Word: diem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...celebrate the first anniversary of his coming to power, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem struck three heavy blows last week against the Hoa Hao (pronounced Wha-How), the second of his country's rebellious warlord sects. Diem sent in two nationalist infantry divisions and four amphibious groups against the Hoa Hao, a rowdy private army of dissident Buddhists who run their own feudal entity-and squeeze the peasants with taxes-in rice-rich western Viet Nam. Premier Diem first offered the Hoa Hao a chance to integrate themselves into the national army and form a peaceful political party...
Behind a brisk barrage from 105-mm field guns, Diem's nationalists, led by a 27-year-old colonel, stormed three Hoa Hao headquarters, forcing the chocolate-colored Mekong River, skittering black pigs and yellow dogs along with the scurrying Hoa Hao. The nationalists lost 40 killed and wounded, but the show was soon over. Only a few hours after the Diem barrage began, one-third of the Hoa Hao laid down their arms and Commander Ba Cut fled for the hills...
...good training, fighting the Hoa Hao," exulted one of Diem's young commanders. "We keep ourselves in shape, while the Communist army stays idle." It was hardly that much of a victory for a dissension-torn country: civil wars do not a country make. But winning them is a necessity for Diem if his regime is to last...
Unexpectedly, the French agreed last week to withdraw the combat troops of their 80,000-man expeditionary corps from the capital city of Saigon into embarkation zones on the coast. French Commissioner-General Paul Ely. who had underestimated the staying power of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, asked to be relieved of his command. Eagerly, in Freedom Palace young Vietnamese Nationalist officers worked out the details of the takeover that would give the Vietnamese effective control of Saigon for the first time in 90 years. Just to show that individual Frenchmen would always be welcome in his country as friends, Premier...
...Premier Diem and his followers got another piece of good news: Communist Ho Chi Minh agreed, in response to a British request, to a month's extension of the deadline after which anti-Communist refugees will not be allowed to leave Communist Viet Nam. Nearly a million refugees have already left; thousands more hope to get away, but now are at the mercy of Ho's Red army, which controls all the escape lanes...