CHAPTER 2

BREAKDOWN OF THE AGREEMENTS

THE POSTWAR WAR: 1973 - 1975

The signing of the Paris Agreements, or more formally called the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam, created the false impression that the cease-fire had ended the war. However, the agreements of January 1973 did not terminate the conflict in Vietnam. In fact, the 'postwar war' began almost the moment peace was proclaimed.

Anticipating success in the January negotiations, the North Vietnamese planned to launch general attacks throughout most of South Vietnam immediately before the expected date of the cease-fire. These attacks had one primary objective: to gain land and control of the surrounding population, and thus add legitimacy to the Communists' claim that the areas belonged to them when the agreements were signed. This offensive, known as LANDGRAB 73, occurred in late January and early February 1973. The operations followed the patterns established in October 1972, when the possibility of a cease-fire existed; except this time, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong waited until much closer to the expected date of the cease-fire to start their campaign. The objectives and techniques were virtually the same as had been used in the past: the main force units would generally defends the territory under their control and attack to fix ARVN regular forces in their bases, while local NVA and Vietcong units entered the hamlets.1

However, LANDGRAB 73 was a dismal failure for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. When the campaign ended on February 9, 1973, ARVN forces had killed over 5,000 Communists and only 23 of the more than 400 hamlets attacked were still reported by the South Vietnamese as contestable.2

Colonel William E. Le Gro, a senior staff officer with the U.S. Defense Attaché Office in Saigon stated that the North Vietnamese and PRG erred in delaying their pre-ceasefire operations in the expectation that the South Vietnamese armed forces would be deterred in counterattacking by the presence of International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) teams. The ICCS was created by the Paris Agreements and was supposed to detect and investigate violations, control entry into South Vietnam, and later, help supervise the national elections.

The ARVN, local regional forces (RF) and popular forces (PF) proved much stronger than the Communists anticipated; they were able to deter the Communists' plans to capture populated areas, show the flag and then await the arrival of ICCS teams to declare and guarantee legitimacy to the Communists in the newly won areas. Colonel Le Gro also commented that the Communists committed an important strategic mistake by dividing their local forces into small units and attacking so many places, thereby reducing the staying power of any local unit. By dividing into smaller units, the South Vietnamese forces were able to eliminate the Communist forces in piecemeal fashion, one by one.3 Colonel Le Gro notes that the local Communist forces were decimated after this campaign and never quite recovered. In fact, numerous articles written by both North and South Vietnamese leaders described the fighting before the final collapse as entirely conventional in nature, giving credence to the opinion that the Vietcong were unable to operate as an effective fighting force in 1975.4 The conquest of South Vietnam, thus became a completely North Vietnamese Army conventional operation.