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The Strategic Hamlet Program was exposed as an almost complete failure in the aftermath of the November 1, 1963 coup that left Diem and his brother Nhu murdered. US officials discovered, for example, that only 20% of the 8600 hamlets that the Diem regime had reported "Complete" met the minimum American standards of security and readiness.
During this period, INR observed, in a 23 December paper, the U.S. needed to reexamine its strategy focused on the Strategic Hamlet Program, since it was getting much more accurate – if pessimistic – from the new government than it had from Diem.
[5] [16] The GVN's "Strategic Hamlet" program for example boasted much progress, but this was primarily on paper, and ineffective in halting VC infiltration, terror, and organizing efforts. [5] [16] ARVN units were often moulded in the American image and style, but without the training or technical knowledge to execute effectively.
The program failed due to peasant resistance, poor management, and disruption by the VC using guerrilla and terrorist tactics. In 1961, the government embarked on the Strategic Hamlet Program, designed partly by Robert Thompson, a British counter-insurgency expert. The idea was to move rural dwellers into fortified villages in which they would ...
The Strategic Hamlet Program effectively ended in November 1963 when the Diem government was overthrown by the army and Diem was killed. Most of the hamlets were subsequently abandoned and peasants moved back to their old homes. [8] The Strategic Hamlet Program highlighted the schism in U.S. policy that would continue throughout the Vietnam War.
[25] [26] Another person in this group was Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, an undetected communist agent who was deliberately fomenting infighting among the officers and mismanaging the Strategic Hamlet Program in order to destabilise the Saigon government. [27]
News reports of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan can never capture the life-and-death decisions people on the ground make regarding their own lives and the lives of their families.
In 1962, the cornerstone of Diệm's counterinsurgency effort – the Strategic Hamlet Program (Vietnamese: Ấp Chiến lược), "the last and most ambitious of Diem's government's nation building schemes", was implemented, calling for the consolidation of 14,000 villages of South Vietnam into 11,000 secure hamlets, each with its own houses ...