The ABCDs of Pacification

PACIFICATION, South Viet Nam's "other war," has been waged in one guise or another since the days of the French. In the 1950s there was the abortive agroville program of agricultural resettlement. In the early 1960s came the U.S. concept of "strategic hamlets," which were meant to fortify rural areas to protect peasants from Communist attack. By 1966 President Johnson was referring to pacification as "the other war," or "the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the people." Whatever its name, the object of pacification for nearly two decades has been to wrest rural areas from Viet Cong control and bring them under the aegis of the Saigon government. With U.S. troops continuing their withdrawal--President Nixon last week announced that the troop level would decline by another 40,000 to 344,000 by Christmas--pacification has assumed ever-increasing importance in determining the allegiance of the country's 11 million peasants.

Alphabetical Ratings. After the Communists' 1968 Tet offensive, U.S. and South Vietnamese officials cast a critical eye on their Hamlet Evaluation System (H.E.S.), which was supposed to determine the relative extent of both the government and V.C. control. The system was found to be misleading. Districts were often shamelessly gerrymandered to create impressions of progress that had no relation to reality. A complex new scheme was devised that requires field advisers to answer no fewer than 149 multiple-choice questions; the replies are fed into a computer in Saigon, which digests them and then prints out alphabetical ratings:

A--full-scale government presence and the apparent elimination of the Viet Cong apparatus; B--strong government presence while the V.C. appear to have been neutralized; C--less-than-firm government presence and some V.C. agents still operating; D--partial government control with V.C. agents operating actively; E--minimum government presence with V.C. agents underground by day and operative by night; V--totally under Viet Cong control.

When the computerized system was launched last January, the percentage of A-B-C hamlets (reasonably secure) immediately dropped from 92.7% to 87.9%. Now, however, U.S. aides claim that the figure has climbed back to 92.8% of the rural population. Obviously Saigon does not exercise total control over that many people; the C hamlets are rather shaky entities, for example, even by optimistic American standards. The problem is still one of interpretation, and Saigon's readings are likely to be overly hopeful.

Even so, the government does seem to be making inroads. To convert a single hamlet from a rating of V even to D requires not only tons of ammunition, miles of barbed wire and nightly counterinsurgency ambushes, but also vast amounts of cement, tin, fertilizer, sweat and blood. The hamlet of Trinh Phu is a case in point. One year ago, government troops entered Trinh Phu for the first time in a decade. To look at pacification in terms of people rather than printouts, TIME Correspondent James Willwerth paid a visit to Trinh Phu, a partially pacified hamlet with a D rating. His report:

The road to Trinh Phu, a muddy ribbon stretching through rice-rich Ba Xuyen province, ends some 85 miles southwest of Saigon at the Rach Vop canal. Until October 1969, Trinh Phu had been controlled by antigovernment forces almost without interruption since the end of World War II. In 1965, the Allies declared the hamlet a free fire zone. Many of the families fled.

Thriving Market Place. Last year, as part of its stepped-up pacification program, the government turned its attention to Trinh Phu. Regional Force troops, a home-grown militia responsible for their own province, moved in cautiously. They were followed closely by black-pajamaed Revolutionary Development cadres, which are supposed to combine the skills of the community organizer and the psy-war specialist.

The government forces established outposts three miles down the canal from Trinh Phu. With air support from U.S.-piloted F-100s, they forced the Viet Cong to withdraw a few miles. The government's presence was secured and Trinh Phu was given an E rating. Slowly, families began moving back.

Progress was slow but hearteningly steady. In November, a medical team operating out of a U.S. Navy boat handed out medicine wrapped in propaganda leaflets--but was nearly blasted out of the water when it ventured too far down the canal and entered guerrilla-controlled waters. In December, hamlet elections were held and, perhaps more noteworthy, the Revolutionary Development cadres built a schoolhouse. Late that month, Trinh Phu won its current D rating. In January, boats carrying ice, vegetables and dry goods moved slowly down the canal; it was the first regular river commerce to reach Trinh Phu in nearly a decade.

Since last spring, terrorist incidents have slowly declined. The sights and sounds and smells of a vibrant and viable community are once again in evidence. The Ben Doi market place has been revived, complete with coffee shops and colorful open-air stalls. Noisy children romp by the canal and women barter loudly with fishermen and farmers. Fifteen acres of high-yield miracle rice will be harvested this month. The fish catch has risen considerably since people have begun to feel safe working on the canal. In the August senatorial elections, nearly every eligible voter in the hamlet turned out.

Unsettling Presence. The battle is by no means over. The D rating represents quite an improvement, but still is nothing to brag about. Pro-government officials can spend the night in the hamlet, but only in the relative security of the centrally located market area. Barely two miles down Rach Vop canal, which flows languidly through the heart of the hamlet, is "Indian country," as American soldiers call guerrilla-controlled areas.

It is the quality of official leadership that will determine the future of Trinh Phu and of the entire pacification program. Local government is still often corrupt. "We have established territorial security," says Army Major Alan Butler, the district's senior U.S. adviser. "But the test is whether at the hamlet level the government can deliver the goods rather than the Viet Cong." Hamlet Chief Tran Van Giao puts it another way. "Our security is now fair," he observed. "Soon I hope to have full security, a place for women to have babies. Where there can be some electricity and medical supplies." Simple things, but so basic that they only serve to show that no matter how far Trinh Phu has come with its D rating, it still has a long way to go.

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