The Other Government

"Good morning, comrades," intones the announcer pleasantly to all South Viet Nam. "You are listening to Radio Liberation." With that, the clandestine transmitter broadcasting from North Viet Nam begins seven hours of Marxist propaganda, spiced with Vietnamese folk songs.

This is the voice of the Communist enemy in Viet Nam, or, as the Reds call their organization, "the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet Nam." Technically, the Front is in overall charge of the bitter war being waged by the Viet Cong Communist guerrillas. One of its most important but less-known functions is to administer the one-third of South Vietnamese territory controlled by the Reds. In fact, it runs what amounts to an entire separate government.

Talk & Chop. Formed three years ago, the Liberation Front has a "cabinet" composed of South Vietnamese; the "chairman" is Nguyen Huu Tho, 53, a Saigon-born, French-educated lawyer. But naturally, he is only a local coverup for North Viet Nam's Red Boss, Ho Chi Minh. The Front's "capital" is believed to be the Viet Cong's military GHQ, which is situated deep in the jungle 75 miles northwest of Saigon, conveniently close to the Cambodian frontier, and protected by a maze of fortifications plus 1,000 elite troops. From there, a disciplined apparatus extends through provincial and district levels, down to the smallest village where the Reds roam.

First task of the Front, in an area under guerrilla influence, is to indoctrinate the populace. An estimated 4,000 propaganda squads follow Red guerrilla units into villages. The Front even publishes 30 crude newspapers. New fly sheets appear daily, accusing the Americans of everything from introducing whores into Buddhist monasteries to gouging out, frying and eating children's eyeballs. The Front uses harsher methods: more than 10,000 local government officials have been assassinated in the long war, usually by beheading.

Above all, the Reds strive to set up a rudimentary regime that will appear to rival the Saigon government. Boldly, the Front's yellow-starred flag now flies over dozens of villages. The guerrillas levy taxes, circulate their own currency, even operate a primitive postal system, complete with censors and stamps printed in Hanoi. For weeks, Radio Liberation has been triumphantly boasting that the organization held its "second national congress" early in January in a secret "liberated area." The 150 delegates were said to have demonstrated "a mood of patriotism as mighty as the Mekong River."

Battle of Presences. The Front claims it gets so many volunteers from the countryside that guerrilla recruits are turned awry for lack of physical fitness, boasts that it is winning the battle for men's minds in its areas. That is probably an exaggeration; in one guerrilla-harassed village recently, a survey by the Saigon government revealed that only 10% of the people collaborated with the Viet Cong willingly.

That does not mean they prefer the U.S.-backed junta in Saigon. Most peasants will go along with whichever side controls their villages. In the past fortnight, the government has dispatched three paratroop battalions into guerrilla-haunted Long An province south of the capital in an effort to root out the Reds and re-establish its influence. To win back confidence among the peasants, the province chief, a young major, has been sleeping in outlying hamlets rather than returning to the well-protected provincial capital at dusk. Such is South Viet Nam's hazardous situation that the sleep-out was deemed heroic. In appreciation, Junta Chairman General "Big" Minh helicoptered down from Saigon, awarded the major the country's highest combat decoration: the Cross of Valor.

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