Strategic Hamlet Program
See also: Strategic Hamlet ProgramIn 1962, Nhu began work on the ambitious Strategic Hamlet Program, an attempt to build fortified villages that would provide security for rural Vietnamese. The objective was to lock the Vietcong out so that they could not operate among the villagers. Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo supervised these efforts, and when told that the peasants resented being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and put into forts they were compelled to build, he advised Nhu it was imperative to build as many hamlets as fast as possible. The Ngôs were unaware Thảo, ostensibly a Catholic, was in fact a communist double agent acting to turn the rural populace against Saigon. Thảo helped to ruin Nhu's scheme by having strategic hamlets built in communist strongholds. This increased the number of communist sympathisers who were placed inside the hamlets and given identification cards. As a result, the Vietcong were able to more effectively penetrate the villages to access supplies and personnel.
Read more about this topic: Ngo Dinh Nhu
Famous quotes containing the words strategic, hamlet and/or program:
“The practice of S/M is the creation of pleasure.... And that’s why S/M is really a subculture. It’s a process of invention. S/M is the use of a strategic relationship as a source of pleasure.”
—Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
“Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)