When Will the Peace Begin?

By James Kelly

An exclusive look inside a troubled, still divided nation

Our mountains will always be, Our rivers will always be, Our people will always be: American invaders defeated, We will rebuild our land Ten times more beautiful. --HoChiMinh, 1969

A decade after the last U.S. combat forces pulled out and eight years after the Republic of Viet Nam crumbled, reminders of the great victory are everywhere. "Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom," one of Ho's favorite slogans, is stenciled on hundreds of roadside monuments, while colorful posters exhorting one and all to remember the North Vietnamese army's heroic sacrifices adorn shopwindows. In Saigon, now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, the airport is fringed by old bomb craters and littered with the hulks of U.S. transport planes. In Hanoi, the capital, the memories of war are cherished in details large and small. At the War Museum, a once stately mansion located near the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, visitors gaze upon such relics as the ID cards of captured American pilots, pieces from a downed U.S. B-52 bomber, and the T-54 tank that first breached the gates of Nguyen Van Thieu's Independence Palace in Saigon in 1975. At a nearby carnival, the most popular game is the beanbag toss, in which gleeful children win pieces of candy by pelting a plywood figure of Uncle Sam.

For the North Vietnamese, the triumph of 1975 held the sweet promise of peace and prosperity; once those in the South realized that a vengeful bloodbath would not take place, they too believed that better times were ahead. Yet as the rare U.S. journalist allowed inside Viet Nam can attest, that hope has not come true. Instead of realizing Ho's dream of a land ten times as beautiful as before the war, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, unifying North and South since July 1976, is vexed by troubles at home and abroad. Its economy struggles along, its 57 million people are divided and demoralized, its leadership is doddering and ineffectual. A reluctant ally of the Soviet Union, Viet Nam faces China, a historic foe, to the north and finds itself bogged down in a drawn-out war in Kampuchea in the south. Finally, Hanoi is in the ignominious position of wanting better ties with he U.S.--only to be turned down cold by Washington.

Hanoi's frustrations sometimes flare into violence. Late last month, Vietnamese troops began their annual offensive in Kampuchea to flush out the estimated 45,000 armed rebels opposed to the Hanoi-backed government of President Heng Samrin. Vietnamese soldiers destroyed Phnom Chat, a border village sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge, the largest of the guerrilla groups, then pulverized O Samach, a settlement 70 miles to the northeast that served as an outpost for the 30,000 followers of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. During the blitz, however, the Vietnamese aimed their fire not only at the insurgents but at unarmed civilians in both Kampuchea and neighboring Thailand. Hanoi's troops ventured a mile into Thai terrain and shelled several villages and a highway. Charges of atrocities grew last week as witnesses claimed that during the attack on O Samach, Vietnamese soldiers herded Kampuchean civilians into bunkers and then tossed hand grenades at them.

Of all the woes that bedevil Viet Nam, its economic problems are the most exasperating. Officially, Hanoi blames the bleak picture on three decades of warfare and what it calls "economic sabotage" by China and the U.S. It does not mention the cost of keeping 1,029,000 men in uniform--the fourth largest standing army in the world, after China, the Soviet Union and the U.S. But party officials now acknowledge that poor planning and mismanagement are partly to blame. Occupied solely with winning the war, the North Vietnamese were unready to rule a reunited nation.

China and the U.S., the countries that fed the two Viet Nams throughout the war, halted rice shipments. The Southerners who had been dispatched to rural work camps called "new economic zones" deserted in droves. Even nature rebelled: in 1977 and 1978, the country was hit by an unlucky streak of typhoons and drought that ravaged the crops.

In 1978, Hanoi reverted to ideological instinct and tried to straighten out the economic chaos by abolishing all capitalist remnants in the South. The stated goal: to eliminate 30,000 private shops that had been allowed to flourish after the war and reroute their trade through state-owned enterprises. It was a disastrous policy that triggered a flood of tens of thousands of boat people; in addition, 170,000 ethnic Chinese fled overland from North Viet Nam to China. Among the refugees were many technicians and managers. Most of the industries in the North have yet to recover fully from that migration.

The month-long invasion by Chinese troops across the northern Vietnamese border in early 1979 destroyed half a dozen cities, roads and railways, and industries such as coal mining and fishing. But the damage was minor compared with what Hanoi had done. By 1978, the country's food production had dipped to an alltime low of 12.9 million tons: Vietnamese actually had less to eat that year than at the height of the war. Hanoi warded off starvation only by importing 1.5 million tons of grain from the East bloc. So inept were the government's domestic policies that by mid-1979 some 700,000 citizens had fled the country, and an estimated 110,000 drowned while trying to cross the South China Sea.

In August 1979, Vietnamese officials started tinkering with the system to permit some free-market practices. The reform program, later dubbed the "contract system," now allows workers to sell goods on the open market once state production goals have been met. In Hai Hung province east of Hanoi, for example, the Ai Quoc farming cooperative, composed of 1,250 families, sells its rice to the state for 2.5 dong (26-c-) per kg. Once its quota is reached, the cooperative is free to trade any surplus to private merchants who pay 10 dong ($1.05) per kg, or to the government, which pays 7 dong (74-c-) for additional rice. With such incentives, production at Ai Quoc has risen from 6.5 tons to 7.2 tons per hectare. "A strong worker can earn 2,100 dong [$225] a year," says Nguyen Van Nien, 35, the farm's chairman. "With that, many of our people can afford to buy a radio or bicycle."

The reforms have had the greatest effect in the North, where the economy is more tightly controlled. Hanoi's Hang Dao Street, the city's main commercial strip, is now lined with private shops selling Chinese porcelain, Levi's jeans and counterfeit Camel cigarettes. In Saigon, where a black market flourished even after the 1978 crackdown, the relaxation of rules has made sales more open. Vendors operating from makeshift booths off Ham Nghi Boulevard hawk everything from refrigerators ($360 at the black market rate) to music cassettes ($1.50) to Japanese-made stereos ($160). To some degree, the government actually competes on the free market: nearly 30 new state trading companies, many run by old bourgeois merchants in Saigon, are showing surprising business acumen in pushing exports.

The trouble is that most Vietnamese cannot afford to shop in the free market regularly. The average worker earns 160 dong ($18 at the official rate) a month and must make do with a monthly ration of cereal (13 kg), meat (2 kg), fish (2 kg) and sugar (1 kg). Government office workers are at a special disadvantage, since they cannot easily supplement their fixed income. Despite a 100% pay hike in 1981, a middle-level bureaucrat takes home only $18 a month: at that rate, it would take him several years to buy one of the Viet-tronics color television sets assembled at a onetime Sanyo plant in Bien Hoa.

Despite Ho's contention that "Viet Nam is one, the people are one," the two halves of the country and their inhabitants have always been, and remain, quite different. In some ways, the end of the war only highlighted the contrasts. The North is relatively undeveloped, with little industry, primitive roads and no high-rise buildings. The South is more modern and retains a bit of its old freewheeling ways. Northerners still regard their Southern compatriots as lazy; the Southerners consider people from the North to be dour and aggressive. Nguyen Van Trang, vice chairman of the provincial government in Hai Hung, sums up the difference from his vantage point. "If we behaved like Southerners, we'd all starve," he says. "We in the North work hard and accept responsibility." Yet daily life in the South can be so much more attractive that many bureaucrats talk of "going to heaven" when transferred south. One glaring difference between the two areas: food is far more plentiful and better in the South.

Beyond that, though it may be resigned to its defeat, the South on the whole has not accepted Communism. Only a small number of students graduating from Saigon high schools join the Young Communist League, regardless of the fact that party membership assures admission to a university. Passive resistance abounds in other ways as well. Despite government warnings, many Southerners still tune in to the Vietnamese-language broadcasts of the Voice of America. The party posters that sprout all over the North are less frequently seen in the South. Suspect loyalties can be punished: the government still runs eight so-called re-education camps where onetime supporters of the South Viet Nam regime are politically "rehabilitated." Officials claim that there are 10,000 political prisoners, but the U.S. State Department puts the total at more than 60,000.

Though overall security probably has never been better, the country remains heavily policed; in the cities, plainclothesmen are ubiquitous. Citizens must obtain a police permit before visiting another city, and no one can switch jobs or move without permission. All music, books, magazines, newspapers and films must be reviewed and approved by the state. Hanoi is capable of censorship on moral as well as political grounds: public dancing, that popular pastime of the decadent West, is strictly forbidden.

Hanoi seems intent on erasing every trace of Viet Nam's days before the advent of Communism. The tombstones at South Vietnamese military cemeteries are being bulldozed. Not even the monument to Alexandre de Rhodes, the French missionary who Romanized the Vietnamese language in the 17th century, is sacrosanct: last month workmen sledgehammered the statue in Saigon and dug up the small French graveyard near by.

The country's only substantial link with the West is through the mails: under recently revised rules, Vietnamese' citizens are allowed to receive three gift parcels a year from abroad, plus enough cash to support a family. Fifty tons of presents a week arrive from the U.S. alone. The distribution warehouse in Saigon is packed with men and women clutching ID cards and bills of lading, and the government estimates that some 200,000 families receive packages during the year. Hanoi collects duties ranging from 15% to 200%, depending on the products, but recipients still can turn a quick profit by reselling their gifts on the black market.

By most appearances, the Roman Catholic Church is flourishing in Viet Nam. Six times every Sunday, for example, some 2,000 people try to squeeze into a church built for 900 in Phi Nghe, several miles from Saigon. Worshipers crowd the aisles and transepts and spill out into the dusty gravel courtyard. It is an impressive sight, and one that seems to confirm Hanoi's claim that all are free to worship as they wish. Indeed, Viet Nam has had a Roman Catholic Cardinal since 1976 (Joseph-Marie Trinh van-Can currently holds the post). But the cooperative spirit is deceptive, for Viet Nam's 5.3 million Catholics have refused to declare themselves socialist, and Hanoi is retaliating. All Catholic schools were shut down in 1975, but far more damaging was the government's move to close seven of the South's eight seminaries. Since 1975 only seven priests have been ordained. By blocking the flow of new clergy, Hanoi is quietly strangling the church. Phi Nghe, for example, has only two priests to minister to its 12,000 parishioners. No churches have been forced to close yet, but that may be only a matter of time.

But even if many Vietnamese, especially in the South, resent the Communist government, and dissatisfaction is widespread, armed resistance is fragmented and slight. Western diplomats in Bangkok believe that some 2,000 guerrillas, including Montagnard tribesmen and former soldiers of the South Vietnamese army, may be roaming the countryside.

Many of the country's problems can be traced to the fact that Hanoi continues to rely on war veterans rather than skilled administrators to run the government. Viet Nam's top officials are all veterans, but a good guerrilla does not necessarily make a good executive. At the province level, for example, fewer than a third of the officials have a college or vocational education. The gaps extend to the top: not one of the 15 members of the Politburo has any training in economics.

The Politburo, however, remains dominated by septuagenarians, some of them ailing; Premier Pham Van Dong is 77, while Secretary General Le Duan just turned 76. The Vietnamese Communist Party, which has 1.7 million members, is divided and confused. There is no clear doctrine on topics ranging from farming collectives to foreign relations. Visitors to Hanoi now hear the government bitterly criticized, with the most pointed complaints coming from cadres. Some government workers are so desperate that they even approach foreigners on the street and offer to change money illegally, at the rate of 75 dong to $1, vs. the official rate of 9.5 dong to $1.

Viet Nam's economic survival continues to depend largely on Moscow's munificence. Soviet aid to Hanoi last year totaled about $1 billion, with an additional $500 million lent by other East bloc countries. In turn, the Soviets have demanded and been granted the right to use the military bases at Danang and the American-built facility at Cam Ranh Bay. Soviet diplomats, military experts and technical advisers stationed in Viet Nam now total some 10,000, and the number appears to be rising steadily.

The Vietnamese make little effort to hide their dislike and distrust of the Soviets. Hanoi signed its friendship treaty with Moscow in 1978 primarily because of the promised financial help. Since then the Vietnamese have been resisting Soviet attempts to gain greater influence within the country. The advisers are allowed to move freely throughout the North, but their travel in the South is severely restricted. In Saigon, for example, Soviets working out of the consulate, formerly the U.S. ambassador's residence, need special permission to travel more than seven miles beyond the city limits.

Though Moscow's ultimate goals in Viet Nam are not totally clear, its newly shaped strategic position worries neighbors and other countries. "Without Viet Nam, the Soviet navy has no naval base from Yemen to Vladivostok," says Philippe Richer, French Ambassador to Hanoi in 1975 and 1976. "With their ships in Cam Ranh Bay and their air force in Danang, the Soviets can patrol most of the South Pacific." One Vietnamese diplomat candidly admits that his country turned to the Soviets in the first place only because Hanoi considers the Chinese even less trustworthy. Says he: "We needed help, and the Soviets were the safest ones to take it from."

Hanoi's ties to the Soviets worry Peking, which follows the old adage that an enemy's friend is an enemy as well. China and Viet Nam may have similar cultures and an 800-mile common border, but the two countries also share a historic animosity that stretches back more than 2,000 years. Though Peking provided Hanoi with as much as $20 billion in aid during the war, tensions began to build in 1978, when ethnic Chinese fled Viet Nam as a result of Hanoi's economic policies. Then, shortly after the Soviet-Vietnamese treaty was signed, came Viet Nam's invasion of Kampuchea. Hanoi's forces quickly toppled the bloodthirsty, Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot and installed in its place a pro-Vietnamese government headed by Heng Samrin. Today 180,000 Vietnamese troops are tied down in Kampuchea, while an additional 45,000 are encamped in Laos.

The Chinese are convinced that Viet Nam is bent on dominating Southeast Asia through a tripartite Indochinese socialist union that would include Kampuchea and Laos. Peking also fears that Hanoi's actions are part of a larger Soviet scheme to threaten China's southern flank. Aside from launching their brief attack across Viet Nam's northern border in early 1979, the Chinese have been giving weapons and supplies to the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Kampuchea. Hanoi, for its part, contends that its troops were sent into Kampuchea partly to end Pol Pot's killing spree and partly to blunt Chinese designs on Viet Nam. Despite Hanoi's intervention in Kampuchea, life in that beleaguered land is clearly better today than during the reign of Pol Pot.

But it is the presence of Vietnamese forces in Kampuchea that remains a key stumbling block for the restoration of relations between Hanoi and Washington. Besides supporting a United Nations resolution that calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops, the Reagan Administration seems intent on keeping Viet Nam in the position of an international pariah. The U.S. prohibits American companies from doing business with Hanoi. Washington also lobbies against United Nations development grants for the country and discourages other nations from offering aid. "Basically, Viet Nam has isolated itself by its actions," contended Secretary of State George Shultz during a Far Eastern swing last February. "Its behavior is outside the pale."

To underscore that contention, the 1982 report on human rights practices released by the U.S. State Department earlier this year excoriated Viet Nam for its alleged offenses and led Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams to call Hanoi "the single most repressive government in the world." Though many organizations, including Amnesty International, are concerned about Viet Nam's human rights record, few experts would agree with Abrams. "In Viet Nam, for example, we are not confronted with the torture and political executions that currently scar Central America," observes a human rights group official in London. "This makes it difficult to draw the balance between worse and worst."

Even today, however, the U.S. and Viet Nam do talk directly about one highly emotional issue: the unfinished business of American fighting men listed as missing in action during the war. Of the 2,500 who remain unaccounted for, about 1,150 are known to have been killed in action, but their remains are yet to be recovered. Only 79 sets of remains have been returned from Viet Nam since the war ended. Last year Vietnamese officials agreed to meet with U.S. medical experts, and Americans have so far traveled to Hanoi twice to discuss techniques of recovering and identifying remains.

Hanoi is still eager to resume diplomatic relations, mostly because it desperately needs economic help. Asian diplomats claim that the U.S. missed an ideal opportunity to renew ties in 1978, after the Vietnamese government had dropped its controversial claims for reparations. It can perhaps be argued that by shunning Hanoi's advances, the U.S. pushed Viet Nam into the arms of the Soviets. Yet it is clear that what Hanoi was desperately seeking at that stage was a strong financial patron, and it would have been politically impossible for Washington to offer Viet Nam the amount of aid that the Soviets promised.

Hanoi may have achieved its goal of making Viet Nam one nation, but the ironies are impossible to ignore. Its people endured a 30-year war, only to be mired in a dismal economic swamp. To remedy the situation, the Communist government is relying on a multitude of capitalistic measures. Once constantly decrying the U.S. for its imperialistic aims, Hanoi invades another country and finds itself stuck in a nasty war battling stubborn guerrillas. After driving out one superpower, Viet Nam invites another one, the Soviet Union, to come in. The mass of Vietnamese must wonder: When will the peace really begin? --By James Kelly. Reported by David De Voss/Hanoi

With reporting by David De Voss/Hanoi This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.