Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/204

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  2. Reunification

The goal of independence, because of American "imperialist" support of the Diem government, thus became closely allied w'ith, if not inseparable from, that of reunification. But the DRV-Lao Dong leaders, though widely acknowledged by all Vietnamese as heroes in the struggle for independence, did not win similar acceptance as political spokesmen for Cochinchina or Annam. Indeed, in all the modern history of Vietnam there has been little real unity. Vietnam's record is, rather, one of violence and political division. The conquest of Vietnam's current territory by the Dai-Viet people of the Red River Delta (modern Tonkin) from the Chams (of modern Annam) and Khmers (of modern Cochinchina) took place throughout this milleniumj the Mekong Delta did not come under Viet suzerainty until 1780. In the meantime, civil 'Var had fractioned the Dai-Viet. for 150 years (1640-1790) two high walls divided North from South Vietnam at approximately the 17th parallel. A unified Vietnam came into being in 1802 under the Emperor Gia Long, but scarcely half a century elapsed before the French conquests began. Under the French, Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin were politically separate. 64/

Present-day South Vietnam--by Viet Minh terms, Zone V (Annam) and VI (Cochinchina or Nam BO)--has always been of secondary importance to the DRV. Ho Chi Minh's government can claim to have ruled Saigon, for example, for only twenty days in September, 1945, and neither th~ DRV government nor the Lao Dong Party ever commanded the strength in South Vietnam that they did in Tonkin. During the war of Resistance, 1945-1954, Zo ne V was less a theater of operations than a source of supplies and recruits for the Viet Minh in Tonkin, and in both Zone V and Nam Bo the Viet Minh practiced economy of force: only some 20% of organized Viet Minh military units llere in either at end 1953, even though the areas supported nearly half of all Vietnam's population. Douglas Pike's study of the Viet Cong led him to conclude that: ""The Cochin-Chinese regarded the resistance as Northern- oriented: the center of fighting 'Vas in the North, the Vietminh was strongest in the North, most of its leaders were Northerners, and the French 'Vere most vulnerable in the Red River delta. The South had less tradition of revolution, and inevitably a variety of North-South policy conflicts arose. The corrun unication channel between Hanoi and Saigon was undependable, and liaison within the South was difficult. The Northern leadership exhibited little knowledge about southerners and even less patience 'Vith Southern lethargy .... " 65/"

Even Ho Chi Minh was fairly explicit in assigning to South Vietnam a lesser role in the revolution. For example, in his December, 1953, addr.ess to the National Assembly on Land Reform, he was careful to point out that Zones V and VI 'Vere not yet ripe for "progress toward socialism": Rh