater, but I have no wish to be a fool myself. At the time of the Diem regime, the American secretary of state boasted that seven million Vietnamese people were living in over a thousand strategic hamlets and that his plan was to erect three thousand such villages by the mid-1960s. In reality, not many of the strategic hamlets were of any use. Some were little more than symbols marked on the maps in undefended zones and a great number of the strategic hamlets existed only on paper.

  “The resettlement funds that were supposed to be distributed to the farmers disappeared on the way and usually never reached their hands. Sometimes not even the weapons for local militias to be raised in the supposedly self-defending strategic hamlets were supplied. Large quantities of these weapons found their way into the black market.