Senator CLARK. You know I am not going after you, Dave. Senator CLARK. Mr. Chairman, I ask to have printed in the record two articles by Richard Critchfield, Asia correspondent of the Washington Star, which appeared in that newspaper under date of January 24, 1966, and January 25, 1966, the headlines are "Peasants Toil for the Earth Not for a Government" and "Armed Might Versus Reforms" and also when they are printed in the record, the part of those articles which I have underlined also be underlined in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection so ordered. Mr. BELL. May I say that series of articles by Mr. Critchfield seem to me a very good series. I think there were four of them, weren't there? Senator CLARK. I have only been handed two by the staff. If there were four I would be glad to have all four of them in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. [From the Evening Star, Jan. 24, 1966] THE PEOPLE'S WAR-PEASANTS TOIL FOR THE EARTH, Not for a GovERNMENT (By Richard Critchfield, Asia correspondent of the Star) TAN AN, SOUTH VIETNAM.-"This earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods * * *." The Asian peasant's deep attachment to the soil he tills and in which his ancestors are buried, described in Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth," is strongly evident here in the Mekong Delta rice bowl of South Vietnam. It is harvest time now. The golden fields of the great fertile plain between the Mekong, Bassac, and Saigon Rivers are dotted with men and women winnowing the precious rice against tall, curved shelters of plaited bamboo so as not to lose a grain. In black pajamas and pointed straw hats, barefoot, bronzed by the January sun, the peasants have the sturdy look of men and women who can endure disease, natural disaster and war so long as they have some land to farm. But very few have land of their own. In Long An, one of Vietnam's most fertile provinces, more than 85 percent of the peasant population are tenants. This landownership pattern may help explain why, despite a tremendous cost in lives and material, the war in Long An is no closer to being won than it was several years ago. Last year, the heaviest fighting raged in the jungles and rubber plantations north of Saigon, the rain forests and grasslands of the high plateau and in the swamps and rice paddies of the narrow central coastal plain. But if the main theater of war lay elsewhere, the rice-rich heartland of the Saigon region and the upper Mekong Delta, linked together by Long An, remains the prize for which the war is being fought. Here, in less than 14 Provinces, live almost two-thirds of the 15 million South Vietnamese. In June 1964, the summer before the Vietcong began massing multibattalion forces for pitched battles, Long An was held up as the showplace of how a combined Vietnamese-American military and economic pacification effort could defeat a Communist insurrection. Visitors went to Long An if they wanted to see how the protracted guerrilla war was going in the countryside. But now, 18 months later, little has changed. There has been no dramatic turn in the guerrilla fighting; the Government has won some villages and lost some. There are no signs of any serious deterioration. But there has been no real improvement either; since it is primarily a war of subversion in Long An, the creeping Communist initiative simply has crept further. Other peasants have replaced the hundreds of Vietcong killed in battle, and American military and civilian advisers agree there are many more Vietcong than a year ago. OPPOSING SIDES Most important in Long An, however, the Government and the mass of peasantry still seem to be on the opposing sides of the fight. None of the successive Saigon governments has succeeded in analyzing the peasants' grievances and then tried to right these wrongs, though there are signs Premier Nguyen Cao Ky's regime is moving in this direction. Land is of such paramount importance here that the Vietcong allow only the landless or very poor farmers in the delta to command guerrilla units or qualify as party members. The provincial government's social order is the exact reverse. Most of the military officers, civil servants and community leaders come from the landowning gentry. The same is true in Saigon, where only one of the 10 generals now sharing power has any rapport with the masses. He is central Vietnam's erratic Maj. Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi, who also is the only one of peasant origin. The traditional Mandarin ruling class fell from power with Ngo Dinh Diem, but their political heirs are the nonpeasant urban middle classes and their relatives. LODGE PUSHES REFORM Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and his top aids have made it clear that the United States regards major land redistribution as essential in successfully prosecuting the war. Ky recently announced a land reform program that will initially convey 700,000 acres to 180,000 peasants. Eventually, the program will be expanded to encompass over 500,000 acres of land formerly owned by the French, 660,000 acres now farmed by "squatters" and 300,000 acres where free titles will be awarded in resettlement areas. The crux of the problem, however, has yet to be tackled. This is the redistribution from big to small owners of more than 2 million acres in the Mekong Delta. Good delta land is worth about $50 an acre; it is roughly estimated by the South Vietnamese generals that it would cost between $150 and $200 million to carry out equitable reform programs here. Land reform under Diem left a bitter aftermath, since 2,279 dispossessed landlords were paid only 10 percent in cash as compensation and given low-interest, nontransferable, 12-year bonds for the rest. The bonds since have plummeted in value. U.S. GENERATING MONEY The United States could solve this problem by generating $150 million in local -currencies so that an outright compensation could be made. It already is generating piasters to pay for the Vietnamese share in the warto the tune of $350 million this year-by giving the Saigon government imported commodities to sell to local merchants. Both North Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap and the U.S. commander, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, describe the Vietnam conflict as "a people's war," and not "a war of attrition." Since the emphasis, first, is on converting and, second, on killing, the investment of $150 million in land reform to undermine the Vietcong's peasant support would seem like a bargain in a war that is costing $16.5 million a week. During the early days of the Diem regime, the United States spent $4 million on land reform. From 1961 through 1965 nothing was spent. And $1.1 million is budgeted for the current fiscal year. PROBLEM NOT UNIFORM The problem is not uniform throughout the country. With the exception of the Saigon area, the upper Mekong Delta and a thin, populated strip along the coastline, South Vietnam is mostly empty terrain. More than 85 percent of the land total is covered with jungle, swampland or dense foliage. Along the overpopulated coastal fringe, now heavily burdened with refugees, most farms are small and owner-operated and there is real land hunger. In the highlands, the problem could be solved simply by giving the Montagnard tribes clear title to land they have farmed for centuries. The real problem is in the delta. Out of 1.2 million farms, only 260,000 are owner-operated; 520,000 are rented and 330,000 more are partly rented. There are 71 farms of more than 250 acres and 85,000 more over 12 acres (though all one peasant family can reasonably handle is 5 to 7 acres). Some 3,000 rich Saigon families still are the big landlords. In Long An, the pattern is even more lopsided. According to one official U.S. survey made last July, 65 rich landlords, 3,000 farmer-owners and 28,000 tenant families comprise the population. COULD INFLUENCE ELECTION The landownership pattern probably would significantly influence the outcome of a free election, such as envisaged in the 1954 Geneva agreements. Lodge has observed the Communist promises of land to the tiller is "perhaps the greatest appeal the Vietcong have." Why there is so much opposition to sweeping land reform among some Saigonese is suggested by the tremendous wealth of a delta province like Long An. In a good year, such as 1963-64, Long An produced 320,000 tons of rice (Saigon's annual requirement is only 600,000 tons). It also sold that year 10,000 tons of pineapple, 70,000 tons of sugarcane, plus chickens, ducks, pigs, and other cash earners. The legal land ceiling is 220 acres. Even so, a Saigon landlord who charges double the legal rental rate of 25 percent, as he can do if the land is fertile enough, stands to profit as much as $40,000 in a single year on 220 acres. This compares with a Vietnamese policeman's monthly wage of $25, or the monthly cash allotment of a Vietcong guerrilla, which is 40 cents. POLITICAL ATTITUDES AFFECTED More important, perhaps, is how this unequal distribution of land affects the political attitudes of the Vietnamese. What seems to be absent here is the kind of political code that Theodore H. White has described as President Johnson's "grassroots liberalism": "You get yours and he gets his and we all share what there is to share." In Long An, this gets no further than "you get yours" and he, the peasant, can either lump it or try to get his by joining the Vietcong. But most of the peasants have learned by now that under the Vietcong nobody keeps his. This has created the kind of political vacuum where many Vietnamese peasants regard the war as a pointless slaughter. They still feel they stand to be the losers no matter who wins. CAUGHT IN VISE Caught between bloodsucking landlords, many of whom charge double the legal rents, and pitiless Vietcong tax collectors, who shoot first and talk later, the peasants appear ready to call a plague on both sides of this indecisive struggle. Yet there is an appeal to the Vietcong's three main propaganda themes: "Land to the tiller," "The soldier helps the peasant," and "The Government exists for the people." These are novel and explosive ideas to a man who works knee deep in mud 14 hours a day, growing half his rice for somebody else, whose idea of government may be a venal local tax collector, and whose chickens and ducks may have disappeared when the last militia patrol passed through his village. If his home has been destroyed or relatives killed by ill-directed bombs and shells, he might make a ready Vietcong convert without knowing what for. U.S. MILITARY FRUSTRATED Within the American military command in Saigon, there is widespread frustration over the failure of pacification efforts in the delta provinces like Long An. One hears talk that the only way the Vietcong fish can be deprived of the water in which they swim is to make things so hot in Communist-held zones that the peasants will come over the the Government side as refugees. Others argue there is no substitute for thoroughgoing land reform. One veteran American adviser in Long An said: "These people have country that doesn't need a government. They could go back 2,000 years and they'd be happy, fish in every pond, crabs in every paddy, bananas, coconut, and ducks. All they need is a little land of their own to be happy. Five percent of the Vietnamese in this Province are honestly pro-Government by their own personal beliefs and ideology, 5 percent are with the Vietcong for the same reason and the other 90 percent are right." [From the Evening Star, Jan. 25, 1966] THE PEOPLE'S WAR-ARMED MIGHT VERSUS REFORMS (By Richard Critchfield, Asian correspondent of the Star) TAN AN, SOUTH VIETNAM.-A respected Vietnamese journalist, when asked why Saigon's generals temporized on enacting the kind of land reform that most people agree is needed to win the war, replied: "They're still convinced it's winnable their way, and if not, it's not worth winning." This harsh judgment may have more than a grain of truth in it. Here in Long An Province, in the rice-rich, heavily populated upper Mekong Delta, the Vietnamese officials and army officers seem as fiercely determined as ever to defeat the Vietcong eventually. The Vietnamese still are fighting their own war here. But local leaders become curt and evasive when questioned about land reform or other innovations to improve the peasant's lot. "All the land we can distribute in secure areas, we have distributed already," said one senior Vietnamese official. GENERALLY RESPECTED Most of these local leaders are reserved, sensitive, French-educated men, generally respected by their American advisers as "very competent" and "fine people." All have lived amidst war and violence since 1939. Yet most of the higher ranking ones see South Vietnam's salvation in terms of military action rather than political remedies. A typical response on how to win the war came from a civilian administrator in his midthirties: "We don't have enough troops, if the free world would go to war with China, then ok. The unique way to win is to attack North Vietnam and China. If not, the war of subversion will last another 5 years." Asked about the fate of the 3,000 Vietcong of South Vietnamese origin in Long An in the event of a cease-fire, the official said, "They all must go back to Hanoi." His opinion was seconded by a Vietnamese officer, "Once the fighting stops, it will take us another 2 years to pacify Long An. We must throw the Vietcong forces out and destroy the Communist infrastructure." A year ago, the U.S. mission in Saigon agreed to finance "grievance committees" in each of Long An's six districts in an attempt to analyze and then to right the wrongs that turn the peasants into Communist guerrillas. One Vietnamese officer explained how the committees were working out: "Each cadre has a small room. Everybody must come in for 5 minutes so as to keep security for the man who seeks to tell something. The cadre asks, 'How is your family? How is your life? In this way, we get information on the Vietcong political organization and make our intelligence net. The grievance committees are the eyes of the Province chief." Other officials praised the committees as a good way of learning the peasantry's "education" needs, getting military intelligence, controlling the population's movements and detecting secret Vietcong cells. No one mentioned the genuine grievances that the peasants presumably voiced. ATTITUDES DIFFERENT Going down the ladder one rung to the district officials, however, there seems to be a distinct difference in attitudes. While most senior provincial officials are from Saigon and make no secret of their personal ambition to be transferred back there some day, the district officials seem to identify themselves much more closely with the local peasantry. Typical of this group is Nguyen Van Dhien, in Long An's most pacified district, Thu Thua. A goateed former Vietnamese ranger with a reputation as a tough fighter, Dhien writes poetry and has let his fingernails grow half-an-inch long to show he has risen above manual labor. Dhien does not think that an invasion of North Vietnam would solve anything and he is a strong advocate of land reform. Asked what might happen if there were a free election contested by the Communists and the Saigon regime in Thu Thua, he said that if the Communists promised land reform, they might get the votes of 85 percent of the 45,000 who are landless peasants. In contrast, he said, the 8,000 refugees who have poured into Thu Thua in recent weeks from Vietcong-held territory probably would vote for Saigon since most are bitterly anti-Vietcong after experiencing Communist rule. Twenty percent of Thu Thua's land, he said, is owned by rich absentee landlords who live in Saigon and Tan An. Unlike the provincial leaders, Thien does not think the protracted guerrilla war will last long. "There is a big flame in the lamp just before it goes out," he said. A third distinct Vietnamese attitude is moral indifference to the war, typically expressed by the bonze superior of Tan An's towering Nguyen Thuy Pagoda. During a conversation marked by long silences, distant gongs, and burning incense, the bonze, a shaven-haired intelligent-looking man in his midthirties, had no opinion on land or any other concrete reform to help the peasantry. "The Buddhist doctrine is tolerance, not violence," he said. "People move to town because they are afraid of bombing and artillery. I hope it is possible you can cease the bombing and shelling. Even where there is no engagement made with the Communist forces, the Americans still bomb, causing much harm to the people." Most of the refugees, however, do not associate airstrikes with the Americans since they have seen few foreigners. One refugee, Mua, a 49-year-old tenant farmer who fled to Tan An with his wife and five children a month ago, said his hamlet, An Nhut Tan, had long been under Vietcong control. "At home I rented a hectare of riceland from a landlord who lived in Lac Tan village. The Vietcong promised to give us land; they called the village chiefs together last year to make a land reform plan, but they didn't do anything." Asked what he thought of the Vietcong, Mua stuck his tongue out and made a face as if he had bitten into a sour pickle. "They usually shoot artillery around my house so I must move. Too much bombing also since November." Since he had no identity papers, he said, he could not qualify for refugee relief and instead was earning 50 cents a day as a construction laborer in Tan An. "It's easy to get work now; many rich men building houses." Asked what he thought of Americans, he had to ask the interpreter what Americans were. After a pause, he shrugged, "The Government used to help more with rice and money. Why doesn't Mr. Diem come back? When he was there we got bank loans." DEFECTOR EXPLAINS A 25-year-old Vietcong defector, who used to lead a 37-man guerrilla platoon, explained why peasants like Mua were turning against the Vietcong. In his area, he said, the Vietcong initially redistributed land. But now they have raised taxes 300 percent. "The more airstrikes, the more people moved away and the heavier taxes became," he said. "The National Liberation Front (the Vietcong's political arm) failed to solve anything. There was no security to work in your field. An F-105 jet got there too fast, there was no time to run for cover. Those and 250-pound bombs were most feared." He said if he were directing the war in Saigon he would intensify air and artillery attacks on the Vietcong villages, and then would offer the peasants amnesty and safe harbor elsewhere. He suggested the offers be broadcast via heliborne loudspeakers by people who previously had left the Vietcong-held villages. He said he had joined the Communist Party 2 years ago. |