4. The Binh Xuyen episode and Diem's fight for survival

When Diem arrived back in Saigon to assume power, he found himself in a political no man's land. South Vietnam was in a state of real anarchy and lawlessness with no effective central government. The French maintained a semblance of military control but the trauma of Dien Bien Phu was too recent for them to effectively govern the country. Unlike the North where most of the fighting took place, between Giap's forces and the Franco-Vietnamese army which resulted in the French defeat in 1954, the South was spared of the war's damage. But Diem faced a political showdown against the various sects that would spill over into an armed confrontation with enormous consequences for his regime.

The history of the sectarian war in the South was never fully understood in my opinion. For many foreign observers, it represented a kind of exotic backdrop to the so-called ''Diem miracle'' during his early years in power, aided by his unexplained instinct for survival according to his US supporters. But the state of South VN at that moment, even before Diem's return to power, already explained many of the deficiencies the Americans encountered through their frustrating and unhappy efforts to salvage his regime and subsequent ones. The Americans naively were led to believe that Diem liquidation of his domestic foes was the first step in the right direction for pacifying the country of all divisive elements in the Vietnamese society. And that he could emerge as the leader of a diversified but united South against the monolithic and repressive North.

From the start of World War 2, the Japanese put heavy pressure on the French for they considered Vietnam as a strategic position in South East Asia. Their aim was to occupy Indochina, or at least force the French to deny the [rail] supply line in Haiphong used by the Americans in providing war materiel to China. They were worried that VN would become the underbelly soft spot in their overall strategy of Asian conquest: a situation dictated by military reality pure and simple. The Japanese also became interested in Vietnam by encouraging different political groups to espouse their ''co-prosperity sphere'' of cooperation. Their reasoning was that the moment was ripe for Asian nations to liberate themselves from ''white supremacy'' by supporting Japan's geopolitical leadership. They didn't entertain an all out occupation of Indochina by defeating the French. It would be too costly and they didn't have the resources to spare. Political intervention they thought was more appropriate for sooner or later the French would be ousted.

Tokyo had already banked on [prince] Cuong De who wanted to replace his cousin Bao Dai as the new monarch in VN. And many Vietnamese from the intelligentsia (including Diem) had toyed with such an idea. Bao Dai's abject failure was the reason, with his lack of authority while he forfeited his leadership to extract concessions from the French to implement real reforms in 1932 and to secure VN's road map for independence. The question for the Japanese was twofold: how to create different politico-military factions to lay the groundwork for their entry into VN, and how to use them to win over the support of the popular mass. Tokyo had already prepared the terrain since early on by allowing many nationalists to take refuge in Japan in their fight against French colonialism.

Tokyo believed the plan would be easy enough, the Vietnamese being of the same race... And Japan is not too far away physically to support her allies in case of need. The main caveat was the Communists of uncle Ho. They would never accept a Japanese fascist tutelage. And other VN nationalist groups did have misgivings towards the Co-Prosperity sphere, Ngo Dinh Diem even refused to serve under Japan occupation in 1945 as premier. One important point to stress here: much of the internal conflict between different political factions in VN had to do with their ideology and political platforms, of the way they foresaw an independent VN, free from French rule. The main contention was the call for outside help to materialize that aim.

There were those who favored working within the colonial system and gradually asking for some form of autonomy, albeit nominal independence, praying on France goodwill and political largesse. They were the traditionalists who didn't want to rock the boat while they depended on it for their private interest. On the opposite, there were the Communists, revolutionary and sanguine in believing they were the only force capable of defeating the French if others rallied under their banner. And Ho chi Minh demonstrated his genial ability to manipulate foreign powers, including having to ''go to bed'' with the French if necessary in order to achieve his goals, although he was dead set against the Chinese. With his now [in]famous remark that ''I would prefer sniffing French shit for 5 more years than eating Chinese shit for the rest of my life...''

Outside help for Ho was a tactical instrument, no more than that. And timing is the essence of his strategy. There were also the Chinese factions under the aegis of the Kuomintan with numerous labels. Mostly they derived from the first opponents to the French under different VN monarchs and for obvious reasons. They escaped French arrests by building bases in Southern China, next to VN borders. And there was the Cuong De faction, betting on Japan emergence as the new world power, but maintaining VN cultural traditions and identity. Diem at some point belonged to that group. He hadn't discovered America yet in 1940. The Japs weren't deterred by VN political idiosyncracy. They tried to win over and co-opted various sects and groups like the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao in the South where French military presence was less dominant and political effervescence was at its peak.

Since 1926, Le Van Trung a colonial civil servant founded a sect after some revelations about the '' supreme spirit'' or Cao Dai, a blend of Buddha and Christ teachings. He established a virtual religious organization copied from the Catholic church with a Caodaist pope at the helm. After his death, Cao Dai became a well organized administrative and politico-religious institution in Tay Ninh, South VN. His successor Pham Cong Tac became in 1934 the new leader with a sizable force of three hundred thousand adherents to be reckoned with by the French authorities. And more worrisome was the overt sympathy he demonstrated for the Japanese. A crackdown by the French in 1938 disbanded his forces and sent Tac into exile in Madagascar. But under Tran Quang Vinh the new leader, the Cao Dai movement had been fully sponsored by the Japanese during WW2 as a counter revolutionary force.

With the Japanese defeat, the sect shifted its alliance to the French while Pham Cong Tac returned from exile. The Cao Dai militia was expanded to 3300 troops and used with great effectiveness against the Viet Minh. Their influence spread and they held hope of becoming the dominant political force in VN while their party the VN Phuc Quoc Hoi became very active in Cochin China. The movement remained the biggest impediment to any future VN central government to take hold over its Tay Ninh province. As a French staff officer commented: '' its dialectics, as specious as those of Communism will always allow [the sect] to perform the most audacious reversals without damage. The Cao Dai have no enemies and no permanent friends. But they have permanent interests which are those of the sect."

Using a check and balance strategy, the French and the Japanese took their turn supporting the Hoa Hao, another sect in South VN. In 1939 in Chau Doc, Huynh Phu So, a Buddhist monk after some prophecies and revelations, founded the Hoa Hao, a name taken from his own birthplace. He was known as the ''Mad Monk'' for he suffered a serious illness at his early life. The French sensing his growing popularity too risky, decided to launch a preemptive strike against him. Huynh Phu So was put into a psychiatric hospital. There, he somehow managed to convert his own psychiatrist!

The Japanese with their own Buddhist-based religion realized that the Vietnamese were more loyal to their religious beliefs than to their political convictions. And they wanted to exploit that to the fullest. A protracted undercover war followed between the French Sureté and the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police to obtain the support from the various sects. Conscious that their days are numbered in South East Asia during the last years of WW2, the Japanese decided to use local auxiliary forces to fight the French. Cao Daists and Hoa Hao elements under Japanese instigation decided to trigger the final phase for independence in the South.

In 1945 Huynh Phu So was active in the formation of the ''National United Front'', a nationalist anti-French body which included the Hoa Hao, the Cao Dai, the Binh Xuyen and the Viet Minh. But after the Japanese defeat, unlike the Viet Minh under Ho chi Minh, the sects kept on fighting for their own survival in the south, in lieu of hoping for independence. They even sided with the colonialist French to come to blows with the Viet Minh whose influence became a threat to their territory. Huynh Phu So was ambushed by the Viet Minh in 1947 on his way to preach in the western provinces. His followers are still waiting for his return...

The South was a place fertile for the underworld gangs near the marshy lowlands, southeast of Cho Lon. In the 1920's and 30's, the area was infested with river pirates, bandits and assassins. Their place of refuge was called the ''Rung Sat'' or the Killers' Jungle. Intermarriage, criminal association and anti-French activities with the Chinese Triads and VN secret societies were common place. In fact, Saigon and Cho Lon (Big Market), its twin city were the cradle of organized piracy well before the French settled in, in 1884 with a full fledged administration.

Duong Van Duong or Bach Ba who made his home in Binh Xuyen, south of Cho Lon emerged as the leader of the new group later called Binh Xuyen. Under his influence entered Le Van Vien or Bay Vien (Vien the 7th), a young street hoodlum who rose through the ranks and became notorious to the French Sureté. He and his cohorts were finally captured by the French and imprisoned on the Con Son island. Ba Duong, having been stripped of his good lieutenant Vien, brokered a relationship with the Japanese secret service during the 1940's under Matsushita Mitsuhiro, a clandestine operator with an industrial cover as director of Dainan Koosi. He was in fact controlled by the Japanese Consul in Hanoi, Yoshio Minoda.

Matsushita arranged for the kempetai to free Binh Xuyen members from Con Son in 1941 making them new allies of the Japanese and enabled them to grow in organization and power. Bay Vien escaped Con Son only in 1945 and returned to Saigon where he engaged with Ba Duong and the Japanese into subversive fighting against the French police. The Binh Xuyen became the new police force by the newly established government. And in August, the Viet Minh formed an alliance with Bay Vien and Ba Duong against the French. After the French counter coup, supported by the British in September 1945, the Viet Minh withdrew leaving Bay Vien as the military commander of Saigon Cho Lon with a hundred men! He with some Japanese deserters and a 2000 strong students group called the Avant Garde Youth of Lai Van Sang engaged the French. They had to pull back to the Rung Sat but their stay behind agents went on in their campaign of terror and extortion.

Ba Duong was killed in Feb 1946 by the French, during a brief period of dispute he had with the Viet Minh. Bay Vien exploited Ba Duong's fall by secretly entering negotiations with the French Deuxieme Bureau to consolidate his hold on power of the Binh Xuyen. He realized that the French needed him to pacify the region from the Viet Minh forces and he could emerge as a respectable political force with lucrative dividends in the South, especially in the Saigon Cho Lon area. In 1954, Lai Van Sang became director-general of Police and the Binh Xuyen controlled a sixty mile strip between Saigon and Vung Tau. Thus Le Van Vien or Bay Vien the Binh Xuyen leader who controlled the vice business around the city, after some 'escarmouches' with the Viet Minh and the French in 1945, reappeared on the scene along with Bao Dai as his ally and protector in 1954! Their alliance was of mutual interest, his Majesty needing the money and material support and Bay Vien was more than willing to acquiesce.

The US even observed, referring to that episode that: ''...the Binh Xuyen was a political and racketeering club which had agreed to carry out police functions in return for a monopoly on gambling, opium traffic and prostitution''. The different sects and their warlords in the South benefited from the political and security vacuum created by the French neglect and outright [criminal] duplicity. It was a political black hole of fiefdoms and pseudo-religious sects dictating their own laws in their own turfs. And the Vietnamese in the south were an easy prey by their religious tolerance, their propensity for superstition and disinterest for national issues.

By the virtue of their own humiliating exit from the North in 1954, the French didn't care who eventually will control the South. They and the Japanese, in their war against each other and against the Communists have used the sordid elements of the VN society as proxies. In order to divide and rule as they did in the North (Tonkin), the French in particular had created a fertile ground for political anarchy and social instability that later Diem and the Americans inherited but found no way of knowing how to deal with.

The Americans were pessimistic about Diem's prospect and rightly so. They almost pulled the plug on him when they saw the whole picture in 1954. Diem was virtually on his own during those first months in Saigon. The Army was under Nguyen Van Hinh, an Air Force general under Bao Dai's strings. The police was Binh Xuyen's right arm. All the political parties snubbed Diem. His influence was limited to a few blocks around his Palace. Of course he has his brother Nhu and a few die hard supporters like Army Colonel Edward Landsdale. But Diem didn't panic. He just wanted to prove to his detractors that they were a little hasty to sell him short. And he savored the idea to prove them wrong with a kind of fanatical but serene faith in his mission, coupled with an obstinacy difficult to fathom. He was a perfect contrarian and loner and it made his success even harder to swallow for his opponents.

Backed by the legendary Landsdale who had a track record against the Communists in the Philippines, Diem proceeded by eliminating his opponents one by one, starting with the perfunctory Le Van Hinh who admittedly underestimated Diem pugnaciousness. Hinh was dismissed and ordered out of the country. Unsure of American and Bao Dai support, general Hinh didn't attempt a coup that would defeat Diem forces had he had chosen to do so. Then came the sects and Bay Vien as the next ennemy. Vien was smarting under Diem decision to cut his payroll by closing his gambling concessions. He once again allied wih the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects to fight Diem. But the rug was pulled under their feet by Diem bribing and splitting their ranks.

General Trinh Minh The, a competent and popular member of the Hoa Hao broke rank, thanks to Landsdale's money, and joined Diem. The sects were split and weakened by internal wrangling. Diem went for broke in the summer of 1955, with a mounted offensive led by colonel Duong Van Minh, who later played a key role in Diem's assassination. The fighting culminated in the death of general The and the defeat of the sects. Saigon was the scene of much carnage and destruction, but Diem finally prevailed thanks to his determination and stubbornness. For the sake of South VN's survival and of his own, Diem had demonstrated that he could be ruthless and unforgiving. Some sects leaders like Ba Cut paid for their lives under the guillotine for resisting to the end.

There was no respite and honeymoon period for his government but Diem saw the light at the end of the tunnel, after one year in office. He wanted to make a clean sweep and the time had come to ask the Vietnamese to choose between him and Bao Dai. Fresh from his victory over the sects, the elimination of the last relic of French colonialism was a foregone conclusion. By a referendum won with 98.6% of the vote, he became the first president and uncontested leader of South VN in October 1955. It was a sweeping political victory aided by preemptive groundwork and unorthodox coaching of the population before the vote. Bao Dai had no chance by his absence for he got no constituencies left in the country. And he wouldn't dare going back for fear for his own life, being condemned to death in absentia by Diem.

Against all odds, Diem had performed a miracle according to his supporters. The French, Bao Dai, the Americans, his political opponents, the Communists and even his own family had written him off. Mgsr Thuc his older brother called on him to quit during that time! He had come back from nowhere. Did he feel that his destiny was a gift from above? Did anyone would have thought differently in his place? It's time for Diem to cash in on his successes. But he was aware that a long and tortuous road lied ahead with many greater challenges that will have to be met head on. Ho Chi Minh and his troops in the North were ready for him.