Page "Duong Van Minh" Paragraph 31

Minh and Thơ halted Nhu's Strategic Hamlet Program.

Nhu had trumpeted the program as the solution to South Vietnam's difficulties with Vietcong insurgents, believing that the mass relocation of peasants into fortified villages would isolate the Vietcong from their peasant support base.

According to the junta, only 20 % of the 8, 600 existing strategic hamlets were under Saigon's control, with the rest having been taken over by the communists, contradicting Nhu's claims of widespread success.

Those hamlets that were deemed to be tenable were consolidated, while the remainder were dismantled and their inhabitants returned to their ancestral land.