Back in Post-Vietnam War Hanoi

I arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday July 1 and was almost the first in line to present my extraordinary health declaration to Vietnamese officials--now required of all visitors flying from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries--amidst a swarm of news cameras and media spotlights.

My declaration was only a formality since technically I spent the last 30-some days in Thailand, but I flew in on the regular Qatar Airways Bangkok-Hanoi flight, and the news crews were on hand to document the first 200 passengers to arrive in Hanoi under the new regulations.

The form I filled out never mentions the deadly MERS-CoV which has lately been in the news, but I knew I'd guessed correctly about its purpose when I googled the whole episode later the next day.

It's always an adventure when I visit a country new to my own experience--especially when it's a country that's been on my "to go" list for three or four decades, as is Vietnam.

I grew up with the Vietnam War, the first TV war in America's checkered history of international interventions, and somehow I was profoundly affected by the experience of seeing so many American boys return from this mysterious Southeast Asian land, which looks like a serpent on the map and which always seems to have had such colorful postage stamps, in body bags and caskets.

Although I was only six years old at the time of the February 1968 Tet Offensive I distinctly remember being frightened at the prospect of getting drafted for the slaughter of a long-running quagmire that I was sure--deep down--would see Americans and Vietnamese killing each other well into the 21st Century.  When I was 10 years old I was already planning my trip to Canada or Sweden to avoid that prospect.

My uncle was stationed in Hue, not so far from the DMZ marking the border between North and South Vietnam, but his 1965-66 tour was relatively early in the conflict, before the Lyndon B. Johnson administration began its upsizing from a few thousand military "advisors" to the eventual 500,000 troops that were stationed in the south at the peak of the war.

In retrospect, the U.S. attempt to prevent the Soviet-backed, Red Chinese-inspired Viet Cong from toppling the corrupt, inept South Vietnamese government was obviously doomed to failure.  But at the time it may have seemed reasonable to most Americans that if South Vietnam fell to the "communist monolith" it would necessarily be the first of several Indochinese "dominoes" to topple, perhaps bringing Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia down with them.

In fact, American involvement in the war inevitably spread to Cambodia where the murderous Khmer Rouge for several years was battling the right-wing Lon Nol regime for control, and to Laos where another low-level "communist" insurgency--similar to that taking place in northeastern Thailand--was also brewing.

It bears mentioning that these Indochinese wars were taking place in three of the poorest countries on earth.

When the U.S. and North Vietnam finally agreed on a peace accord in January 1973 that would see a complete American withdrawal in exchange for the return of all American POWs held by Hanoi, it was only a matter of time before the Indochinese insurgencies bore fruit.  By the end of April 1975 Vietnam was reunified under Hanoi, and communist regimes were in control in Phnom Penh and Vientiane as well.

But Thailand successfully crushed its own low-level insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s, as Malaysia had done in the 1950s-1960s.

Revolution Museum and Guerrilla Camp Worth the Visit

Steady rain all yesterday kept me away from the village for much of the day, but by this morning it had stopped and left behind a thick foggy mist covering the surrounding mountains.

I caught a ride in the back of a pickup--the village is a steep quarter mile trudge up the hill from Perkin Lenca--and arrived at the Salvadoran Revolution Museum early. 

Inside are photos, posters, news clippings and many artifacts from the rebels' side of the brutal conflict that ravaged the nation from the late 1970s until the early 1990s.  A highlight for me was the various maps of the conflict including one that showed the extent of FMLN territorial control.  Other maps included hand drawn ones of combat operations planned against government forces.

Artifacts include weapons, communications equipment, medical supplies, diaries and personal effects of fighters and their leaders.  Though most of the accompanying explanatory texts are in Spanish, the visitor gets a good overall picture of the history of the war from about 1975 until a U.N. brokered peace was established in 1992.

Outside the museum are remnants of American made aircraft which crashed in the area or were shot down.  Perquin was the center of a very large area of the department of Morazan which was under rebel control for much of the conflict, so it was also a major target for government air raids and bombings.

The guerrilla camp features much evidence of those raids including shrapnel stuck deep in trees, unexploded (deactivated) ordnance, and bomb craters.  Like the Viet Cong before them, the FMLN fighters built tunnels to shelter them from those raids.

The rebel camp also had a display of the party's clandestine radio station Radio Venceremos and a photo of the captured vice minister of defense being interviewed by rebel journalists.

After a day or two up here the visitor gets a good sense of how and why the rebels were able to control this area for so long.  This is high, remote, heavily forested country, and though the main road is now paved, everything off the main road is dirt (or mud, as it is now).  Is it any wonder that a weak central government, unable to outright defeat the rebels, sought material assistance in the form of aircraft and airborne bombs from the Reagan administration?

Although there wasn't truly an FMLN "revolution" in El Salvador in the strictest sense, I think it's pretty amazing what did, in fact, take place.  The FMLN and ARENA--the main government party--eventually came to an accomodation with each other, and since 1992 the FMLN has been an active participant in the political process here.  To me that seems a fair outcome after a war which obviously couldn't be won by either side--even with American assistance for one of the parties.