Moving Forward

Despite President Marcos' pessimism over the "other war" in South Viet Nam, a report handed Lyndon Johnson last week noted that social and economic reforms in that country are "moving forward on a broad front." The 44-page assessment by Robert Komer, the President's special assistant for peaceful construction in Viet Nam, was described by Johnson as "impressive."

Komer estimates that about 55% of South Viet Nam's population has been brought under the government's wing, a "modest gain" of about 5% in the first eight months of 1966. Accentuating the positive, he notes a rapid increase to 28,539 workers in the key Revolutionary Development Cadre program, describing the 59-man teams sent into the countryside as "a dagger pointed at the Viet Cong's heart" (though an official Vietnamese assessment in preparation tells another story--of faulty recruiting, bad training, improper use of workers and ill-advised psychology). Komer notes proudly that 12,106 Viet Cong have surrendered under the Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) amnesty program so far in 1966--nearly 1,000 more than for the whole of last year--but, again, ignores a sad record of Vietnamese in difference and downright hostility to rehabilitating yesterday's enemy.

On hand to get first copies of Komer's report was Donald MacDonald, 44, who replaces Charles Mann as AID chief in Viet Nam. MacDonald has headed AID programs in Pakistan and Nigeria, and is known as an expert troubleshooter. The report's main points: > Galloping inflation, which could yet undo all the benefits of the U.S. buildup by swamping Viet Nam's economy with more money than it can absorb, has been curbed by a drastic 50% devaluation of the piaster, as well as by new economic restraints worked out jointly by U.S. and Vietnamese officials. -- Saigon's creaking dockyards, once a crucial brake on the war effort, have been more than doubled to handle 380,000 tons of cargo each month. An increase to at least a 650,000-ton capacity is planned for next year, but bottlenecks still abound.

> Villagers built 1,600 new schoolrooms during the first half of 1966, well ahead of schedule. Peasants supplied labor, while lumber and cement came from AID and the Vietnamese government. Manning 6,400 hamlet schools are 7,200 teachers, including 3,400 who completed training in 1966. Hamlet schools can now provide elementary education for 540,000 youngsters. -- Fighting disease are 42 free-world medical teams, including Cuban refugee doctors and medical personnel from 13 other nations; 153 American doctors took furloughs from their private practices for two-month voluntary stints with Project Viet Nam; West Germany has sent its hospital ship, Helgoland; and Canada donated equipment for ten 200-bed portable emergency hospitals. G.I. medics and Navy corpsmen, resting from battle duty, have treated hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and there are 21 U.S. military medical teams ministering full time to civilians; by the end of June, 39,700 patients were being treated each month, and medical facilities will be able to cope with more than 2,000,000 sick Vietnamese next year. Because Viet Nam has only 1,000 doctors of its own (700 of them serving in the army) and 2,500 fully trained nurses, medical education is being stepped up dramatically to give the country 200 new doctors, 50 dentists and 800 nurses a year by 1970.

> AID added $22.5 million to a Vietnamese allocation of roughly $10 million to assuage the misery of more than 1,000,000 war refugees. At least 280,-000 were either sent back to their homes last year or resettled in new locations, but new refugees pour in daily, and the number living in temporary hovels rose during the same period from 320,000 to more than half a million. Private citizens in the U.S. have sent nearly $20 million in clothing, medicines and cash for refugee relief, and 29 U.S. voluntary agencies staffed by 400 Americans work in the camps.

-- Imported fertilizer and improved strains of seed and breeding pigs and chickens are helping to raise peasant incomes in Viet Nam, where 85% of the people live off the land. Pesticide sprays treated 1,400,000 acres and 10 million rats were exterminated last year, halving a 30% crop wastage through vermin and disease.

A major problem is the government's flagging "Revolutionary Development" program for the countryside. With two-thirds of the year gone, Viet Nam's four regions have committed less than half of their 1966 development budgets; in northern provinces, racked by anti-government ferment last summer, as little as 13% of these projects has been completed. Reform of Viet Nam's archaic land tenure, the key to a land-hungry peasant's loyalty, is also dragging. Though Komer claims that the Ky regime "is proceeding with distribution of 1,200,000 acres of expropriated and government-owned land," in fact it has only managed so far to hand out title deeds to 40,000 acres, and many of those tracts have been abandoned in the fighting. In this pivotal program, as Philippine President Marcos warned, the Allies have a long way to go to win over Viet Nam's peasants.

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