III.

The New War Begins

The position taken by Diem won the backing of the United States. The Communist government in Hanoi, however, indicated its determination to reunify the nation under their rule. The truce arranged at Geneva began to crumble and by January 1957, the International Control Commission set up to implement the Geneva accords was reporting armistice violations by both North and South Vietnam. Throughout the rest of the year, Communist sympathizers who had gone north after partition began returning south in increasing numbers. Called Vietcong, they began launching attacks on US military installations that had been established, and in 1959 began their guerrilla attacks on the Diem government.

The attacks were intensified in 1960, the year in which North Vietnam proclaimed its intention “to liberate South Vietnam from the ruling yoke of the US imperialists and their henchmen”. The statement served to reinforce the belief that the Vietcong were being directed by Hanoi. On November 10, the Saigon government charged that regular North Vietnamese troops were taking a direct part in Vietcong attacks in South Vietnam. To show that the guerrilla movement was independent, however, the Vietcong set up their own political arm, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), with its headquarters in Hanoi.