The “strategic hamlet” program, most acclaimed and favored project of the year, sponsored by Diem’s brother Nhu and highly regarded by the Americans, succeeded in actually turning back the Viet-Cong in many places, if it did not endear the Diem government to the rural population. Designed to isolate the guerrillas from the people, depriving them of food and recruits, the program forcibly relocated villagers from their own communities to fortified “agrovilles” of approximately 300 families, often with little but the clothes on their backs, while their former villages were burned behind them to
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