The Strategic Hamlet Program was a plan by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War to combat the Communist insurgency by means of population transfer.
In 1961, U.S. advisors in South Vietnam, along with the Diem regime, began the implementation of a plan attempted to isolate rural peasants from contact with and influence by the National Liberation Front (NLF). The Strategic Hamlet Program, along with its predecessor, the Rural Community Development Program, played an important role in the shaping of events in South Vietnam during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both of these programs attempted to separate rural peasants from Communist insurgents by creating concentration camps. The program led to a decrease in support for Diem’s regime and an increase in sympathy for Communist efforts.
Read more about Strategic Hamlet Program: Background and Precursor Program, Strategic Hamlet Program, Problematic Implementation, Eventual Failure
Famous quotes containing the words strategic, hamlet and/or program:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“This program has helped me to keep physically healthy and to eat the right foods ... and that’s really what the swimsuit competition is about.”
—Kaye Lani Rae Rafko (b. 1968)