Cultural Congress
of Havana Vol. 6, No. 6 February 16, 1968 Barricades in Saigon
Kennedy Admits
U.S. Can’t Win
in Vietnam
Lyudmila |. Ginsburg
Protests Slander
of Her Son
ALEKSANDR GINSBURG Clark Clifford: ‘Counselor to the Mighty’
38
ALEKSANDR GINSBURG
ALEKSANDR GINSBURG
BARRICADES IN SAIGON
The Paris daily Le Monde reported February 8 that although the combats had died down somewhat by Tuesday, February 6, the tension had become "more and more insupportable." Still worse, in sectors officially announced as having been "pacified," fighting flared up again.
"The Vietcong are most numerous in Cholon, where barricades put up by the insurgents appeared for the first time Wednesday," continued Le Monde. "The [South] Vietnamese military vehicles are stopping a respectful distance from the barricades made of privately owned automobiles, taxis and gasoline cans. No one is trying to remove them, and yet no Vietcong have been seen manning the barricades."
"Behind the barricades, in the ‘red zone,'" continues Le Monde, "the Chinese population is fleeing from the market area where big fires are burning. This is where the Vietcong, perhaps to intensify the difficulty of supplying the city with provisions, set fire to an enormous government store of rice. According to the [South] Vietnamese radio, the warehouse contained 40,000 tons of rice, some 40% of the capital's reserves. It was half destroyed.
"The exodus from Cholon is assuming unprecedented scope. The Chinese population is fleeing from the fires and from the dangers of the fighting. They have been living for several days between the two groups. A Chinese cook, who just reached the city, described the recent days:
"'The Vietcong came in groups of a dozen. Very young men and young girls advanced along the rows of tightly closed shops. Some of them stopped to ask for some water or something to eat. They always asked; they never stole. After they passed, the police came. They searched all the houses, kicking in the doors, yelling, turning things upside down, beating people without any reason. They took people to headquarters, then released them after checking their identity. People were not afraid of rifle shots, but the Skyraiders filled us with fear when they swooped down on the city to drop their bombs.'"
In Go-Vap, another suburb, according to Le Monde, fresh fighting broke out and the streets became deserted again. "The American and government military police are on constant patrol and shoot at all the civilian passers-by."
A more detailed account of the pattern of fighting in Saigon was given by Beverly Deepe in the February 9
Christian Science Monitor (Boston).
"Fighting in the streets, alleys,
and store fronts of this harried capi-
tal," she said in a report from Saigon,
"is pivoting into a new pattern: Commu-
nist minimobile warfare.
"This tactical pattern is tail-
spinning the South Vietnamese Government
of President Thieu into another round of
increasingly grave crises in the near
future.
"In a larger time frame, this tac-
tical pattern is already succeeding par-
tially in implementing the long-range
Communist strategy of attrition -- to
chop off the roots of the government at
the police precinct and small outpost
level within the city limits.
"In short, the Communists appear
to be eroding the government strength
from the bottom echelon upward as a pre-
lude to overthrowing it at the top in
the near future.
"Mobile warfare, the military tac-
tics in which the Communists semi-
conquered Vietnam's rice fields, now is
being implemented in miniature along the
streets and alleys of Saigon with enough
success to appall senior officials here."
The sharpest fighting has centered
in Cholon where National Liberation Front
squads, platoons and a company are engag-
ing government police stations, posts and
military units.
"American officials," continues
Miss Deepe, "originally predicted the
Communists would be routed from the capi-
tal city two days after their sensational
Jan. 30 assault into the city. But the
Communists have continued to maintain a
fluid hit-and-hide harassment in at least
three of the city's nine precincts."
The critical precincts -- the
sixth, seventh, and eighth -- "include
lower-class working and residential areas,
canal-side wharves and warehouses, home
industries such as textile spinning,
light industry, the race-track area, and
the ‘duck farm' and slaughterhouse areas
from which produce from the countryside
is processed and routed for use in the
city."
A "reliable source" told Miss
Deepe: "We are now faced with the pros-
pect the Communists can set up a perma-
nent enclave in these three Cholon pre-
cincts and launch terror raids into other
parts of the city from there.
"Even worse," the reliable source
continued, "the South Vietnamese Government is toying with the idea the only way to solve the problem is to flatten it with bombs. That is the cowardly way to do it -- with wretching political overtones.
"But the police can no longer handle the job. The Americans have never armed the police with heavy enough weapons -- they don't even have basic infantry weapons. And there's not enough infantry troops to wiggle the Communists out of there.
"Even worse, there's no good information on how many organized units are there -- or where they are. I asked four different high-level sources today -- and got four different answers."
Another "source" told Miss Deepe: "If the Communists can hold those precincts for three to eight weeks, the results will be just horrific. It's quite possible the government could fall in one way or another."
Miss Deepe continues with her eyewitness account of the pattern of fighting inside the city:
"Large sections of Cholon are barricaded off by the Vietnamese Government with puffballs of concertina wire and stop signs.
"But now the Communists have started to barricade smaller alleys and side streets with water jugs, rain barrels, and the charred remains of tin roofing from previous bombing raids near An Quang pagoda. These home-made Communist barricades become a fluid frontline as resistance warfare.
"At night the government forces become island fortresses behind barbed wire and pill boxes. The vast sea of population living between posts are living virtually at the mercy of the Communists -- reminiscent of warfare in the rural areas for years.
"From within this sea of population, roving bands of Communists pounce from government post to subprecinct station -- and now even the three precinct stations have become targets with American officer billets in the area."
Cholon is honeycombed with "local guerrilla and political cadres who know the neighborhoods and the people."
Much of their activity consists of knocking on doors at night and talking with people. But they also carry out reprisals against officers of the Saigon government forces.
"Some local guerrilla squads are made up predominantly of Chinese with Vietnamese citizenship, reliable sources report. Many of their numbers are highly aggressive women, some of whom once worked in the Chinese-owned textile mills that have now been bombed.
"Under government regulations, the Chinese women were allowed to hold tradeunion meetings to learn about their jobs. These gatherings have for years been turning into Communist cell meetings rather than progovernment labor sessions, reliable sources report.
"The impact of this has been to make the Vietnamese suspicious of other