THE GREEN BELT
WHO’S TO BLAME?
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“The Green Belt” is a semi-fictional political novel dealing with the Vietnam War (1960-75) in the years of the war’s Americanization, following the Viet Cong’s Ha Noi-incited uprising all over the south in five years, followed by its staggering Vietnamization until the tragic end.
The story focuses on the political stage of a highland tribal district (Ban Me Thuot) bordering Laos and Cambodia, and looking out the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main road driving Communist soldiers from the North into the South.
To understand the politics of this region in this historical phase, the readers however should also look into something more crucial to South Vietnam: the tumultous politics of Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam.
Some of us now can still remember distinctly our generals at the time tended to regard the presidential palace as their main battlefield after the demise of the First Republic of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Meanwhile, our monks and priests did not urge their followers to fight against the Viet Congs for independence and freedom but to fight each other for political power.
In a way, through “The Green Belt”, we can understand better that it was this politics of Saigon which led to the negligence of the safety of the border highland as part of the vital territory of the nation. As a result, the abandon of the latter led to the fall of the former.
The work, which came out in 1970, when President Nixon’s search for “peace with honor” entering the second year, had been supposed to be a comprehensive investigative report about how politically the Saigon government and its American ally had managed to contain the Communist menace in a region where mainly only tribal highlanders lived.
The author, Dr. Ngo The Vinh, however, decided to switch the factual report to a novel, out of the justifiable fear that certain facts and truths the book exposed could not survive the censorship of the Ministry of Information of the Saigon government.
Dr. Vinh graduated from the Saigon Medical School in 1968 (when he was 27) and subsequently joined a combat unit of Airborne Special Forces operating search-and-destroy missions in this border-triangle highland zone. In his years as a medical student, he ran a highly successful students’ magazine of the school. Tình Thương (Compassion) was very unique in its own way at the time, gaining much popularity owing to its daring coverage of sensitive political and social issues. Predictably, the magazine was shut down by the government in 1967 after slightly more than four years of publication.
A political novel was a scarce and sensitive product nonetheless. It’s almost impossible to recall any of such a thing in those years. Especially one about the deplorable irresponsibility of the senseless miltary junta in Saigon in abandoning the control of Central Highland tribes to American “advisors” and American troops (the Green Berets), and the misuse (abuse?) of power of these Americans in this phase of Americanization of the war.
To no one’s surprise, the author Ngo The Vinh, his novel and its publisher were brought to court in 1971 on charges of “slandering the Army and endangering the fighting spirits of the soldiers”. The verdict was a fine without jail term, as his Special Force unit was operating right in the battle zone he had written about in his book.
More ironical was the fact that a year earlier, shortlty after the novel came into being, the 1970 Presidential Literary Prize was awarded to him for this work, although until now we have yet to learn from any official statement why and how he earned this honor. It was quite unusual, however, there was no ceremony to celebrate this event although the prize bore the name of President Nguyen Van Thieu.
Two points need highlighting here:
First, the tribal location was highly strategic and even vulnerable, meaning that if the Viet Congs could wipe out the Saigon troops from this land, they could instantly pose an expansive menace for the entire Second Military Region, disconnecting the First in the north and the Third plus the Fourth in the south, and;
Second, despite an oft-heard slogan “Vietnamese natives and Montagnards are under the same roof” (Kinh Thượng Đoàn kết Một Nhà), the native Vietnamese (called “Kinh” in Vietnamese, meaning those living in lower land), more often than not disregarded the existence of these tribesmen (“Thượng”) compatriots in society. Vice versa, these self-isolated tribesmen tended to regard themselves as “aliens” in their own homeland, having nothing to do with the Vietnamese and being equally unfriendly to both the Saigon government and the Communists from the North.
This mutual apathy in a way was worse than racial discrimination in America. In spite of all the talks of racial divide, for centuries the whites and the blacks in the United States have signed a nonverbal non-peaceful co-existence agreement – until now. Both sides have always understood that they should live with each other and, in a way, probably still hate each other, don’t trust each other but rely on each other. For the purpose of racial reconciliation, Barack Obama was made the 44th president of the United States in 2008 and 2012. And it seems much likely that Vice President Kamala Harris can become the first female black president of this country.
This was not the case of “đồng bào Kinh và Thượng” (Native and Montagnard Vietnamese compatriots). Those in Saigon did not know much, and did not care, how their “compatriots” were living in the highland, while those living there had no idea about the Communist menace to the Saigon regime. Due to the mutual indifference of the mountaineers and the native Vietnamese, this outpost was highly vulnerable for the Saigon regime.
In fact, probably for the first time, in September 1964, the people of Saigon heard about the FULRO, or the “United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races” in short (in French: “Front Unifié de Lutte des Races Opprimées”. Note that it had a French name at first, to ask why!) when at an Army camp in Ban Me Thuot district town montagnard rebels staged an uprising, killing roughly 50 Vietnamese soldiers and holding some 60 others as hostage. Only a “peaceful intervention” from American advisers did the rebels finally allow American helicopters to set free these Vietnamese troops.
Most people in Saigon at the time believed that both the distant crime scene and the ethnic rebels were beyond their primary concern. They were more preoccupied with the historical Tonkin Gulf attack of North Vietnamese boats on U.S. Navy ships (owing much to the initiative of President Johnson and opening a new chapter of the Vietnam war), Gen. Nguyen Khanh’s Vung Tau Constitutional Proclamation which made him the head of state and chief of the Revolutionary Milirtary Council, and almost daily street protests from ambitious Buddhist monks and followers, countered by demonstrations by Catholic priests and their northern-migrated faithfuls. There was also a just cause in sleepless fear of the Communist campaign of terrorist acts in Saigon, rampant inflation and steeply rising unemployment.
Ngo The Vinh, however, with the “basic instinct” of a newsman, believed that the revolt of these montagnards should imply a long pending threat to the safety and security of this particular region which both the Saigon government and the tribesmen could not afford. As a reporter for the students’ magazine, he had a few visits to the scene in these crisis-ridden years. Once he became a member of a Special Forces unit operating in this area and had a better understanding of the way these montagnards lived, Ngo The Vinh was more convinced that he should write about what he had obsessively had in mind.
There was also another reason behind NTV’s commitment to The Green Belt. That was The Green Berets. In the words of Philip D. Beidler, author of American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam, 1982, quoted by James Olson, Chief Editor of Dictionary of the Vietnam War, published in 1988, “Robin Moore’s 1965 novel The Green Berets was a naive but temporarily popular novel about the American war effort in Vietnam. In the book, U.S. Special Forces troops appeared as the “good guy” out to rescue South Vietnam from its own incompetence and the immoral aggression of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. South Vietnamese army officers appear cowardly and venal and ARVN (trops unreliable and quick to desert when facing combat. The Vietcong and North Vietnamese are depicted as uniformly venal and evil, bent on torture, murder, and atrocity.”
NTV opined that Robin Moore’s The Green Berets was a “totally dishonest fabrication”. In other words, a “damn lie” by a white man with a mentality of a colonialist that should be promptly repudiated one way or another. The Green Belt therefore was a conscientious and systematic attempt to unmask The Green Berets.
NTV’s novel was a truth-and-fact based narrative of a reporter working for a Saigon-based newspaper who was so much concerned about the insecurity of a tribal district in the Central Highland that he should regularly fly to this highly unsafe mountainous area to see how the people there were living and the governance as well as the security of this area. The newsman almost always had a trustworthy companion, American journalist Davis, who was working for a privileged American newspaper. He must have been of great help for NTV in seeking access to American authorities in the region. NTV candidly stated “... the press being considered an enemy by the government and mistrusted by the people.” It is a rather severe indictment!
The author began the first chapter of the novel with a frank and daring statement which tells all: “At a time when the Americans had moved beyond the advisory stage, everyone knew this was their war; a war had developed and was dealt with in the interests of the Unite States.” Basically, it was a truthful assessment: once the White House realized that the anti-communist Saigon regime was in dreadful danger, the U.S. decided to send combat ground troops to South Vietnam (the first landing was on 14 March 1965 on the shore of Da Nang). The Americanization of the war officially began. With American troops prevailing in all vital areas of South Vietnam and American economic aid (Commercial Import Program – CIP) pouring in amounting to almost 800 million dollars a year, coupled with the generous spending of American troops boosting the economy in an unprecedented way, the Saigon government had no way to have a real say in governing the country.
The book delves deeply into the politics of this tribal zone: the rulers and the ruled. We could see the overwhelming presence of the Americans in this region. Any way, this is the so-called Vietnamization of the war, when the Americans replaced almost totally the South Vietnamese in the battlefields. That was the reason why there was such a myth about the Green Berets bringing peace and security to the highland border area.
Any observer could instantly recognize the omnipresent superiority of the Americans in this highland. They had the military power to thwart any Communist attempts to infiltrate or sow terror among the people. The USAID had the economic might to render happiness to the mountaineers, who probably for the first time had a blissful understanding of American aid. And the montagnards also were spiritually consoled with the religious faith sowed by Ameircan missionaries. At least they were convinced that they were being cared about, now associated with the powerful Americans instead of the inimical Vietnamese from the Saigon regime.
More ominous was the fact that the montagnards now could nurture the long-dreamed hope of raising an independent state named Đông Sơn (Eastern Range, reminding us of Nguyễn Huệ’s Tây Sơn, or Western Range, from the nearby Qui Nhơn town in the 18th century) with the tacit approval of the Americans. As a result, the FULRO became much more ambitious and restless in all these years as they had found an ally in the Americans.
It should be noted that the Thượngs’ traditional hate of the Kinh was divided equally to both the Saigon regime and the Communists. That’s why the Viet Congs launched a terror campaign to kill hundreds of tribesmen in the Tết Mậu Thân spring of 1968 as a retaliatory warning. This massacre did strengthen the Green Berets’position: the montagnards shoul move into their Green Belt for protection.
The Vietnamese generals had done almost nothing until the Americans departed. A general, named Trị, who was in charge of this military zone, believed that the Vietnamese should have only a “political role” in this zone, without realizing words alone could achieve nothing. In fact, he did say, “The Vietnamese government had made a mistake in entrusting to the Americans to distribute aid to the Thuong refugees”. He said: “ “I am not blind to the one truth about the Thuong people; they obey and feel grateful only to those who put food into their mouths. The Americans know this as well, and they utilize the circumstance when they attempt to monopolize the effort to win the hearts and minds of the Thuongs”.
In the words of the author, “objectively speaking, there has been an age-old antagonism between the people living in the mountains, popularly known as Thuong, and the Vietnamese living on the plain, popularly referred to as Kinh – origins of the antagonism resulting from the discrimination and contempt for the Thương held by the Vietnamese Kinh. The Kinh-Thuong relationship is very bad due to the deplorable attitude of the Kinh toward tribal minorities, whom they scornfully call Mọi, savages. In actuallity, highly educated Thuong do exist, but are not allowed to participte in the government...”
The Saigon military junta did nothing, partly because they knew very little about what they should do, partly beause they did not have much to do with the Americans pushing them aside, and partly because they spent more time with fighting among themselves for power than against the enemy for freedom. When the American ambassador, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, asked them to stop their childlike power game, General Nguyen Khanh, head of the military-controlled govrnment, snapped back: “You have gone too far. It was none of your business!”
“The Green Belt” ended in a sullen note. It was all about the end of the Americanization of the war. The U.S. now had the intention to pull out of the traditional outpost of the Free World by pulling out this highland tribal outpost of South Vietnam. The author spent six months in a hospital out of an injury. His dream lover ended the romance – probably because she saw no end in sight in his venturesome career. Davis was killed in a Viet Cong’s ambush...
There was a ceremony marking the transition of power at this tribe from the Americans to the Vietnamese. No one seemed happy – the Americans, the Thuong, even the Vietnamese who took over the reign. While a Vietnamese chief physician of a Vietnamese Special Forces C-Team (who else but the author) suggested that the Kinh and the Thuong “have no better choice than to come close together and join hands in building a new collective nation of Vietnam”, the author himself concluded that “the vision of the highlands as a Promised Land was a task that would take “longer than raising a cup of rice wine to your lips – as a Thuong expression goes – a long and arduous task entailing much more blood, sweat and tears”.
“The Green Belt” is a “semi-fictional” novel because it is essentially “fictional” but it sounds knowledgeably very true. Some readers of the older generations even could imagine such figures who were very popular and controverial at the time as Generals Nguyễn Chánh Thi, Vĩnh Lộc, Nguyễn Bảo Trị, Buddhist monk Thich Trí Quang or Catholic father Hoàng Quỳnh...
Basically, the book dealt mostly with the Americanization of the war with the highland tribe seeming to be a case study. It boldly tells us where we were wrong and why. Unfortunately, we did not heed his warnings although we had plenty of time. At the time, we did not read the story seriously and tactfully to get ourselves prepared for the following pending phase.
The Vietnam war could be divided into four phases: the uprising stirred by Ha Noi; the Americanization of the war as the American response; the Vietnamization of the war as a result of American pullout, and; the fall of the South because Saigon’s lack of direction. The uprising should be easily foreseen, but the South was far from being prepared to tackle it. The Americanization of the war should be seen by Saigon as a move of last resort, but the South in all those years seldom showed thay were ready to redeem the crucial mistake. When came the Vietnamization phase, the leaders of Saigon did not seem to understand the basic thing: a house divided cannot stand.
How and when can we stop feeling sorrowful for having made mistake after mistake?
HOÀNG NGỌC NGUYÊN
Utah, 04.01.2021
In Time of Covid 19 Pandemic
Educated in graduate programs of the National School of Administration (Saigon), Oxford University and David Eccles School of Business (University of Utah), Hoang Ngoc Nguyen has been a writer and an economist for his whole life, writing in both Vietnamese and English, before and after 1975. In recent years, he has been a major contributor to Saigon Weekly and But Tre magazine with main interest in historical and political matters of Vietnam and the United States.
