1 MARCH 1986, Page 25

A guerrilla betrayed by Uncle Ho

Peter Kemp

JOURNAL OF A VIETCONG by Truong Nhu Tang Cape, f10.95 . . . L lnd to my betrayed comrades, who believed they were sacrificing them- selves for a humane liberation of their people.' With this dedication in his memoirs, Journal of a Vietcong, the author summarises what remains today perhaps the most important lesson of the Vietnam war: the callous cynicism with which the communists, as on so many occasions since 1917, successfully exploited the patriotism and idealism of their allies.

Brought up in a large, wealthy, and closely-knit Vietnamese family observing the Confucian tradition, Truong Nhu Tang also enjoyed the best French education available in colonial Vietnam — his father had served in the French administration. Designated by his father to become a pharmacist — a greatly respected profes- sion in Vietnam — he went to France in 1946 to complete his studies. There he met Ho Chi Minh and from that meeting deliberately planned by the communist leader — sprang his future revolutionary career.

Like so many others, westerners as well as Vietnamese, Tang fell immediately under the spell of 'Uncle Ho's' winning personality. Right up to the end, it seems, he never realised that Ho's benign aspect and show of warm-hearted sympathy, especially appealing to the young, was a clever disguise hiding a cold and ruthless veteran communist, fashioned in the mould of another notorious 'uncle,' Joseph Stalin.

Tang's revolutionary activities began after the French withdrawal from Indo- China in 1954. They were invariably poli- tical, he explains, not military — the political front was always far more impor- tant to the Vietminh than the military operations, which merely supported it. Tang himself, like his closest friends, was no communist; they were both suspicious and afraid of the communists. But they wanted to get rid of the corruption, ineffi- ciency, and oppression represented in their eyes by President Diem and his successors, and to remove all foreign influence from the government of their country; to them this meant the United States, but they failed to foresee their efforts would lead to the replacement of US influence by the implacable and irreversible rule,of Stalinist communism, not only in Vietnam but throughout Indo-China.

In 1965 Prince Sihanouk told a visiting journalist that what he himself and the majority of Cambodians most feared was communism — 'Above all,' he added, `Vietnamese communism'. Many of us will remember how the 'Domino Theory' was ridiculed by western 'experts' and politi cians, who also assured us repeatedly that the Vietminh had no ambitions to impose communism, even on Vietnam. I hope they sleep easy now, when they read about the `boat people'. Perhaps Truong Nhu Tang and his old friends can't be blamed for their illusions; at least they had to suffer the consequences themselves.

About the end of 1960 Tang became a founder member of the National Libera- tion Front of South Vietnam, generally known as the Vietcong; the emphasis then was on the term 'National,' for the Front embraced a wide variety of political views and organisations — although always, as he came to see too late, manipulated by the Lao Dong, or Workers' Party, the official name of the Vietnamese Communist. Party, which operated under orders from the Politburo in Hanoi. Tang remained in Saigon, where he suffered imprisonment twice — the second time was a horrific experience which included torture by elec- tricity. After his release in 1968, following the Tet offensive, he joined the guerrillas in the jungle, but as a political leader.

He gives a grim account of the hardships and hazards of jungle life. Disease, espe- cially malaria, lack of food and medicines, and the devastating B52 raids — much more effective, Tang says, than popularly supposed — made existence there a des- perate struggle to survive; the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, for instance, claimed the lives of 50 per cent of its travellers. It is impossible not to admire the courage and tenacity of those men and women who endured it all for the sake of an ideal which makes even more tragic and sicken- ing their ultimate betrayal.

This book contains a very detailed account of Vietnamese political life after 1954 — too detailed for the general reader, perhaps, but essential for the student. It is also the first account I have seen of the war from a Vietcong guerrilla. The last few chapters, including Tang's escape by sea, are absorbing — and deeply distressing.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975 the northern communists rapidly took control of the south — something they had repeat- edly promised they would never do. There was at first a government of South Viet- nam, in which Tang was a minister, but he explains it had no power. 'Throughout the entire country, administration was in the hands of Party Cadres' — who took their orders from the Stalinist Politburo in Hanoi and ignored their nominal govern- ment. Arbitrary arrests and detention without charge in prison or the labour camps — politely called 'Re-education Centres' — terrorised all sections of society in the country:

In the first year after liberation, some 300,000 people were arrested — a figure based solely on the number of officers, state officials, and party leaders who were sum- moned for thirty days of re-education . . To my knowledge, none of them had returned after a month or even a year . . . This figure of course does not include people who were arrested in the sweeps by government organs and military authorities.

This book is especially recommended to those who still think it is possible to have a `dialogue' with communists.