0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
Icommunist insurgents. Basic to the French counterinsurgency "modus
SI
L
operandi" was ruthless control of the details of villdge life by an occupy-
'w] army to separate the guerrilla from the population. This, however, was
as far as the approacn was able to go; true pacification was never
attained. There was no answer to the problem of institutionalizing the
gains achieved at a high cost or of how the occupying army would be able to
let go its hold in the villages. There was little from the French experience
that was accepted by US counterinsurgents when the Americans replaced
the French in Vietnam.
A graphic comparison of the above menticned counterinsurgency
models ",s shown as Figure 5-1.
2, The Process Defined
Over time, pacification began to take on a broader meaning within
the context of counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam. Security for the
rural population became synonymous with pacification.
In 1966, then White House consultant Robert Komer reported on ,he
status of pacification and he defined it as follows:
If we divide the US/GVN problem into four main
components, three of tnem show encoLraging progress.
The campaign against t"ie major VC/NVA (North Vietnamese
Army) units is in high gear, the constitutiunal process
seems to be evolving favorably, and we expect to contain
inflation while meeting most needs of the civil
economy. But there is a fourth problem area, that of
securing the countryside and getting the peasant
involved in the struggle against the Viet Cong, where
we are lagging way behind. It is this problem area
which I would term pacification .
of the
At the
pacification
risk of over-simplication,
problem as involving
I see
three
management
main
subtasks: (1) providing local security in the counL,'yside--essentially
a military/police/ cadre task;
(2) breaking the hold of the VC over the people; and
(3) positive programs to win the active support of the
rural population. 7/
i
5-4