NEWS ANALYSIS, SEPTEMBER 15, 2001.


TERRORISM


The terrorist attacks at New York World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon on September
11 are still shocking the nation and many parts of the world. 

The enemy has brought terrible destruction and heavy human losses right into the heart of the nation
for the first time since the United States declared its independence. Everyone living in the United
States shares the national grief and anger. The Vietnamese exiles in the U.S., more than anyone else,
have a deeper feeling and higher sensitivity of such horrible tragedy. 

Most of the Vietnamese have spent part of the life in war, experiencing and witnessing savage
terrorist attacks in Vietnam after 1945. The September 11 attacks once again revive painful
memories of those Vietnamese.

Images of human parts mingled with rubbles from collapsed buildings after similar bomb attacks
years ago in Vietnam urge many Vietnamese around the United States to quickly respond to the call
for relief contribution from radios and newspapers in Vietnamese language. Large numbers of
Vietnamese exiles are sending cash contributions and donating their blood to help the victims. 

It's worth noticing that the average contribution of a Vietnamese to the Sept-11 attacks relief fund is
from $50 to $100 whereas average individual donation to natural disaster victims in Vietnam has
been from $20 to $40. They also hold religious services praying for the victims in churches and
pagodas of the overseas Viet community. Some contributors say that the Sept. 11 attacks cause the
most powerful shock to them. 

The largest donation came from a Vietnamese businessman, Tran Dinh Truong of New York. On
Thursday, September 13, 2001, he contributed two million dollars to the relief fund raised by the
American Red Cross chapter at Buffalo, N.Y. According to Buffalo News, Nancy Blaschak,
executive director of the chapter said Truong's gift is the largest single donation by an individual that
the chapter has ever received.

Truong and his family fled Vietnam when the Communist forces overran Saigon in 1975 and arrived
in America with almost nothing. Now he is the owner of two hotels, one in Buffalo and another in
New York City. He wants to show his grateful thanks to the American people, who welcomed him
and helped him rebuild his life, saying that the donation was the least he could do.


*



Very few Americans have been aware that in the Vietnam War, the American soldiers had just
participated in the pure military activities. But an important part of the war of insurgency in South
Vietnam was terrorism, which is largely overlooked by the press corps, observers and scholars. In
the Vietnam conflict, VC terrorism was inseparable from the war.

In fact, it is the systematic acts of terror well designed by the highest Communist rulers that helped
them conquer South Vietnam after 20 years of conflict. Probably, only American advisors and others
fighting or working along with the Vietnamese in rural villages might have had some clear notion of
how terrorism was playing the most effective role in the Vietnam War. 

Terrorism had once been employed by the French military in the 1946-1954 war as a deterrent
measure to frighten peasants away from supporting the Resistance forces. But the French failed and
suffered the boomerang effects that turned more Vietnamese against them. 

On the opposite front, forms of terrorism had been carried out in various scales with executions of
nationalists by the Viet Minh from 1945 to 1954. At the same time, terrorist attacks were also
directed at the French and their Vietnamese collaborators who were dubbed Viet Gian (Viet Traitor)
during the Resistance War 1946-54. The bloodiest mass execution was carried out by the
Communists against many thousands of Hoa Hao Buddhist followers in 1947 in the Mekong Delta.

After the 1954 Geneva Agreement divided Vietnam at the 17th Parallel, South Vietnam became an
independent republic and people were living in peace for a few years from 1956 to 1959. Meanwhile
in the North, Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) consolidated its regime by launching the "Mass
Motivation Movement." It consisted of twin campaigns: the Land Reform Campaign and the
Rectification of Errors' Campaign. The two were radically implemented, closely following lessons
learned from Communist China. 

In reality, the Land Reform was exactly a terrorist campaign to kill and to incarcerate all landlords
and those who would possibly become staunch opponents of the Communist regime. According to
the Communist theory, it was the manner of killing or torturing or humiliating the enemy that counts,
not the sentence to death or prison.

The accurate number of victims of the movement has never been disclosed. Researchers and writers
could only guess it at as high as 100,000 or as low as 15,000 people executed. Some North
Vietnamese former officials estimated it at 30,000. At any number, the killing obviously aimed at the
VCP's objective as to keep the 16 million North Vietnamese people under the party tight control by
implanting in their heart a "fear machine." 

The Rectification of Errors' Campaign that followed the Land Reform, turned out to be a secondary
terrorist campaign in which many Land Reform Group members were killed by the victims' relatives.
The party and its government did not lift a finger to save their faithful members but sacrificed them as
scapegoats to calm down public anger.

The massacre from 1955 to 1956 was the main reason for South Vietnamese government to refuse
holding general elections to reunify the country as suggested in the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

The sight of the horrible executions has imprinted deeply on the mind of the North Vietnamese, both
pro and anti-Communists. Since 1957, this effect, along with political and propaganda cramming and
food control system, helped the VCP motivate and drive millions of North Vietnamese into the war
at the largest extent that has surprised most foreign observers.

In the South, the Ngo Dinh Diem government launched the campaign "To Cong", or Denunciating the
Communists, in an effort to clean up underground Communist infra-structure. The campaign applied
some kinds of terrorist tactic, even imitation of some Communist techniques. But compared to that in
North Vietnam, what were done by South Vietnam government looked several times smaller.

After 1954, Communist terrorist tactic was applied on the two areas: In the government-controlled
territory and in the remote villages where the Communists were taking control around the clock or
partly at night.

Communist terrorist tactic in South Vietnam had effectively helped the VCP win the war . Since
1957, the war began with terrorist attacks reported in remote villages where village chiefs and
members of village governments were assassinated by Viet Cong death squads. Notorious village
officials were primary objectives. When "wicked lords" had been done away with, "good officials"
became victims who were solely labeled as "servants of the American Imperialists and Diem." 

In the first few years, from 1957 to 1961, many VC guerrillas squads were hiding in the jungle close
to the common border areas with Cambodia. Many times they stopped cross country buses at night
on national highway 13, 14 and robbed passengers of their money and jewels, acting as if they were
only highwaymen, not VC soldiers. They conducted terrorist attacks quick and deadly against special
targets carefully selected. Besides human targets, a lot of bridges, dispensaries, schools, village
offices.. were demolished.

Since 1961 until 1975, Communist terrorist attacks claimed the most important parts of war efforts
under the leadership from Hanoi. In general, terrorist actions were conducted against several types of
objectives.

Terrorist attacks primarily supported the so called Kinh Tai branch of the Communist organizations in
South Vietnam. Kinh Tai, shortened from Kinh Te Tai Chanh, or Economic and Financial, was an
underground system in charge of procuring material supplies (mostly money) for all VC activities. The
system was considered by the Communist Party as its backbones. The Kinh Tai enjoyed top priority
over all other branches.

Sappers and death squads would carry terrorist attacks against individuals or business facilities
whose owners failed to pay promised monthly or annual "contributions" to the VC. They were
owners of cross country buses and boats, three-wheeled passengers vehicles, theaters, restaurants
and other businesses vulnerable to VC attacks.

Terrorists also supported counter-intelligence activities, that was to get rid of the "moles,"
government and army informers, VC defectors, selected government and military officials,
particularly village chiefs and other village officials and even their relatives.

In the areas under VC full or partly control, local political security member of the village and district
Communist clandestine governing bodies exerted terrorist actions to inhibit the population from
supporting the government and armed forces, while they forced villagers to contribute their greatest
parts to the Communist side. Only two or three Communist cadres with terrorist action could take
effective control over a village of about 300 to 500 people.

From 1957 to 1975, the number of victims of VC terrorism was about 10,000 to 20,000, as roughly
estimated. A list of about 5,000 victims with identification and addresses was released by Saigon
Ministry of Interior in its White Book published in 1962, but the book drew little attention from
foreigners.

During the war, terrorists lent great supports to all fronts and all Communist territorial military units
operating in populated areas. 

Everyday, in every one of more than 400 districts all around South Vietnam, there have been some
ones who were executed by VC assassins. The victims might have been armed militiamen and regular
soldiers, unarmed village officials, government employees including public health nurses. In many
cases, wives and children of prominent or fanatic anti-Communists among government employees,
civilians or members of nationalist parties, were murdered by VC death squads as an act of warning
or retaliation.

VC terrorism frightened people in rural areas so much that no villagers dared to give any information
to goverment soldiers, not even talk to them. Selling a chicken or a pig to the soldiers might result in
severe punishment right after the troops had left: a seller's finger would be chopped off.

Many victims were not only shot but also beaten to pulp, eviscerated, beheaded, dismembered or
buried alive. In village level, the victims' relatives sometimes took revenge by killing captured VC the
same way. But actions of terror on the Saigon government side were somehow limited because there
hadn't been a terrorist policy from the central government level as in the Communist side. Moreover,
there were reporters and foreign advisors in military units around whose reports could bring troubles
to the responsible persons. 

VC terrorism was so successful that in many villages, there was no candidate running for any seat in
the village government. The tactic also assisted the Kinh Tai branch to successfully boost "fund
raising" operations. In the fiscal year 1968-69, the government of Dinh Tuong province collected
about 200 million SVN piasters from all kinds of taxes. At the same time, the VC clandestine Kinh
Tai branch of the same province extorted about 220 million piasters from the people's pockets.

On highways, there were thousands of vehicles, trucks, buses, tractors, 3-wheeled passenger and
sometimes cars blown up to pieces during the 15 years from 1960 to 1975. In the early 1960s, many
large buildings and hotels where a number of Americans living were destroyed by car bombs. Brinks
Building in Saigon and Viet Cuong Hotel in Qui Nhon were among the terrorists' targets in 1965.
Vietnamese and Americans in the old American Embassy on Ham Nghi Blvd, Saigon fell victims to
another car bomb in the same year.

Many times VC sappers launched Soviet-made 122mm rockets on suburban areas and even cities
and towns while they knew for certain that their rockets only hit civilians in the neighborhoods. In
1962, a VC bomb blew up at the entrance to the floating restaurant My Canh on Saigon River,
killing a dozen civilians visitors. At the Military Court, the suspects pled guilty and said that their
superiors considered all people living in the American "puppet government" areas as enemies. 

In an anti-terrorist action, the National Congress and President Ngo Dinh Diem passed a legislation
known as Law # 10/59 in 1959 to bring terrorists to a special court with simplified procedures
against crimes that had not been dealt with appropriately in the existing Criminal Law. The legislation
set severe punishment against terrorists committing sabotage aimed at bridges, roads, railroads,
political kidnapping and assassination, attack on vehicles, theaters, installations of businesses,
economic, health service, education facilities... 

The law was bitterly criticized by many in the foreign press corps and human rights activists who said
it violated the basic principles of justice. However, none of those international critics has ever said
anything about the 3,000 civilians and unarmed servicemen executed and buried in mass graves
around Hue City by the Communist troops before their withdrawal from the city. They ignore the
most horrible massacres committed by the Communist side as if it were entitled to terrorism on behalf
of their Marxist-Leninist ideology.

The Phuong Hoang (Phoenix) Campaign since 1968 intended to destroy Communist infra-structure
proved very effective. It almost put an end to terrorist attacks in the last four years before the
Republic of Vietnam collapsed on April 30, 1975. For the first time in the war, there were no
terrorist or guerilla attacks behind the front line of battle areas in the Communist Summer 1972
offensive. However, a small number of the PRU (Provincial Reconnaissance Unit) soldiers might
have committed some cases of illegal killing. But the cases were exaggerated in Western news
reports to lay the blame on the South Vietnamese military.

Unfortunately, Phuong Hoang and some other campaigns, including on the propaganda front, proved
themselves great successes too late when the American government had already lost patience, willing
to fight and determination to win. 

The Communist leaders in Vietnam, many of whom had been terrorists during the war, are still relying
on terrorism to keep the Vietnamese people well under their control. They are terrorizing religions
and the believers and those who struggle peacefully for democracy and freedom disregarding
international criticism. Their experiences have proved that terrorism could be an efficient tactic to
prevail over the enemy war power especially when they are supported by a powerful propaganda
front.

In short, terrorism in the Vietnam War is worth more profound studies. Without due consideration
for the terrorist front, the history of the Vietnam War will be seriously misunderstood.