8
CIDG
“One of the most successful innovations in counterinsurgency techniques, CIDG
worked well until control over it was transferred to MACV [Military Assistance
Command-Vietnam] which changed the program to emphasize offensive operations
rather than village security” (Nagl 2002, 128).
8
Beginning in November 1961, US Army
Special Forces soldiers (two detachments of twelve men each) supervised the training,
organization, and arming of villagers—mostly members of a distinct ethnic group, the
Montagnards—and the provision of medical and agricultural assistance.
The methods employed by the Special Forces were straight out of classical
counterinsurgency doctrine. The Green Berets worked hand in hand with
the people to fortify their village; they constructed shelters and an early-
warning system and closely regulated the movement of people in and out
of the area. A dispensary was built, and local volunteers were armed and
trained to help protect the village from attack by guerrillas. A small group
of men from the village were designated as a ‘strike force.’ This strike
force was the only full-time military force (Krepinevich 1986, 70).
Beginning in one village, the SOF would then spread the program to neighboring
villages. By April 1962, forty villages in the Darlac province were pacified and by
August of that year, approximately two hundred villages were in the program, supported
by five detachments of Special Forces soldiers and some Vietnamese Special Forces
(Krepinevich 1986, 71). By February 1963, the province was declared pacified and some
discussion of the debate. For a related discussion of the US military’s organizational preference toward
conventional (or middle-intensity) warfare, see Krepinevich (1986) and Nagl (2002).
8
Gibson disagrees with this assessment, pointing out that the “Army Special Forces fared no better than the
Strategic Hamlet program…. If Vietnamese did not want to arm Montagnards in the first place, then
training of the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups by Vietnamese was a dubious project” (1986, 86).
Convention