Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
SECRET/NOFORN
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH
Research Memorandum
RFE-1, September 29, 1961
INR/AN
SOUTH VIETNAM: CRISIS AND SHORT-TERM PROSPECTS[1]
ABSTRACT
Since late 1959 the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) has been faced with greatly accelerated, diversified, and unremitting Communist guerrilla and terrorist warfare and subversion directed and support by the the North Vietnamese regime. During this period the armed component of the Communist apparatus has grown from 3,000 cadres to a well-organized, adequately armed, and increasingly aggressive guerrilla-terrorist force of about 17,000 as a result of stepped-up infiltration and recruitment locally. Although Communist armed operations are concentrated in the rural areas of the Mekong River delta, they have spread to the once relatively quiescent central and northern provinces and have occurred increasingly closer to urban areas. The immediate Communist objectives are to demoralize the peasantry, weaken and supplant government authority in the countryside and discredit President Ngo Dinh Diem's leadership to the point of precipitating his overthrow.
Communist progress toward these objectives has been substantial. More than one-half of the entire countryside in the highly productive Mekong River delta, as well as some areas north of Saigon and in the central provinces, have come under varying degrees of Communist control. In many of these and other areas, the Communists, have restricted the flow of rice to the marketing centers, forced the curtailment of government agrarian and other rural programs, and gained control of many inland waterways, thereby adversely affecting the economy. Since the beginning of 1960, Communist guerrillas and terrorists have killed or kidnapped more than 6,500 civilians, local officials, and security and military personnel, thus increasing the shortage of trained local administrators and weakening morale particularly among the security services and the local civil bureaucracy. Moreover, in the face of the government's inability to provide adequate protection to the populace in many rural areas, Communist reprisals and propaganda have aggravated peasant dissatisfaction and have made the peasantry reluctant to participate in local government projects and to assist the security forces with vitally needed intelligence on the Communists.
- ↑ This paper is based on material prepared as a contribution to NIE 14.3/53/61 Prospects for North and South Vietnam, August 15, 1961. It has been substantially revised for publication at the present time.
SECRET
