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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.
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 program called for rural people to provide manpower and labor to build and defend the strategic hamlets. It was an ambitious program which projected that 7,000 strategic hamlets would be built by the end of 1962 and 12,000 by the end of 1963, thus consolidating nearly all the rural population of South Vietnam. [10] 4 February
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.
The hamlets were intended to isolate the VC from the villages, their source for recruiting soldiers, supplies, and information, and to transform the countryside. In the end, because of many shortcomings, the Strategic Hamlet Program was not as successful as had been expected and was cancelled after the assassination of Diệm.
[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.
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.
At the same meeting Rufus Phillips, head of the USAID mission in South Vietnam, said that the war in the Mekong Delta was going poorly. The strategic hamlets in the Delta were being chewed to pieces by the VC. Krulak disagreed, saying that only 0.2 percent of strategic hamlets had been overrun by the VC.