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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  establishments have also increased. In rural areas, the Communists have attempted to subvert local government projects and inspire anti-government demonstrations and have undertaken major campaigns to gain control over the tribal minorities and to aggravate economic conditions.

B.

Communist successes since the beginning of 1960 have been high. Probably the most significant gain has been the spread of Communist control and influence over increasing sectors of the countryside largely through organized coercion and terrorism. The number of Communist cadres and converts is probably small in most villages, but in the absence of government forces sufficient to protect the village against reprisals, those inclined to support the government and turn against the Communists are effectively contained. The high rate of assassinations of local officials and retaliatory murders, moreover, is a continual reminder of the penalty of noncooperation with the local Communist forces.

Although the Communist armed-political apparatus does not appear to have succeeded in completely supplanting the government over any sizeable area, it is believed that more than one-half of the entire rural region south and southwest of Saigon, as well as several areas just to the north and in the central provinces, may be under substantial Communist control by night, with the government generally capable of maintaining its authority only by day. However, in some of these areas (for example, portions of the Ca Hau peninsula and of the swampy  ), the Communists have benefitted from the extended absence of sufficient government military and security forces and reportedly exercises considerable control by day as well as by night. Moreover, these areas are believed to be dangerously close to becoming "liberated" areas, the Communists frequently being reported levying and collecting taxes, directing the harvesting and controlling thee distribution of rice and other farm products, conducting indoctrination programs on the populace, conscripting cadres, and setting up overt party organizations and provisional local government units similar to those established during the Indochina fighting.

Another highly significant gain by the Communist network has been the sharp increase in the size and in the armed capability of its guerrilla-terrorist force. Total armed strength is now estimated at about 17,000 and the number of political agents, although still unknown, probably has also increased. The bulk of the Communist armed force is still distributed in the southern region, despite the substantial increase of forces in the rest of the country. The total numerical increase in strength, which is due both to stepped-up infiltration and recruitment locally, enabled the Communists during most of 1960 to operate frequently in large bands and on several occasions of several hundred armed. personnel, e.g., during the attack on an army regimental headquarters in Tay Minh in January 1960 Rh