NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
fertilizer program to increase the production of rice in areas safely controlled by the government was to be expanded and announced very soon.
Although VC successes in rural areas had been the prime feature of the downswing over the past half year or more, pacification was to receive less comparative emphasis, in fact, in the next year or so than it had before. Nevertheless, Khanh's statement of a pacification strategy -- which was later to form a conceptual basis for the ill-fated Hop Tac program -- was approved in principle, and a critique of it was accorded a place as Annex B of NSAM 288.
In simplified outline, the plan was based on a "clear and hold" concept, including for each area these steps:
1. Clearing organized VC units from the area by military action;
2. Establishing permanent security for the area by the Civil Guard, Self Defense Corps, hamlet militia, and national police;
3. Rooting out the VC "infrastructure" in the hamlets (particularly the VC tax collector and the chief of the VC political cadre);
4. Providing the elements of economic and social progress for the people of the area: schools, health services, water supply, agricultural improvements, etc.
These general ideas were to be (1) adapted and applied flexibly…(2) applied under the clear, undivided and decentralized control of the province chief; and (3) applied in a gradually spreading area moving from secure to less secure areas and from more populated to less populated areas (the "oil drop" principle)…
The major requirements for success of the Pacification Plan were:
First, and of by far the greatest importance, clear, strong, and continuous political leadership…
General Khanh and his top colleagues were to supply this requirement. Their ability to do so was as yet untested; but some early evidence was good…
A second major requirement for success of the Pacification Plan was the adoption of government policies which would give greater promise of economic progress and greater incentives to rural people. The three key areas were:
- the price of rice to farmers, which was artificially depressed and held substantially below the world market price;
- uncertain or oppressive tenure conditions for many farmers (a
