32 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL who would be most wary and, in many cases, most embittered about the war, particularly on the Vietnamese side. In my meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage, they stressed exactly the same goals. From the early 1990s, even before normalization, cooperation began in dealing with the legacy issues remaining from the war: returning the remains of those missing in action (MIAs), reuniting refugees with family members remaining in Vietnam, and demining and removing unexploded ordnance. Then came economic engagement. Our bilateral trade agreement was signed a few days before I arrived in Hanoi as ambassador on Dec. 15, 2001, and was quickly followed by agreements on textiles and civil aviation. The U.S. was soon Vietnam’s biggest trade partner. Intel’s decision to build a multibillion-dollar manufacturing and testing facility near Ho Chi Minh City was a critical step for Vietnam in moving from basic manufacturing to high tech. Humanitarian and educational cooperation were also strong. We had one of the largest Fulbright programs in the world. And President George W. Bush designated Vietnam, which managed the SARS epidemic well, as the only Asian country to benefit from a special fund for HIV/AIDS, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This progress was encouraging, but I soon realized that I had come during a period of some tension in the relationship. On Easter Day 2001, large and at times violent demonstrations had broken out in the Central Highlands. Ethnic minority people—often known as “Montagnards,” the name given to them by the French—protested harassment of their Christian house churches, which were not officially recognized by the state. A more fundamental cause of discontent was that ethnic Vietnamese had been occupying the indigenous peoples’ land to develop coffee plantations. The army suppressed the demonstrators, and many fled to Cambodia. By December, when I arrived, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had repatriated some of these people back to Vietnam. UNHCR wanted to visit the Central Highland provinces to confirm that conditions permitted continued repatriation. Vietnam resisted the inspections. The Bush administration was giving a lot of attention to this issue, which U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Raymond Burghardt (center) joins the commanding officer of the USS Vandegrift, Cdr. Richard Rogers (to his right), for a press conference aboard the ship in Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 19, 2003. This marked the first U.S. Navy ship visit to Vietnam in 30 years. GARY GRANGER/U.S. NAVY
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