FIGHTERS OF THE MOUNTAINS
As the war with Viet Cong insurgents was heating up in 1961, South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, had a serious problem. His government’s influ-ence rarely extended beyond the larger cities and towns, and Saigon’s Army of the Republic of Vietnam was simply not large enough to maintain an effective presence throughout the nation’s back-country. This was especially true in the Central Highlands, a remote, mountainous 25,868-square-mile region dominating the country’s midsection.
Historically, the Highlands, isolated from the lowland coastal population centers, had been a mostly unmanageable territory, with government influence confined to provincial and district capitals. Worse, the Western Highlands sat adja-cent to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, an ancient labyrinthine system of footpaths snaking from North Vietnam through eastern Laos and Cambodia. The rugged, untamed border proved ideal for infiltrating men and materiel into South Vietnam. Both factors had for years enabled communist cadres to operate largely unimpeded in the Highlands.
One by one, southern villages and hamlets fell under communist control, providing Hanoi supplies and fresh conscripts for its insurgency. By the end of 1961, the South Viet-namese government had effectively lost control over many rural provinces. Contemporary CIA estimates found that perhaps 50 percent of Western Highlands villages had gone over to the communists. It was clear to both Washington and Saigon that something had to be done. Enter the CIA’s Combined Studies Group. In 1961, the clandestine organization, along with U.S. Special Forces, had begun experimenting with a program to organize a group of Highland tribes known collectively as “Montagnards.”
The moniker, roughly translating to “people of the mountains,” was a holdover from the French. The Montagnards were not ethnic Vietnamese but rather of Mon-Khmer or Malayo-Polynesian extraction. The Vietnamese despised the tribes, regarding them as uncivilized and disloyal. Historically, the more numerous lowland Vietnamese had steadily pushed the Montagnards inland to the less-desirable interior.
