Australia, New Zealand. South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand also sent military personnel to South Vietnam as part of what the Americans called the Tree World Military Forces', whose purpose was to help internationalize the American war effort and thus confer upon it some legitimacy. Sound familiar? Australia's participation in the conflict constituted the most significant commitment of its military forces since WWIL There were '46,852 Australian military personnel that served in the war; the Australian casualties totaled 496 dead and 2398 wounded. Most of New Zealand's contingent, which numbered 548 at its high point in 1968, operated as an integral part of the Australian Task Force, which was stationed near Ba Ria, just north of Vung Tau.
THE FALL OF THE SOUTH
All US military personnel departed Vietnam in 1973, leaving behind a small contingent of technicians and CIA agents. The bombing of North Vietnam ceased and the US POWs were released. Still the war raged on, only now the South Vietnamese were fighting alone. In January 1975 the North Vietnamese launched a massive ground attack across the 17th Parallel using tanks and heavy artillery. The invasion provoked panic in the South Vietnamese army, which had always depended on the Americans. In March, the NVA occupied a strategic section of the central highlands at Buon Ma Thuot. South Vietnam 's president, Nguyen Van Thieu, decided on a strategy of tactical withdrawal to more defensible positions. This proved to be a spectacular military blunder. Whole brigades of ARVN soldiers disintegrated and fled southward, joining hundreds of thousands of civilians clogging Highway 1. City after city - Hue. Danang, Quy Nhon. Nha Trang - were simply abandoned with hardly a shot fired. The ARVN troops were fleeing so quickly that the North Vietnamese army could barely keep up. Nguyen Van Thieu, in power since 1967, resigned on 21 April 1975 and fled the country , allegedly carting off millions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth. The North Vietnamese pushed on to Saigon and on the morning of 30 April 1975 their tanks smashed through the gates of Saigon's Independence Palace (now called Reunification Palace). General Duong Van Minh, president for just 42 hours, formally surrendered, marking the end of the war. Just a few hours before the surrender, the last Americans were evacuated by helicopter from the US embassy roof to ships stationed just offshore. Iconic images of US Marines booting Vietnamese people off their helicopters were beamed around the world. And so more than a quarter of a century of American military involvement came to a close. Throughout the entire conflict, the USA never actually declared war on North Vietnam. The Americans weren't the only ones who left. As the South collapsed, 135,000 Vietnamese also fled the country; in the next five years, at least half a million of their compatriots would do the same. Those who left by sea would become known to the world as 'boat people '. These refugees risked everything to undertake perilous journeys on the South China Sea. Pirates raped and pillaged, storms raged, but eventually these hardy souls found a n ew life in places as diverse as Australia and France.
REUNIFICATION OF VIETNAM
On the first day of their victory, the communists changed Saigon's name to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). This was just the first of many changes. The sudden success of the 1975 North Vietnamese offensive surprised the North almost as much as it did the South. Consequently, Hanoi had no specific plans to deal with the reintegration of the North and South, which Oliver Stone has never had totally different social and economic systems , been one to shy away. The North was faced with the legacy of a cruel and protracted war that from political point-had literally fractured the country. There was bitterness on both sides, and scoring and in the f irst of a mind-boggling array of problems. Damage from the f ighting extended his famous trilogy about from unmarked minefields to war-focused, dysfunctional economics; from Vietnam, Platoon, he a chemically poisoned countryside to a population who had been physically earns dix points. A brutal or mentally battered. Peace may have arrived, but in many ways the war was and cynical look a t the far from over.Until the formal reunification of Vietnam in July 1976. the South was ruled of rookie Charlie Sheen. by the Provisional Revolutionary Government. The Communist Party did with great performances not trust the Southern urban intelligentsia, so large numbers of Northern from Tom Beranger and cadres were sent southward to manage the transition. This fuelled resent- Willem Dafoe. ment among Southerners who had worked against the Thieu government and then, after its overthrow, found themselves frozen out. The party decided on a rapid transition to socialism in the South, but it proved disastrous for the economy. Reunification was accompanied by widespread political repression. Despite repeated promises to the contrary, hundreds of thousands of people who had ties to the previous regime had their property confiscated and were rounded up and imprisoned without trial in forced-labour camps, euphemistically known as re-education camps. Tens of thousands of businesspeople, intellectuals, artists, journalists, writers, union leaders and religious leaders - some of whom had opposed both Thieu and the war - were held in horrendous conditions. Contrary to its economic policy, Vietnam sought some sort of rapprochement with the USA and by 1978 Washington was close to establishing relations with Hanoi. But the China card was ultimately played: Vietnam was sacrificed for the prize of US relations with Beijing and Hanoi was pushed into the arms of the Soviet Union, on whom it was to rely for the next decade. Relations with China to the north and its Khmer Rouge allies to the west were rapidly deteriorating and war-weary Vietnam seemed beset by enemies. An ant capitalist campaign was launched in March 1978. seizing private property and businesses. Most of the victims were ethnic -Chinese hundreds of thousands soon became refugees or 'boat people ', and relations with China soured further. Meanwhile, repeated attacks on Vietnamese border villages by the Khmer Rouge forced Vietnam to respond. Vietnamese forces entered Cambodia on Christmas Day 1978. They succeeded in driving the Khmer Rouge from power on 7th January 1979 and set up a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh China viewed the attack on the Khmer Rouge as a serious provocation. In February 1979 Chinese forces invaded Vietnam and fought a brief, 17 day war before withdrawing (see the boxed text Neighbouring Tensions, .Liberation of Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge soon turned to occupation and a long civil war. The command economy was strangling the commercial instincts of Vietnamese rice farmers. Today, the world's leading rice exporter, by the early 1980s Vietnam was a rice importer. War and revolution had brought the country to its knees and a radical change in direction was required.
INNOCENT VICTIMS OF THE WAR
One tragic legacy of the American War was the plight of thousands of Americans. Marriages, relationships and commercial encounters between Americans and Vietnamese were common during the war. But when the Americans headed home, many abandoned their 'wives' and mistresses, leaving them to raise children who were half-American or half-Vietnamese in a society not particularly tolerant of such racial intermingling. ' After reunification, the Americans - living reminders of the American presence - were often T mistreated by Vietnamese and even abandoned, forcing them to live on the streets. They were also denied educational and vocational opportunities, and were sadly referred to as 'children of the dust '. At the end of the 1980s, the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) was designed to allow Americans and political refugees who otherwise might have tried to flee the country by land or sea to resettle in the West (mostly in the USA). Unfortunately, many Americanise children were adopted by Vietnamese eager to emigrate, but were then dumped after the family's arrival in the USA. Asian American LEAD ( 1323 Girard St NW. Washington, DC 20009, USA) is an organization that has done some fine work training and mentoring Americana k ids as they adapt to life in the USA.
OPENING THE DOOR
In 1985 President Michael Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were in, radical , revolutionaries were out. Vietnam followed suit in 1986 by choosing reform minded Nguyen Van Linh to lead the Vietnamese Communist Party. do moi (economic reform) was experimented with in Cambodia and introduced to Vietnam. As the USSR scaled back its commitments to the communist world, the far-flung outposts were the first to feel the pinch. The Vietnamese decided to unilaterally withdraw from Cambodia in 1989, as they could no longer afford the occupation. The party in Vietnam was on its own and needed to reform to survive. However, dramatic changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 were not viewed with favour in Hanoi. The party denounced the participation of non communist’s in Eastern Bloc govern mints, calling the democratic revolutions 'a counterattack from imperial ist circles' against socialism. Politically things were moving at a glacial pace, but economically the Vietnamese decided to embrace the market. It has taken time, but capitalism has taken root and it's unlikely Ho Chi Minh would recognize the dynamic Vietnam of today.
THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE
Sound familiar? It's how George Bush won two elections, !t keeps Eng land divided at the Watford Gap. It sometimes threatens to snap Italy in two. Vietnam knows more about north-south divides than most, as the country spent 21 years partitioned a long the 17th Parallel a la Korea. War and politics are not the only explanation for two Vietnam's. Climatically, the two regions are very different and this has an impact on productivity, the Mekong Delta yielding three rice harvests a year and the Red River just two. There are two dialects with very different pronunciation. There is different food. And, some say, a different persona. The war amplified the differences. The north experienced communist austerity and US bombing. The south experienced the roller-coaster ride that was the American presence in 'Nam. As the war came to a close and southerners began to flee. thousands settled abroad, known as the Viet Kieu. Many have returned, confident thanks to an overseas education and savvy in the ways of the world. Their initiative and investment has helped to drive the economy forward. This meant that is was the south that benefited most from the economic reforms of doi moi, self confident Saigon the dynamo driving the rest of the country forward. The economy has grown by more than 7% for a whole decade, but th is is heavily skewed to the south. Much of this is down to the attitude of government officials and the fact that many northern cadres were far more suspicious of reform than their southern cousins. The government is aware of these divisions and tries to ensure a fa ir balance of the offices of state. It wasn't always so and many southern communists found themselves frozen put after reunification, but these days the party ensures that if the prime minister is from the south , the head of the Communist Party is from the north. When it comes to the older generation, the south has never forgiven the north for bulldozing their war cemeteries, imposing communism and blackballing whole families. The north has never forgiven the south for siding with the Americans against their own people. Luckily for Vietnam, the new generation seems to have less interest in their harrowing history and more interest in making money. Today there is on ly one Vietnam and its mantra is business.
VIETNAM TODAY
The Vietnam War (the American War to the Vietnamese) was just a blip in a history marked by hundreds of years of warfare. Explaining why he harboured relatively little will against the American after the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese man told an American journalist, "You’re Americans and we fought you for 10 years, and before you there were the French and we fought them for 100 years and before them, the Chinese, and we fought them for 1,000 years. We’re a very proud people, and you’re just a small part of our past."
Relations with Vietnam's old enemies, the USA, have improved in recent years. In early 1994 the USA finally lifted its economic embargo , which had been in place since the 1960s. Full diplomatic relations with the USA have been restored and Bill Clinton, who didn't fight in the war (and didn't inhale!), became the first US president to visit northern Vietnam in 2000. George W Bush followed suit in 2006. as Vietnam was welcomed into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Relations have also improved with the historic enemy China. Vietnam is still overshadowed by its northern neighbour and China still secretly thinks of Vietnam as a renegade province. But Vietnam's economic boom has caught Beijing's attention and it sees northern Vietnam as the fastest route from Yunnan and Sichuan to the South China Sea. Cooperation towards the future is more important than the conflict of the past. Vietnam is an active member of Asean, an organization originally established as a bulwark against communism, and this is all adding up to a rosy economic picture. Vietnam's economy is growing at more than 8% a year and tourists just can't get enough of the place. The future is bright, but ultimate success depends on how well the Vietnamese can follow the Chinese road to development: economic liberalization and 90 million Vietnamese, it is a road they must tread carefully.
