◆ SpookStack

HISTORY OF UNITED STATES INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM 45 them, give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers but they have to win it.” Like those of Ho Chi Minh, the methods of Ngo Dinh Diem fut thse mt oda mfFaa Were authoritarian; oud wey were not administratively eflective. Unlike Ho, Diem lacked contact with the bulk of his people, and he had no trained and dedicated party cadres and officials upon whom to rely. Most of the educated people who have worked in Diem’s government and the governments that have succeeded it have been of two kinds: southerners who had collaborated with the French and thereby alienated the local population; or anti- Communist refugees from the North without roots in South Vict- nam, men who speak a different dialect and most of whom are Roman Catholic, a religion foreign ta the overwhelming majority of southerners. Moreover, at a very early stage Diem antagonized a large part of the southern peasantry by largely undoing the agrarian reforms that Ho Chi Minh’s regime had carried out, Lands previously divided among the peasantry were restored to the jandlords, and police supporied the coiiection of five years’ back rent. In mid-1956 Diem uprooted the traditional system of village autonomy by abolishing the elected village councils. He replaced them with officials who were appointed by and served as agents of the central government. Diem also removed many able and popular officials, leaders with strong local roots who had worked under the previous Vietminh administration. These men were often replaced with corrupt and oppressive appointees from outside, further alienating the rural population. Diem governed with a harsh and heavy hand, countenancina nme Astle ddl aa aa genuine opposition to his regime and indiscriminately denouncing as Communists those who opposed him, whatever their political views. By 1957 the harshness of Diem’s repression had sparked uprisings against him, often not Communist-led. The Vietcong was abie to Duild upon these later when its cadres became active. By 1958, former Vietminh supporters living in the South had begun to organize guerrilla operations against Diem, undertaking. by 1959 a campaign of assassination of village chiefs. It must be recognized that this campaign, although often effective in disrupt- ing Diem’s efforts to establish his own administration throughout the country, did not antagonize the rural population so widely +.