Saigon announces success of strategic hamlet program
Saigon announces that 4077 strategic hamlets have been completed out of a projected total of 11182.The figures also stated that 39 percent of the South Vietnamese population was housed in the hamlets.U.S.
officials considered these figures questionable.The strategic hamlet program was started in 1962 and was modeled on a successful British counterinsurgency program used in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.The program aimed to bring the South Vietnamese peasants together in fortified strategic hamlets to provide security from Viet Cong attacks.Although much time and money was put into the program it had several basic weaknesses.
There was much animosity toward the program on the part of the South Vietnamese peasants who were forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands.Also the security afforded by the hamlets was inadequate and actually provided lucrative targets for the Viet Cong.Finally the entire project was poorly managed.
After the assassination of the programs sponsor President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 the program fell into disfavor and was abandoned.
