The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2015 55 three of the aid mission’s American staff of 110 were posted outside of Saigon.) The study found that the Vietnamese were implementing their own counterinsurgency approach, the Stra- tegic Hamlet Program—at heart a self-defense, self-government effort focused on the smallest rural settlement, the hamlet. After initial progress, however, the program was stalling; the overly centralized Vietnamese bureaucracy was a significant impedi- ment. Also, the population relocation focus the program started with (based on the British Malaya experience) was ill-suited for Vietnam, where the insurgency was not primarily defined along ethnic lines. The United States injected the local currency equivalent of $10 million into the hamlet program. Joint Vietnamese-Amer- ican committees, consisting of the province chief, the Rural Affairs civilian representative and the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnammilitary adviser, made spending decisions at the provincial level on a consensus basis. The aid supported various self-defense and self-development programs, ranging from hamlet physical improvements, elections and training for elected officials to hamlet defense militia. Though the USAID provincial representatives had minimum assignments of two years, U.S. military advisers were limited to one-year tours with no extensions, which handicapped their effectiveness. Hamlet elections encouraged political participation, while In 1962 the Saigon aid mission was reorganized, with a new special office called Rural Affairs that assigned representatives to each province. Impressed by civic action deeds, Central Vietnam villagers who had been under Viet Minh control for nine years welcome Vietnamese Army troops in 1955. Courtesy of Rufus Phillips