Strategic Hamlet Program - Problematic Implementation

Problematic Implementation

Although many people in both the U.S. government and the government of South Vietnam (GVN) agreed that the Strategic Hamlet Program was strong in theory, its actual implementation, beginning in early 1962, was criticized on several grounds. Roger Hilsman himself later claimed that the GVN's execution of program constituted a "total misunderstanding of what the program should try to do."

The speed of the implementation of the Program is important to note, as it is one of the main causes for its eventual failure. The Pentagon Papers reported that in September 1962, 4.3 million people were housed in 3,225 completed hamlets with more than two thousand still under construction. By July 1963, over eight and a half million people had been settled in 7,205 hamlets according to figures given by the Vietnam Press. In less than a year, both the number of completed hamlets and its population had doubled. Given this rapid rate of construction, the GVN was unable to fully support or protect the hamlets or its residents, despite the immense funding by the United States government. Vietcong insurgents easily sabotaged and overran the poorly defended communities, gaining much sought access to the South Vietnamese peasants. It is estimated that only twenty percent of the hamlets in the Mekong Delta area were controlled by the GVN by the end of 1963. In an in interview, a resident of a hamlet in Vinh-Long described the situation: “It is dangerous in my village because the civil guard from the district headquarters cross the river to the village only in the daytime…leaving the village unprotected at night. The village people have no protection from the Viet Cong so they will not inform on them to the authorities.”

There are several other important problems that the GVN faced in addition to those created by the failure to provide basic social needs for the peasants and over-extension of its resources. One of these was wide public opposition to the Program stemming partly from an aggressive propaganda campaign by the NLF, but also brought about by the inability of the committee to choose safe and agriculturally sound locations for the development of the hamlets. However, according to the Pentagon Papers, the most important source of failure was the inflexible nature of the Ngo family.