REPORT ON INDOCHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00423R000800830001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 5, 1999
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 1, 1953
• Content Type: REPORT

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OFFICIALS ONLY ,..:onitz_ 2-5X1A2g
ved For Release 199 -- IN.Wi3-00423R0008008191-1
ecurity Information!*"-??.6/
Dat '5-3
COUNTRY Indochina
SUBJECT ; Report on Indochina
Mace Acqd - -
Date Acqd : mid 1953
Date of Info : mid 1953 and prior
SOURCE : -Documentary-
Agailable on loan from the CIL Library is a galley proof of an article offered to.-
and under consideration for publishing in-the Atlantic Monthli, entitled
"Report on Indochina", written by a contibutor who is now (mid 1953) traveling
in South East Asia,
-end-
This anevalmted information for US Officials
Only is su-,.7:ltJ for tte posse interest of
your analysts. it does not want dissemi-
nation by 00-B report.
ij I
RETURN TO CNA
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As the summer monsoon rains poured down, the
French in Indo-China were being plagued with the
results of their own half-way policies the half-
hearted war they have waged on the Viet Minh for
seven years and the half-measure of freedom they
have granted the three Associated States.
Under the terms of agreements France made in
1949 with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, these gov-
ernments are now independent "within the French
Union.? It is an independence which the French,
at least on paper, can make look very convincing to
an outsider. The government of each of the three
countries may "exercise to the fullest extent all the
attributes and prerogatives 1:vhich pertain to its
internal sovereignty." Their independence has been
recognized by thirty-seven nations. Vietnam has
diplomatic representation in the principal capitals
of the Free World, and Cambodia and Laos would
also if they could afford it.
But sovereignty involves power, and the power in
Indo-China, or in those sections not controlled by
the Viet Minh, is in the hands of the French. A
French general whose name, Henri Navarre, fasci-
nates the symbolists of the publicity office is the
commander-in-chief of all the armed forces. French
officers "advise" the high commands of the armies
of the three states, and many of their units are com-
? manded by French officers and trained by French
noncoms.
Officials of the three goveniments. are Ere.
trained former functionaries in the old colonial ad-
ministration. Those in the top jobs were selected
for their posts by the French. In key areas where
France has a strong military or economic interest,
as in the port of Haiphong, or in Moncay on the
Chinese border, a French delegue is stationed, again
?to "advise" the official nominally in charge.
It is against this behind-the-scenes control that
the young King of Cambodia has been protesting so
vigorously. In his outbursts of righteousness,
Norodorn Sihanouk has shown courage, energy, and
a clever sense of public relations. Ile has maneu-
vered the French into a corner.
If they give in to his demands, it will be apparent
to the world that they have knuckled under and
they will be forced to grant similar concessions to
Vietnam, where their military situation is far more
parlous than in Cambodia, and where they have
need of some firm controls. If they hold out and
call Norodom's bluff, they will stamp themselves
as tyrants. Viet Minh propagandists know how to
make use of their dilemma.
Paris decides
If the French were as able in the field of public
relations as their enemy and their prot?, they
would long since have issued an uncompromising
promise of complete independence for all of Indo-
China ? after the war. Even now such a declara-
tion would give the peoples of Indo-China a new
outlook on the struggle.
The announcement could be exploited by news-
papers, by posters, by tracts dropped over enemy
areas, and by word of mouth. It would counter-
act the Red propaganda about French imperialism.
It would convince the people of the French-con-
trolled areas, most of whom are now quite apathetic
about the war, that victory would have some real
meaning. It should even put some pep into the
lagging spirits of the Vietnamese troops in the field.
The reasons why the French continue to hold out
against making such an announcement lie not in
Saigon but in Paris. As it is on so many subjects,
the Chamber of Deputies is divided right down the
middle on the question of Indo-China. The parties
of the Right support the war and vote to continue
it. The parties of the Left want France to pull out
of Asia.
The actual split comes somewhere in the ranks of
the Radical Socialists. Pierre Mendes-France of
that party, who failed by only three votes to form
'a government during the extended crisis in the sum-
mer, had often expressed his desire to "negotiate"
with Ho Chi Minh. That means, in effect, to give
up the fight. Enough members of his own party
voted against him on that issue to prevent his be-
coming premier.
Among the parties of the Right but not from any
one of them, there is said in Saigon to be a solid bloc
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of forty votes which concentrate no
maintaining France's power in the
former colonies. In a parliament as
delicately balanced as the Chamber
of Deputies, forty votes throw more
weight than their mere numerical
value. No cabinet of the Right-
Center can be formed without the
support of this bloc.
The deputies who cast those votes
are the voices of the firms with huge
investments in Indo-China, such as
Denis Freres, the coastal shippers,
and Chargeurs Iteunis, the consoli-
dated shipping line ,between Europe
and Saigon. Then- there are the cor-
porations owning rubber plantations
and coal mines, and the large import-
export houses. Indo-China was, be-
fore the war, a profitable proposition.
It could be again. But the investors
fear for their properties. They think
independence has gone far enough,
That the firm hand of French control
is needed to stave off the horrible fate
of expropriation.
now strong is Tam?
Vietnam is by far the largest and
most important of the three states.
It runs for 1200 miles along the coast
of the China Sea, from China in the
north to Siam in the southwest. It
comprises the old French colony of
Cochin China in the south and the
protectorates of Annam in the center
and Tonkin in the north. Although
the capital is Saigon, in the south, .
the war is run from Hanoi, in the
north, which. has become a sort of
second capital.
Monarch of the 22 million Vietna-
mese is Bao Dai, descendant of the
Annamese emperors. The French
brought him out of retirement to seat
him on the throne in 1949. He had
retired in 1946 when the French for a
few months recognized the Vietna-
mese Republic of Ho Chi Minh, still
recognized as the legal government
by all the Iron Curtain countries.
There is no national legislature in
Vietnam. Government is by fiat.
The premier, Nguyen Van Tarn, who
was appointed by Bao Dai, has the
dubious distinction of being the only
prime minister of a modern state to
hold citizenship in another nation.
He and more than half his cabinet are
French citizens, thanks to their pre-
war status as colonial civil servants in
Cochin China. They are, according
to their Vietnamese critics, "more
French than the French."
Tam describes himself as a "mod,
:crate nationalist." He operates on
the premise that. no small, weak
country like Vietnam can hope to
exist in the world of today without a
powerful friend and protector. His
attempt to ally himself with French
hounds and nationalist hares has
made him the butt of criticism from
both sides. The French think him
ungrateful for past favors because of
his annoying requests. He keeps
pressing, for instance, for additional
Vietnamese generals; there are only
two in the whole Vietnamese army of
200,000 troops. He is also insisting
on the evacuation by the French of
the imposing Norodom Palace, a little
Versailles in the middle of Saigon
where the Commissioner General
maintains his office.
On the other hand the Vietnamese
people, or those of them, at least, who
take an interest in politics wit hout
being in the government circle, resent
Tam's toadying to the French on
major issues. His highly tooted land
reform bill, for example, they say was
loaded to favor the big French plan-
tation owners.
It is not easy to judge how strong
the current of opposition to Tam is
running. All newspapers are strictly
censored. They cannot publish a
word of criticism of the Tam govern-
ment, of Bao Dai, or of the French.
Furthermore each day Saigon's seven-
teen Vietnamese and Chinese editors
receive from the censor a list of
official releases which must appear
in the next day's editions. They may
be ordered to praise the minister of
veterans' affairs for a speech on pen-
sions; or to report that the wife of
General Nguyen Van Tarn visited
wounded soldiers in the hospital.
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. whole of each paper, Including
the advertisements, is combed by the
censor just before the presses roll.
Editors who have violated censorship
have found their papers suspended
..for six weeks, and in extreme cases
they themselves have wound up in
concentration camps.
A Vietnamese May be arrested by
any of four types of secret police:
either the military or the civilian
"security branch" of either the Viet-
namese government or the French
High Commissioner. There is no
such thing as habeas corpus. Saigon
residents say an arrested citizen rarely
Is told the charges against him, and
sometimes doesn't even know what
_ branch of the police has seized him.
The police power is intended as a
security measure against the Viet
'Minh underground. Vietnamese
blame both Premier Tam and the
French for using it as a political
weapon where no issue of Communism
.is inirolved.
If there is a real focal point for
? the combined anti-Tam, anti-French,
,anti-Viet Minh sentiment, it lies in
the person of the able and intelligent
governor of North Vietnam, Nguyen
hum Tri. He makes no secret of his
feelings. From the point of view of
national politics his Tonki.nese back-
ground is a drawback. However, he
is so strong a rival of Tam that the
premier fired him from his post a year
ago. Six months later, under pressure
from Bac) Dai, Tam was forced to
replace his opponent in the governor's
palace in Hanoi.
.The .war in the delta
In Hanoi a visitor from the outside
world really becomes conscious of
the closeness of the war. Because
Cochin China has been fairly success-
fully cleared of Viet Minh guerrillas,.
Saigon radiates a false aura of peace.
By day in Hanoi trucks rattle through
the streets in convoys of soldiers?
French,. Vietnamese, Moroccans, Al-
gerians, Senegalese, and Germans of
the Foreign Legion. By night, from a
.distance, comes the rumble of artil-
lery.
In the Red River delta and in the
mountains of the T'ai country, the
French have been losing the war.
After six years of fighting they still
don't control the rich rice lands of the
delta. They collect from the area
only one third of the pre-war level of
rice production. Some of the missing
two thirds has been lost because land
is out of cultivation. Most of it is
going to supply the Viet Minh.
French armored units patrol the
delta during the day, but by night
the Franco-Vietnamese troops retire'
to their blockhouses. Then the Viet
Minh move about the delta at will.
Many a rice farmer who watches from
his paddy as the tanks move by in
the daytime, changes his role after
dark to plant. a string of mines along
the roads or to lob a few mortar shells
into the nearest French outpost.
The entire French strategy has
been built around protection of the
delta. To maintain even its tenuous
daylight hold on the rice fields, the
High Command has sacrificed all the
mountain areas the Viet Minh have
chosen to attack.
As tokens of counteroffensives, the
French hang on to a few fortified
posts scattered through the hills of
northwestern Vietnam. The two
most impostant are Na,san, where the
Foreign Legion beat off a series of
major Viet Minh assaults last fall,
and Laichau, far up in the corner of
Indo-China on the Yunnan border.
Using coolie labor, the Franco-Viet-
namese troops dig themselves into a
perimeter defense around an airstrip.
When they are surrounded, they get
supplies by air from Hanoi. The
garrisons are troops that might well
be used to form a mobile reserve.
It was this strategy of retreating
to strong points that the High Com-
mand chose to employ in Laos when
the Viet Minh attacked that sleepy
little country in April. The French
abandoned a new $100,000 airstrip
at Sam Neua, just built with Ameri-
can money, to retire to a prepared
position on the Plaine des Jarres.
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The Viet Minh by-passed that pla-
teau without firing a shot and headed
forLuang-pra,bang, home of the King
,of Laos. In a panic the High Com-
mand flew fife battalions of troops to
transform that peaceful town into
,another hedgehog. The Viet Minh,
influenced by the approach of the
rainy season or by orders from Mos-
cow and Peking, withdrew without
testing the defenses of either position.
The French promptly claimed a vic-
tory for their strategy.
One thing observers of the war were
not able to understand was why
General Raoul Salan never took ad-
vantage of his strategic position at
Nasan. There some 5000 well-trained
troops were stationed less than 100
miles from the trail along which most
of the Viet Minh supplies had to move
into Laos. The officers and soldiers of
this polyglot army are professionals.
They are well disciplined, well armed,
and ? most of them ? well trained.
If ordered to take the offensive, they
will attack with efficiency and skill,
if not with any martial enthusiasm.
Early in his command General Na-
varre began talking about attacking
and ending the war in eighteen
months. In mid-July 5000 French
Union paratroopers landed at Lang-
son in the Tonkin delta, ten miles
from the Chinese frontier, blew up
bridges, captured the garrison, and
threatened to cut supply lines. The
French claimed a clear victory here,
but an offensive on a major scale
means sizable casualties, and casual-
ties are anathema to miniBters in
Paris whose government must face a
vote of confidence every day, and to
deputies who may be tumbled into
an election any week. From 10,000
miles away, even victory doesn't seem
worth the cost in blood and votes.
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