The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; Vietnamese: Ấp Chiến lược) was implemented in 1962 by the government of South Vietnam, with advice and financing from the United States, during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency. The strategy was to isolate the rural population from contact with and influence by the National Liberation Front (NLF), more commonly known as the Viet Cong. The Strategic Hamlet Program, along with its predecessor, the Rural Community Development Program, attempted to create new communities of "protected hamlets". The rural peasants would be provided protection, economic support, and aid by the government, thereby strengthening ties with the South Vietnamese government (GVN) which was hoped would lead to increased loyalty by the peasantry towards the government. Most hamlets involved restructuring existing villages with a defensible perimeter. This led to the relocation of villagers living on the outskirts. In other instances, entire villages were relocated to new locations. Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a communist sleeper agent of North Vietnam who had infiltrated the South Vietnamese army, was made overseer of the Strategic Hamlet Program. He sabotaged the program and had many hamlets built in areas with a strong NLF presence and forced the program forward at an unsustainable speed, causing the production of poorly equipped and poorly defended villages and the growth of rural resentment towards the government. The Strategic Hamlet Program was unsuccessful, failing to stop the insurgency or gain support for the government from rural Vietnamese, it alienated many and helped contribute to the growth in influence of the NLF. After President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup in November 1963, the program was cancelled. Many hamlets were abandoned, destroyed or had been taken over by the NLF, with villagers moving back into their old homes or escaping the war by moving to the cities. The failure of the Strategic Hamlet and other counterinsurgency and pacification programs were causes that led the United States to decide to intervene in South Vietnam with air power and ground troops.
Background and precursor program In 1952, during the First Indochina War (19 December 1946 – 1 August 1954) French commander François de Linares, in Tonkin began the construction of "protected villages," which the French later named agrovilles. By constructing quasi-urban amenities, the French designed the agrovilles to attract peasants away from their villages. This policy was known as "pacification by prosperity." In addition to offering social and economic benefits, the French also encouraged villagers to develop their own militias, which the French trained and armed. "Pacification by Prosperity" had some success, but it was never decisive, because the settlers felt insecure, a feeling which the numerous French guard posts along the perimeter could do little to dispel so long as the Việt Minh operated at night, anonymously, and intimidated or gained the support of village authorities. Between 1952 and 1954, French officials transplanted approximately 3 million Vietnamese into agrovilles, but the project was costly. To help offset the cost, the French relied partially on American financial support, which was "one of the earliest objects of American aid to France after the outbreak of the Korean War." According to a private Vietnamese source, the U.S. spent about "200,000 dollars on the 'show' agroville at Dong Quan." After visiting the villages of Khoi Loc in Quảng Yên Province and Đông Quan in Ha Dong Province, noted Vietnam War correspondent Bernard Fall stated that, "the French strategic hamlets resembled British [Malayan] prototypes line for line." However, in contrast to the British, the French were reluctant to grant Vietnam its independence, or allow the Vietnamese a voice in government affairs; therefore, the agroville program had little effect. The First Indochina War terminated and the 1954 Geneva Conference partitioned Vietnam into communist (north) and non-communist (south) parts and the terms North Vietnam and South Vietnam became the common usage. Beginning in 1954, Việt Minh sympathizers in the South were subject to escalating suppression by the Diem government, but by December 1960 the National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam had been formed and soon rapidly achieved de facto control over large sections of the South Vietnamese countryside. At the time, it is believed that there were approximately 10,000 Communist insurgents throughout South Vietnam. In February 1959, recognizing the danger that the guerrillas posed if they had the support of the peasants, President Diem and his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, made a first attempt at resettlement. A plan was put forth to develop centers of agglomeration. Through force and/or incentives, peasants in rural communities were separated and relocated. The primary goal of the centers was to concentrate the villagers, so they were not able to provide aid, comfort, and information to the Viet Cong. The Government of Vietnam (GVN) developed two types of centers of agglomeration.
The first type, qui khu, relocated Viet Cong (VC) families, people with relatives in North Vietnam, or people who had been associated with the Viet Minh into new villages; thus, providing easier government surveillance. The second type of relocation center, qui ap, relocated into new villages those families that supported the South Vietnamese government but lived outside the realm of government protection and were susceptible to Viet Cong attacks. By 1960, there were twenty-three of these centers, each consisting of many thousands of people. This mass resettlement created a strong backlash from peasants and forced the central government to rethink its strategy. A report put out by the Caravelle group, consisting of eighteen signers, leaders of the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo sects, the Dai Viet, and dissenting Catholic groups described the situation as follows:
Tens of thousands of people are being mobilized… to take up a life in collectivity, to construct beautiful but useless agrovilles which tire the people, lose their affection, increase their resentment and most of all give an additional terrain for propaganda to the enemy.
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