Highlights of a Vietnam trip, August 2002
LW with Trung standing
on a bridge in Nhabe in August '02.
(click on thumbnail to see a larger picture)
TRUNG. At the fall of Saigon in 1975, Trung did not join the diaspora of Vietnamese fleeing from communist rule, nor the hundreds of thousands of “boat people” escaping in later years. By staying however and refunding to the employees of his bank their hard earned pension contributions, rather than let the new authorities grab those, he put his head above the parapet. This cost him the confiscation of all his worldly goods and 3 years in an isolated re-education camp in North Vietnam
Lam Quang Trung, ex-spokesman for
Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh diem,
former executive of Shell..
RE-EDUCATION. Even here his organising ability stood out so clearly that the commander of the communist guards appointed him camp manager. There was no way to dodge the assignment. So he took responsibility for the survival of some 600 inmates, generals, ministers and officials of the old regime, as well as of the guards themselves. Construction of buildings, division of labour, cultivation of 20 hectares of ricefield with insufficient water, discipline and cultural activities, were all left to him. To get 4m3 per day of drinking water, they had to dig 20 m. deep wells at 3KM from the camp, each man carrying 2 tins of 20 litres on his back. Remembering Shell experience, Trung fitted a russian 3m3 bulktank on a Molotova chassis without engine to be pushed all the way by the convicts, thus saving half of the water team for other jobs. With the construction of a saw mill, they began to make money, but there was little food and no medicine to be bought. When an ignorant young guard shot an inmate point blanc in his chest, accusing him of trying to escape, Trung could only scream in anger. After contracting tuberculosis, he was discharged penniless and hitched a ride back to Saigon.
RECOVERY. After three years of forcing farmers into cooperatives, producing nothing but nationwide famine, the regime abolished the cooperatives. This gave the farmers a profit motive, which brought Vietnam back to rice exporting status within 2 years. But up to 1985 the communists still kept imposing their socialist dogma on a resisting urban population. Only when forced to loosen their grip and abolish subsidies, small business began to blossom.. After the end of the cold war in 1990 even the party cadres became eager for happiness and a brighter economic future. Foreign investores re-appeared and inevitably Trung was asked to lead the industrialisation in Saigon. He became wealthy again. (Saigon represents 75% of Vietnam’s national product).
He also used his influence to promote US/Vietnam relations, a.o. by bringing together the ex-commanders of the opposing forces, Admiral Zumwalt of the US Navy, a personal friend, with General Tran Van Tra, the supreme communist commander in South Vietnam. Honest combattants who respected each other. By contrast, he pours scorn over Robert Mc Namara’s later attempt in Hanoi to seek mutual apologies and healing. The Vietnamese do not expect, nor can be expected to give apologies.
General Tran Van Tra, Trung and Admiral Zumwalt and his son (from left to right)
COLONEL LE BAC UOC. We sought out our own former enemy, the commander of the elite 10th regiment of sappers, who for ten years tried by all means to halt the flow oil products into Vietnam and Cambodia, through our Nhabe installation. The conflagration he caused in Dec. 1973 graces the back cover of my book. Now a retired hero of the revolution, he received me in the dignified poverty of his rooms in Bien Hoa. We had tea. Out of his 1000 man regiment, 625 died attacking us, or from disease in the Rung Sat swamps. He proudly showed photo’s of a maquette of our installation used in his base camp. A born Southerner, Uoc had returned to the Rung Sat via the Ho Chi Minh trail in the sixties, after military training in Hanoi. At the time the Nhabe installation was defended by only one ARVN company, which we considered part of our own establishment. But communist commanders do not respect their fallen opponents of the South Vietnamese Army, who also fought valiantly. Instead they buldozed their graves and condemn survivors to anonymous disgrace.
Le Ba Uoc, embracing supreme general
Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi recently.
LW with Col. Uoc at his house
in August 2002
THREATS AND CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM. The police and security forces are what is holding Vietnam together. The central government itself seems irresolute, bereft of idealism and ideas and frightened of its own shadow. Recently, after suppressing a farmers revolt, it bowed to the farmers demands for more money, putting its own local party officials in jail. Vietnam now seems more corrupt than the South Vietnamese Republic of the seventies.
A top police official came to pay me a visit to share his organisation’s concern for the future. He was seriously preoccupied by attacks against the internal political stability, quoting the farmers revolt, an ethnic minorities revolt in the highlands and the landing of armed dissidents on the coast as recent examples. In two of these they detected the hand of the US government, or the émigré Vietnamese community in the US. When the US house of representatives passed a new trade agreement applicable to Vietnam last year, it attached a civil rights resolution as a conditio sine qua non for its implementation. A subversive campaign, started from outside Vietnam, to create a democratic opposition had been able to contaminate Hanoi politicians before being squashed. The police cannot be complacent with regard to local Buddhist and Catholic activities either.
WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION. Although steeped in communist political doctrine, my interlocutor smoothly admitted failure of the economic system. Government ownership causes such stagnation and corruption that privatisation had become attractive. The grand solution however was for Vietnam to seek WTO membership and all it implies, following the Chinese example. To achieve rapid entry and comply with WTO conditions, they are eager to negotiate with governments and multinationals the compensation of foreign properties taken over without compensation in 1975 and had already restituted some American assets as a goodwill gesture. However, so long as absolute power remains the birthright of one party, I for one cannot see an end to corruption, which is the favorite weapon of the disenfranchised.
FOREIGN INVESTMENTS. I toured the extensive foreign industrial parks outside Saigon. Well laid out but not very busy. Most executives complain of vaccillating government policies, arbitrary taxes and red tape which increase costs and above all of pervasive corruption. Some enterprises are leaving and the malaise is palpable.
In my own expertise of oil distribution, I noticed pre-communist installations and bulklorries still going strong, distributing low quality product from politically situated uneconomic supply points.
But rest assured, the country is still as beautiful and the population as hyper-active and welcoming as ever.
fishing vessels on the beach at Phan Thiet
On 22nd of January 2004 my friend Trung passed away after a hectic life lived to the full, with all its ups and downs, riches and deprivations, through the turbulent era of three regime changes in Vietnam. He is sorely missed by family and friends.