Death and a Dubious Cease-Fire?

Explosions shattered the cool early-morning calm at South Viet Nam's Bien Hoa airbase one day last week. For 20 minutes, 35 Viet Cong 122-mm. rockets blasted the sprawling base, destroying four F-5 jet fighter-bombers, heavily damaging a workshop and cafeteria, and killing one airman and one child.

Twenty-four hours later the calm was again broken--this time by the deafening roar of dozens of South Vietnamese air force warplanes taking off from Bien Hoa. Loaded with 500-and 750-lb. bombs, the planes headed northward on a mission to avenge the previous day's attack. Their primary target: the city of Loc Ninh, the "administrative center" of the Viet Cong, 62 miles away. Saigon insisted that its bombs hit only military targets. The Viet Cong claimed that bombs fell on Loc Ninh's marketplace and infirmary, killing 42 civilians.

Not in dispute is what the two incidents dramatically demonstrate: the ten-month-old Viet Nam cease-fire has failed to silence the guns. Early this month, South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu told a National Day audience that "the hope [for peace] entertained by this nation and the world, which a year ago was infectious, now turns out to be so much disillusion."

Significant Extensions. Since the signing of the ceasefire, more than 50,000 Vietnamese on both sides have died in the continued fighting--more than the total number of Americans killed in the eleven years of U.S. involvement. When a newsman in Saigon asked: "Is there a cease-fire?" Lieut. Colonel Le Trung Hien, the military spokesman, replied dryly: "Our daily communiques [of military action] answer your question."

At first Western observers thought that the Saigon government and the Communists were merely trying to improve their defenses and straighten the boundary lines of areas they controlled on the day the cease-fire went into effect. It is now apparent that both sides are violating the Paris Accords and are determined to extend their holdings significantly. Saigon's air force has been flying up to 100 sorties daily, many of them against targets in those parts of Tay Ninh and Pleiku provinces that were accorded to the Communists by the cease-fire agreement. In sections of Chuong Thien province, deep in the Mekong River Delta, the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) has systematically nibbled away at Viet Cong positions.

The Communists seem to be even more ambitious. There is evidence that they are attempting to establish a supply route running along the Laotian and Cambodian borders from the demilitarized zone down to Loc Ninh inside South Viet Nam. A major obstacle to setting up the route was a string of 50 ARVN outposts in the wooded, hilly Central Highlands. Many were lost in the 1972 offensive. In the past three months, South Vietnamese troops have been pushed out of most of the remaining camps.

Russian Tanks. Last week, in one of the biggest battles since the ceasefire, North Vietnamese troops using Russian-made T-54 tanks overwhelmed the 150-man ARVN garrison defending the former U.S. Special Forces camp at Bu Prang, just 1 1/2 miles from the Cambodian frontier. Despite support from helicopter gunships, ARVN troops abandoned the camp, hurriedly destroying four 105-mm. artillery pieces that had to be left behind. Ironically, nearly four years ago, ARVN thwarted a similar Communist attempt to capture Bu Prang, in what was then regarded as an encouraging first test of the ability of the South Vietnamese to fight without U.S. help on the ground. The loss of the camp at Bu Prang, as well as of camps at Bu Bong and Dak Song, leaves ARVN with only a handful of outposts along the Communists' new infiltration route.

President Thieu, and some military experts in Washington, believe that the Communists are determined to launch a major offensive some time in the next six to eight months. They note that the North Vietnamese now have about 170,000 troops inside South Viet Nam--about 30,000 more than when the cease-fire was signed. Recently, the Communists have repaired twelve airfields, including the former U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh, which has been upgraded to handle MIG-21 jets and is ringed with SA-2 antiaircraft missiles. The Communists, moreover, seem to be sniping persistently at South Viet Nam's towns, perhaps to force Thieu to concentrate the majority of his 1,100,000-man armed forces round the populated areas. This could enable the Communists to gain control over much of the countryside, and with it the food supply essential for a protracted offensive.

Pointless Rantings. There are other Western experts, however, who discount the likelihood of a general offensive. Says one: "While Hanoi now has the potential to launch offensives, it does not yet have the ability to launch the offensive." These experts believe it is more realistic to expect Hanoi to launch attacks on selected targets like Hue, the former imperial capital. Another objective might be to cut South Viet Nam in two, by driving ARVN units from the area separating Military Region I and Military Region II (see map). Either goal, if successful, would demoralize Saigon and undermine popular support of the Thieu regime.

Meanwhile, the machinery created by the cease-fire agreement has been powerless to prevent or even monitor the fighting. The International Commission of Control and Supervision, composed of members from Poland, Indonesia, Hungary and Iran (which replaced Canada), is so paralyzed that it cannot even agree on an agenda.

The talks in Paris between representatives of the Thieu regime and the Viet Cong, which are supposed to be about a political solution for South Viet Nam, degenerated into pointless rantings and last week were suspended at Thieu's request. In Saigon the members of the Joint Military Commission no sooner sit down at the daily sessions than they start haranguing one another; frequently the members simply slam down their papers and stalk out. As one Saigon-based Western diplomat sadly puts it, all that the cease-fire has done so far is to create "a dialogue of the deaf--and get American troops out of Viet Nam.

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